A Way to Stop Overthinking on Race Day

Finding yourself perpetually overthinking and choking on race day? Here’s a mindset you can take to practice to build a performance for the ages in competition.

Swimmers face a lot of competitors in the pool.

And not just the swimmer in the next lane or the resistance of the water or poorly painted T’s on the pool floor that leave you with a smashed up heel from a bulkhead-on-ankle collision.

Competing thoughts, well, compete for our attention when at practice, facing down another it’s-going-to-hurt-so-bad-I-can-only-laugh main set or when stepping up on the block at the Big Meet^TM.

This overthinking can leave us feeling overwhelmed with doubt or overthinking the basic mechanics of swimming to the other side of the pool and back.

So, what is a mental approach swimmers can take with them to the pool, packed at the top of their swim bag, that will help them to avoid performance-crushing overthinking and help them swim better?

Training to get better at racing.

Here’s how.

Train to Perform

Each Monday morning, swimmers are gifted a fresh, unwrapped week of swim workouts and opportunities to improve.

And broadly speaking, there are two ways we can approach each session in the water this week:

a) To get better at training

b) To get better at racing

Those two things look the same, but when we spend more time on B), we better automate the outcomes we want on race day.

Training to race (or training to perform) reduces overthinking, builds self-confidence (giving you a sense of “been there, done that”) as you step on the blocks, and provides a real sense of urgency and focus to your swim workouts.

In other words, this mindset forces you to you draw a direct line from what you are doing in practice to what happens on race day.

Ian Thorpe, five-time Olympic gold medalist (and the real current world record holder in the 400m freestyle), nailed this sentiment with this banger:

• “I swam the race like I trained to swim it. It is not mathematical. I just let my body do it. It is a lot easier if you let your body do what it is trained for.”

Training is hard work, I get it.

But what’s even harder is getting up on the blocks on race day and expecting to perform in a way that doesn’t match what you’ve done in training.

Your goal in training is building the evidence for a superior performance on race day that eliminates the overthinking and self-doubt that is typical of swimmers who train to train and don’t train to perform.

The Next Step

Having a performance-oriented mindset doesn’t mean you don’t have to do all the training stuff that doesn’t perfectly correlate to a fast swim on race day. But you should be able to connect the swimming you are doing today with what you want to achieve on race day.

• Work backwards from the type of swim you want on race day. The splits. The stroke rates. How many dolphin kicks you are going to take off the wall. Get granular, or don’t but have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish. One tool I love for this is journaling out the dream race scenario to make it more “real” and give you something tangible to work backwards from.
• Create short-term goals to help get you there. Set shorter term goals to build momentum and self-confidence along the way. They should directly feed into the Big Goal later in the season. The roadposts will also keep you accountable.
• Train with an eye towards performance. Don’t just show up to work hard and churn out the meters. Train to improve in the ways that will help you excel. Does that mean being more focused on hitting race pace targets? Stroke counts? Nailing the small details like a hyper-sonic streamline and attacking the walls?

The good news is that most swimmers will train to train and show up on race day, frantically squish themselves into a tech suit, and hope/pray/love their way towards a personal best time.

Not you.

Set the goal. Make a plan. And train to perform.

And leave no doubt when you step up on the blocks.

ABOUT OLIVIER POIRIER-LEROY

Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national-level swimmer, author, swim coach, and certified personal trainer. He’s the author of YourSwimBook, a ten-month logbook for competitive swimmers.

He’s also the author of the best-selling mental training workbook for competitive swimmers, Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High-Performance Mindset.

It combines sport psychology research, worksheets, anecdotes, and examples of Olympians past and present to give swimmers everything they need to conquer the mental side of the sport.

Ready to take your mindset to the next level in the pool?

Click here to learn more about Conquer the Pool.