Looking to unlock more self-confidence? Not sure where to start? Here’s a simple blueprint for self-confidence all season long.
Every swimmer wants more self-confidence.
Few have the interest or effort to understanding how confidence works and how to get more of it.
They just kinda hope/pray/wish that it shows up on race day.
Instead, leverage your existing sources of self-confidence.
Here’s how.
What Gives You Self-Confidence?
First, let’s look at some of the classic well-springs of self-confidence for swimmers.
Typically, when talking to swimmers and asking about what helps them feel confident when they hit the water, the answer is, “When I’m swimming fast.”
(But more usually, it’s a shrug and an “I dunno.”)
When prodded a little more, some of the common sources of self-confidence from swimmers include:
- Quality of their workouts. How they swam last workout helps dictate confidence levels going into their next workout. Same goes for chunks of training. Better workouts/training tend to yield increased self-confidence.
- Previous performances. Performances can include how swimmers did on a challenging main set, on a get-out swim, hitting certain race pace targets in training, and past swim meets. Previous performances are the highlight package that we run in our heads when a big meet (or workout) approaches.
- How they are sleeping. Lack of sleep and stress go hand in hand, which often create a downward spiral of confidence. Hard to feel confident when you are constantly tired and exhausted.
- Diet. Eating like hot garbage can make us feel like hot garbage during our swim workouts, while also giving credence to the idea that we are not taking our goals seriously, reducing confidence.
- How the taper is going/went. Tapering can often be one of the most frustrating parts of meet preparation, a roller coaster of overthinking and overanalyzing.
- Swim meet pressure. Swim meets are hectic, pressure-filled weekends full of soggy butts and stress which can leave even the hardest worker in the pool with shaky confidence.
Build Routines for Self-Confidence
The above list represents a short list of places where confidence flows (or as is usually the case, it doesn’t).
But the cool thing is this:
Each of those items listed above is controllable.
And on top of that, you can choose to bring these things into focus by building routines around them to solidify confidence.
- Quality of workouts. Grade and track how often you work your tail off in training. Grading your workouts gives you a detailed record of how hard you are working that you can reflect on. The grading also has the impact of encouraging more quality swim workouts. Confidence comes from evidence of our hard work.
- Previous performances. Inventory ALL of your breakthroughs and moments where you excelled. Doing this regularly gives you a valuable and irrefutable stockpile of “See, I can handle big moments! for when you need it most. Missy Franklin, when she was swimming at Cal, kept a “confidence jar” of all the things she accomplished over the course of a season, giving her a visual inventory of what she’d done.
- How you are sleeping. Keep a sleep diary, get to bed earlier, power down the screens while in bed, and so on. You’ll feel better refreshed and recovered, and you’ll swim faster, to boot.
- Diet. Meal prep, pack healthy snack, have a meal plan, journal your meals. Taking control of your nutrition is one of the simplest things you can do to perform better and accrue the confidence that will naturally come along with it.
- How the taper goes. Have a plan for your taper based on previous successful tapers. A taper plan can include daily recovery activities, focus points in training, and so on. Having a taper plan ahead of time (that is obviously flexible to your circumstances) can reduce a lot of the agonizing overthinking that leads to confidence crashes.
- Swim meet pressure. Speaking of plans and routines, slap together a pre-race routine for race day that is simple and 100% controllable. This can include things like mental imagery, goal setting, and anxiety framing to help you generate even more confidence.
This little exercise should produce a series of “ah-ha” moments where you see that self-confidence is a skill that you can work on.
Which gives you much more control over how self-confident you feel in the weeks and months ahead.
Wrapping Things Up
Having the self-confidence to perform like a champ under pressure, or at the tail end of a big week of training, can be tough.
Feels like you are trying to adjust the head strap length on your swim goggles without breaking stroke.
But with some breezy analysis and developing the right routines, you can better lock down that precious self-confidence.
So:
Recognize your sources of confidence…
Develop ways to create routines around them…
And bring them to the forefront of your daily training and focus.
Happy swimming!
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.
