It’s the end of summer. Did you enter an ocean swim or watch others have a go and think, “I’d like to do that next year?” Did you swim often enough to help your stroke and fitness improve? Did you make it to the sessions you wanted or did life get in the way? Did you finally get to do a FUNdamentals course and are feeling stoked with yourself?
Hopefully you had a summer full of swims and goals and challenges met but perhaps you didn’t. Now is a great time to reflect on what you did and didn’t do and set a plan in place for the year ahead.
Take a moment to reflect. Make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, (or a glass of wine or gin) and sit down with a piece of paper.
Write down the 3 things you enjoyed most about your swimming this summer. If there were lots more write them down too – sometimes we don’t appreciate what we have achieved until we see it written down. Own the opportunity to feel good about yourself. It doesn’t have to be major thing.
When you know what you’ve done well and enjoyed you feel good about yourself and you can return to this list in the future when things don’t go your way or you find yourself struggling for motivation.
Write down 3 things you would like to change/achieve in the next year. Perhaps your goal is unachievable in a year so write down your long term goal and then break it down in to elements you can aim for this year.
Write down any barriers you can think of– that might get in the way of you achieving these goals. Sometimes owning the barriers and seeing them written down can help you clarify what needs to happen to find the solution to overcome them.
When you know what you are aiming for and what’s been stopping you/holding you back in the past, you can make a plan to achieve your goals. We will be working on this and the cornerstones of swimming improvement in our Bali swim camps – finding ways to manage life and still achieve goals for ourselves – after all you are worth it!
The cornerstones to swimming improvement, the elements you have to play with are (because I love a good acronym) – the 4 T’s:
Technique– Is this slowing you down or have you nailed that this year. Is your stroke rate at the optimum level for you
Timing –Are you fast enough to achieve your goal? There may not be a time requirement for your goal and so time may be replaced by distance – can you swim far enough to achieve your goal? You may need to find the speed or increase your distance. – This can be done from the other T’s but its important to know where you are currently and measuring things helps you quantify where you are at.
Training – are you training enough to achieve your goal – its not enough to swim once a week and hope that will be enough to get around the jetty. Equally it’s not enough to train your socks off to swim to Rottnest and not train your stomach – training covers your mind, body, swim sessions and preparedness.
Trial –If your goal revolves around the ocean are you getting ocean swims in to familiarise yourself with the wonderful and varying conditions? Are you trying it? The more you expose yourself the greater your chance of achieving your goal. Try goggles, try different breakfasts, try stretching…..so many things to try. Try giggling whilst you do them too
Its always important to remember that your goal has to be just that. Your goal. Don’t compare yourself to others – swimming to Rottnest for me is comparable to swimming 25m for someone who has been afraid of the water – we are all unique and our goals should celebrate that.
If you tell me yours I will tell you mine. E-mail me your answers and I will e-mail you mine:
Write down the 3 things you enjoyed most about your swimming this summer
Write down 3 things you would like to change/achieve in the next year
Write down any barriers you can think of