Who do you swim for? (and control what you can control)

I was reminded of this talk as I went back home for the holidays and my father mentioned that he wanted to give this talk to his swimmers. This was a talk that I tried to do every year with my group after swimmers have been for me a little while. I have some new kids and some kids who were still young, but it still is good for them to hear.

"Do not answer the question, as I know your response already if you do not take some time to think about it. Who do you swim for? Do you swim for your parents? Do you swim for your coach? Do you swim for your friends? Do you swim for yourself?" Most swimmers having heard this cliche before will normally quickly respond that they swim for themselves because they know that is the right answer. But knowing the right answer doesn't help them, but realizing the real answer can help them. If they do swim for something else, they need to try to refocus and begin swimming for themselves.

Swim Meet performances: they'll have bad times at meets on occasion, but that isn't where the biggest disappointment should be. It is when they touch that wall and they feel like they still have something left in them, that should be the frustration. Bad times are going to happen it is part of the sport, but not giving 100% of your effort in a race is cheating yourself. The swimmer puts in all that time and effort and then to go to a race and not be completely spent, why did you train all that time for? to only put in 90%. It's cheating themselves, and that is the thing you don't want to do if you are swimming for yourself.

Enjoyment of the sport is the idea of being the best that you can be. That means 100%; at practice, during warm-ups, during cool downs, during races, during boring coaches talks, 100% attention and effort. Don't worry about what you can't control and make excuses. Just worry about yourself and make sure that you give it all you got.

You can't control what the other swimmers do. I once told my swimmers that I rooted for other swimmers in our area to go faster. They looked at me weird. I told them that if the competition gets better then there is someone pushing you to the next level. Of course I wanted my swimmers to win, but in reality for age-group swimming, I really didn't mind seeing a swimmer from another team get faster. I am looking for my swimmers to step up and push themselves to work harder to outperform that swimmer the next time they meet. But again, the swimmer must understand that they can only control their own swimming and not that of their competitors.

From my own experience, I began enjoying swimming when I started swimming for myself. My father aided this as although he had swimmers winning Junior Nationals, making Olympic Trials, making the Goodwill games and other international teams, he let me choose my own path. I chose when I wanted to be able to compete with my peers and went to the Pre-Senior Group at 12, and I made the choice to be a one sport athlete when I was a Junior in High School. It probably held me back from being the swimmer I could of becoming dedicated so late, but it left me in love with the sport of swimming and now look, I coach it. I hope that my athletes love the sport, and fulfill their potential in a way that I am not sure that I did.

So, who do you swim for?