A Swimmer’s
Guide to Mental Toughness
Research done by Louise Eling 2006
Have clear goals!
You can’t get to where you want to go unless you know exactly where that is. Your success as a swimmer starts with a dream, a goal of how far you’d like to go in the sport. The more detailed a picture you can paint of this goal, the better your chance of turning your dream into reality. Saying you want to be as good as you can or go faster are goals that are general and too vague to be useful. Qualify for Senior Nationals, or going 50 flat in the 100 fly are clear, specific and more reachable. Your goals are like magnets, which will pull you in their direction. The more specific and detailed you make them and the more time you spend thinking about them, the stronger the pull. Try to have your goals broken down from long term to intermediate to short term so that even on a daily basis you will have specific goals for practice. This will help you stay motivated.
Think about it! Set yourself some goals and share them with your coach/teacher.
Example: 1 Long Term: I would like the Midland District time for 100m Butterfly
Medium Term: Take 1 second off my time.
Short Term: Work on my streamlined kicking off the wall. Don’t miss any lengths out during training.
Example: 2 Long Term: I would like to achieve my Bronze speed award for my 50m breaststroke
Medium Term: Improve my leg kick because it is really weak.
Short Term: When ever I get choice kick I will do breaststroke kick
Click for Goal's Sheet to print out