Ask the Swim Doctor

by Dr. Paul Hutinger

QUESTION: I've watched you at meets and you always seem so relaxed and have a positive attitude about your events. I train hard, but I'm always tense and nervous before my events. What mental strategies would you suggest I use to improve my swimming performances?

ANSWER: Psychcybernetics, mental preparation, for Master swimmers will give you some basic principles to improve performance beyond training and stroke mechanics. Since the person needs to be considered totally, confidence must be built into a positive self image for a well-rounded program. Establish the groundwork for a good self image and confidence during the year with regular training sessions. Program yourself for success with mental practice training, stroke mechanic skills, and race strategies. Your success program should include the following:

• Establish goals or targets.
• Develop self-confidence; correct any errors.
• Forget failures; remember successes.
• Have faith; don't wait for proof -- let your creative mechanism work; don't make it work.

These basic principles should give you a new mental picture of yourself after a period of time. Use mental practice and imagery to improve your training techniques and stroke skills. Spend time thinking of correct stroke mechanics and how it feels to do the stroke correctly.

Use this same technique to prepare for your events before a meet. Many Master swimmers never plan ahead and train for their specific events; they just dive in and swim as fast as they can. Top swimmers mentally go through each event stroke by stroke from the dive in to the finish. To use imagery for your events, see yourself performing or feel yourself actually going through each detail when you swim the event. You can avoid many mistakes in races with this technique. Starts and turns can be enhanced with mental practice used as a supplement to the actual skill practice. During warm-ups, get to know the physical characteristics of the pools where you are competing: flags, blocks, etc.

This imagery, used frequently, helps to keep your goals within sight and creates motivation to practice and train to make it a reality. Many people feed in failures instead of successes which interferes with achieving their goals. You should dehypnotize yourself from these ideas. Avoid negative statements like, "I can't...." or "I never do well..." as an ending in all aspects of your life. How many times have you put yourself down by saying you do not have the capabilities to do certain things?

Measure yourself by your own standards. Have good thoughts about yourself and remember the successes that you have had. This servomechanism will help guide you toward goals and a higher achievement level. Use your failures as a guide to motivate you toward success.

Anyone wanting more info, please email or send a large SASE to Dr. Paul Hutinger, 1755 Georgia Avenue NE, St. Petersburg FL 33703.