Olivier Leroy on Your Goals

Bonjour! There’s a familiar pattern to trying to make a big change with our swimming. Maybe we’ve finally decided we’ve had enough and really want to punch that best time in the face. And so what do we do? We show up to practice every day. Bang out the main set with precision and ruthlessness. Clean up our lifestyle habits, eat a bit better, go to bed a little earlier. After a few weeks the expectation is that we are much, much better. We’ve worked hard, after all. Only we find that in doing a test set, or racing that we’ve barely improved. Hardly. Cue up the greatest hits of soggy self-talk: “I suck—see I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it.” “This goal will take way too much time for me to achieve. I’ll never be able to do it.” Before you throw away all that hard work, before you give up on doing things the right away, there is something ya need to know… And it’s this… We are hilariously brutal at guesstimating how long it’s going to take to accomplish something. We can look at our past history, and make predictions based on our experiences and abilities, but more often than not we underplay how long and how hard something will be. Here are two examples. Example 1: The first example is something you can almost certainly identify with… Last weekend I was meeting up with a friend to grab lunch. I sent out a text, “Leaving now, be there in 5.” I gathered my things, and headed out the door. 15 minutes later… I walked through the door of the restaurant. Oops. Example 2: In 2004 at the Athens Olympics Michael Phelps was going for 8 gold medals. We forget that this was the case, because he accomplished it four years later. In reality, he failed in his stated goal to win 8 in 2004. The 200m freestyle, known as the Race of Century, exemplified why he came up short. Racing against Ian Thorpe and Pieter van den Hoogenband, Phelps was never really in the race, placing 3rd. For Phelps, the disappointment was hard to disguise as Thorpe and Hoogie smiled and laughed across the lane rope. Those devastating walls that he became known for later weren’t in his repertoire at that point in his career. In the years after Athens Phelps dedicated himself to develop an underwater dolphin kick that would demoralize the competition. This included leveling up his back squat to just under 400 pounds, being able to do 300+ pound box squats for 20 reps at a time, and doing an endless amount of weighted vertical kick. Oh, and also not missing a single day of training for nearly five years. The result in Beijing spoke for itself. Phelps 200m freestyle win was one of his most dominating, taking a half body length off the dive and never looking back, his underwaters powering him to a mind-blowing 1:42.97, a mark that would still stand if not for the Rubber Suit World Championships in 2009. The lesson? Things always take longer than we imagine it will. Whether it’s going to meet a friend down the street, or crushing our personal best time, it will always take a little longer, and require more work than we initially realize. So when you feel those self-defeating thoughts start to creep up… And you are getting frustrated that things are taking longer than you’d like… Stick with it. See you in the water, Olivier P.S. One of my favorite parts about writing out my workouts is that I can see with some measure of accuracy how long it’s going to take to improve. Why is this important? Because it helps us to be realistic about progress, about how long things will take to level up, and help keep us motivated over the long term. YourSwimBook’s custom ten-month log book is designed specifically for swimmers. It also comes with a 76-page mental training skills eBook—appropriately called “Dominate the Pool”—that will help you stay on top of the mental aspect of your training and racing.