Olivier Leroy on getting your Butt Kicked. Excellent Read

There is one thing I don’t miss from my age group swimming days. No, it wasn’t the 100x100 holiday sets. And it’s not even that one pool that was treated with bromide instead of chlorine. (It makes ya retch. So bad.) Or the time that myself and a couple other swimmers had to do 10x400’s IM between sessions at a competition because we’d swum so poorly in the morning session. What was it? It was the car ride home after getting my butt kicked at a big meet. That long, solitary drive home where you are finally alone with your thoughts and shattered expectations. The stomach churning. The disappointment. Not easy to forget. And sitting here, writing this, I can feel my belly start to tie itself up just a little bit just by reminiscing on it. But as the wounds started to heal, and the raw disappointment began to lose some of its sharpness, something else began to take its place. A maddened, determined rage to do better. To be better. I would use the frustration, the disappointment, and the bad performance(s) to fuel a better effort moving forward. Sometimes, just sometimes… Getting your butt kicked can be the best thing to happen to you. After all… It’s a reminder that maybe you weren’t doing as much as you could have. Failure is immensely powerful for one particular reason—it can be a course corrector when you need it most. Those breakouts weren’t as good as they needed to be. Or you thought that you could sail by without improving your kick. Or that you really do need to work on your dive, after all. Failure shows us—rather pointedly, I might add—that what we are doing isn’t working. It’s humbling. It’s natural to protect ourselves from wanting to feel that awful, nearly overwhelming sense of despair and disappointment after we wet the pool. To withdraw to where we are comfortable. To go back to the habits and training patterns that we know. Never wanting to put ourselves on the line for fear of just getting let down again. But when you get your butt kicked is precisely when you should be smashing through those old habits. Use that anger… That frustration… To brave the uncomfortable and to do what you have never done before. As it turns out, getting your butt kicked periodically isn’t something to be feared. In fact, it might be just the thing that you need to help you get to the next level. So maybe I don’t miss it so much after all. See you in the pool, Olivier