Hard Training and Why We Do it
Great article from former Canadian swimmer, Olivier Poirier-Leroy
Training is meant to prepare you for competition.
Physically.
Mentally.
To inure yourself to pressure, adversity, and the physical demands of swimming your best exactly when you need it most.
The approach of making training hard so that competition is “easy” is not novel. It’s something high performers across a variety of fields use to build authentic, legitimate confidence.
Here’s an example.
Been reading an excellent book titled SAS: Rogue Heroes, by Ben Macintyre, that chronicles the formation of Britain’s Special Air Service, an elite commando unit, during the early days of World War 2. Selection and training for this new unit was brutal. Recruits worked their way up to completing 100-mile treks in the baking sand-blown desert in Egypt carrying a full load of water and stones (to simulate the weight of explosives they’d carry for nighttime raids).
The goal?
"…to instill supreme physical stamina and self-confidence, to make the men so inured to hardship that the reality, when it came, would feel almost easy. 'The confident man will win,' said commanding officer, Lieutenant John Steel 'Jock' Lewes." Lewes, a born leader, didn’t just ask his prospective warriors to do these marches on his own…He first tested the marches himself in the hot desert, pockets full of rocks and stones.
The point?
Make practice so challenging and full of hardship that when it comes to stepping up on the block, you can look down the length of the lane and know that you’ve put in more work and conquered more challenges than the swimmer next to you and the PB in the psych sheet.
Crank up the pressure by racing your teammates, tracking performance, and aiming to beat metrics from distance-per-stroke to average pace.
Use test sets to challenge yourself mid-season and sharpen your competitive mindset. Set audacious goals in training to expand your mindset of what is possible. Swim with a mindset that embraces difficult challenges instead of shrinking away from them.
Chase hardship in training and you will find excellence and an impossible-to-fake confidence on race day.
See you in the pool,
Olivier
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Blue Dolfins have been teaching swim lessons, conducting a year-round USA Swimming Club, and competing in national & international competitions for over 50 years in Winter Park and greater Orlando.