Swim training can be a grind.
With only the sound of bubbles rushing past your ear, the quiet, judging hand of the pace clock, and the back-and-forth going on in your brain, finding the motivation to swim can become difficult as the season progresses.
Fear not!
In this article, we will look at some classic methods and strategies for keeping the motivational fire burning all season long.
Whether you swim alone or with a team, here are some proven tips for maintaining motivation like a champion.
Let’s dive in.
1. Have a clear “why.”
Let’s start big picture!
Why are you going to practice? Why are you getting up at quarter-to-no-one-else-will-be-up-for-three-hours for morning training? Why, oh why, have you chosen the life of perpetual chlorine, mountains of soggy towels, and botched shave-downs?
Understanding the why for your swimming is crucial for sustained motivation over the course of the season.
Not just when things are going well and you are dropping time and feeling the jolt of motivation from excelling, but in the low moments when you aren’t improving.
The why is the fuel for your day-to-day swimming.
And they should be larger and more big picturey than a time, medal, cut.
- “I love the opportunity to see what I can achieve in the water.”
- “To see how far I can push my natural talents and abilities in the water.”
- “To achieve things that I can look back on with pride after the season or my career is over.”
- “Doing hard things makes me confident and motivated in other areas in my life.”
Whether it’s competitive success, self-growth and personal development, or being part of the team and community, exploring–and consistently reminding yourself of—your whys can help swimmers stay motivated in the short and long term.
Think about them. Reflect on them frequently. Write them out and remind yourself when motivation ebbs.
2. Set short-term goals.
Goals! Goal setting is a skill that all swimmers should master as it is a high-grade motivational tool that can deployed in all types of time frames.
Swimmers typically focus on the big, season-ending goal. And imagine how motivated they will feel when they achieve it.
But short-term goals are where it’s at if you want lots of motivation to keep pushing towards the big goals.
The short-term goals swimmers can make for increasing motivation levels include:
- Goals for today give you a sense of urgency and focus when you head to the pool. Think about things you can achieve today at the pool. Swimming a number of yards at a specific race pace. Overall distance. Focusing on a specific technical element.
- Short- and medium-term goals help break up the longer, overarching goals you have for the season. They can be weekly (“My goal is to swim 8x this week”) or monthly (“My goal is to make every practice this month”). Consider them the rungs of the ladder taking you to the Big Goal.
Motivation shouldn’t solely be reserved for when you achieve something big and nasty in competition.
It should be drip-fed into your chlorinated veins via short term goals over the course of the season.
3. Use a process-based mindset.
Swimmers, coaches and parents who have been reading my content since 2013 (happy Decadiversary swim friends!) know that me and “the process” are like paddles and pull buoys. Swim goggles and caps. White boards and motivational quotes.
A process-based mindset, which favors controllable tasks that promote excellent results, reduces needless stress and anxiety, improves performance, and gives swimmers confidence in the water.
A process-based mindset can result in a simple daily process that looks like this:
- Show up to practice 15 minutes early
- Give a 9/10 effort each day in the main set
- Eat a healthy dinner
Yes, that’s it. Those three things look small, simple, and easy.
Which is the point, because it means you can do it repeatedly, over and over, consistently over the course of the season.
This simple process cuts out a lot of the mental clutter that tends to happen when we are trying to force motivation with our swimming.
But wait, there’s more…
This teeny-weeny process also doesn’t reflect what ackshually happens when you create a small foundation of excellence square in the middle of your swimming.
That commitment to excellence, the execution at a high level, doing simple things really well, always naturally expands.
- The healthy dinners lead to some healthy lunches, leading to better snacking and hydration habits.
- The 9/10 effort on the main set leads to increased technical focus during the rest of the workout, leading to a hunger to try harder and harder stuff in training.
The fun fact about excellence, no matter how small it is initially, is that it’s contagious. It’s a five-alarm bacterial infection of awesome that spreads quickly.
Which creates a ton of motivation to swim.
When we do things well, we become more motivated and tenacious to get after them (Wang et al., 2023).
A process-based mindset gives you more opportunities to build a sense of self-efficacy, which cascades into motivation.
4. Build a schedule for success and motivation.
The hardest part of a swim workout is almost never the actual main set. (Well, unless you are doing a lactate set that leaves your mouth with the taste of lactate.)
It’s the hour or two just before practice, where you are ruminating on how tired you are, how hard the practice is going to be, and how unmotivated you feel to train.
In the moments before we train our most convincing counterarguments make their best case for not going to practice.
- “It’s only one practice. No biggie if I skip it.”
- “I’ll go tomorrow and work twice as hard and make up for it.”
Take the mental grunt work out of trying to “get motivated” to swim by having a routine or schedule.
Build a schedule for your swimming that removes the mental back-and-forth of getting to the pool and trying to summon motivation to swim.
- “Each afternoon, I walk out onto the pool deck at 3:15pm.”
- “Every weekday, after work, I drive to the pool to train.”
Build a routine that eliminates the need to get hyped up to show up at the pool.
Save that mental energy for your short-term goals, focusing like a champion in training, and overcoming pesky negative self-talk on that final round of the main set.
5. Journal your workouts for endless motivation.
Journaling your swim training is an old school tactic that boosts motivation.
Whether you write out your workouts in a paper logbook, use one of the countless swim apps on the market, or details them in a Google Doc on your computer, journaling has a lot of benefits for swimmers.
It helps you track progress and identify patterns. Builds accountability and provides a detailed record of your achievements. And of course, you can use this record to boost your motivation.
Looking back on your history of training highlights, you can see how far you’ve come and all the hard work that has led up to today.
Seeing the tough things you’ve done, on paper or on an app, can be just the thing you need to keep the motivational embers burning to hit the pool later today.
Motivation, unleashed.
6. Compete!
Competing with your teammates in practice can bring a new element of intensity and motivation to daily training that can be difficult to summon on your own.
Racing teammates encourages swimmers to push beyond comfort zones, finding motivation in the increased performance that arises from it.
There were countless occasions during my swim career when a teammate and I went head-to-head for the duration of the main set, staring each other down over the lane rope, pushing each other to new heights and speeds that we wouldn’t have been able to do on our own.
Pair up to race teammates in practice. Do more time trials and off-the-blocks swims. Do inter-squad competitions and relays.
Not only will you hone your racing instincts by getting more competitive in training, but the intensity and competition is highly motivating and engaging.
7. Build an environment that grows motivation.
Whether you are a highly self-motivated swimmer or not, every swimmer can benefit from building an environment that promotes more consistent motivation to swim.
By constructing an environment that allows motivation to flourish, swimmers can spend more of their mental energy on maximizing performance in training, accelerating improvement.
Ways swimmers can build a cocoon of motivation around themselves include:
- Write goal times on your water bottle. Having it front and center when swimming can give you that little push when things get tough in training. Katie Ledecky had her goal times for the Rio Olympics scribbled on her pull buoy, front and center each day in training.
- Have your goals and motivational quotes visible. Whether you have your goals and quotes bedside, on the fridge, or taped to your steering wheel, your whys should be readily and consistently visible.
- Spend time with motivation-inducing friends and teammates. Teammates that share your level of ambition are more likely to help push you on days where motivation is slagging. Pick your inner circle carefully. Negative Nelly’s can feed that inner critic that is just begging for material to demotivate you.
- Communicate your goals with your coach. Regular feedback and encouragement from your coach is awesome for increased accountability and motivation. Let them know what you’ve got on your mind for goals this year.
By creating an environment with motivational cues and reminders, whether it’s goal times or motivational quotes or a combination of both, you’ll find it easier to get motivated to get your rear-end to the pool.
8. Unleash the motivational power of gratitude.
It’s funny how swimmers will bemoan and complain about the demands of the sport, but the moment they get injured or cannot swim, they catch a case of swimming FOMO.
It’s human nature to want what we don’t have.
Sustaining motivation to swim is much easier when we are grateful for the little things and the big moments we experience in the pool.
A daily gratitude practice, whether that’s writing something you enjoyed about practice—a laugh or joke between teammates, watching a lane mate achieve a breakthrough, or a quality bonding experience outside the pool—can help remind you how fortunate we are to partake in this sport.
Be grateful for those early mornings. The time spent grinding with teammates. The opportunities to pursue difficult challenges in the water.
Ultimately, these are the things you are going to remember most when your swim career is over, so keep a record of them, and as a huge side benefit, experience the bright and explosive motivation that comes along with it.
Wrapping Things Up
Motivation doesn’t have to be a passive process. You shouldn’t expect that motivation is going to come crackling out of the sky and hit you with a full charge of motivational fire when you need it most.
Motivation is a daily process and choice that every swimmer can make.
Whether it’s setting regular goals, recognizing wins and reasons to enjoy the sport, being process-oriented, or creating an environment that fosters motivation, swimmers can cultivate and grow their motivation to swim.
Get your motivation on, crank up the improvement in the water, and happy swimming!
ABOUT OLIVIER POIRIER-LEROY
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national-level swimmer, author, swim coach, and certified personal trainer. He’s the author of YourSwimBook, a ten-month logbook for competitive swimmers.
He’s also the author of the recently published mental training workbook for competitive swimmers, Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High-Performance Mindset.
It combines sport psychology research, worksheets, anecdotes, and examples of Olympians past and present to give swimmers everything they need to conquer the mental side of the sport.
Ready to take your mindset to the next level in the pool?
Click here to learn more about Conquer the Pool.