By Norah Hunt, Swimming World College Intern.
One of the most exciting parts of watching sports is being able to see the all around winners, the rare and talented bunch of athletes that simply cannot seem to be beaten. Any day, under any condition, they can go out and succeed, regardless of what the competition says or does. Many bystanders inevitably wonder how these athletes stay so dominant, how they are able to stay motivated when, at least for the moment, they are at the top of their ranks.
Our sport is filled with dominance, of teams or athletes that are able to consistently rise above their competitors, year after year. The Texas men, the Emory women, and even individuals like Katie Ledecky or Caeleb Dressel all face the constant threat of becoming comfortable, of struggling to find a new goal to strive for after they look around and realize they are on the top.
Becoming complacent is one of the most surefire ways to not only stop progress, but also to move backwards. The question is, how to fight against it?
The most obvious answer, of course, is to simply set more goals.
No team or individual has won absolutely every award out there or has had a completely perfect season. Even if they win their conference or even the national title, there is still more to pursue.
Can they work on their performances at dual meets? Can they strive to have better underwaters, better starts, better technique? On the college level, can they work on raising the team GPA or doing more volunteer work? Can they have more individual NCAA or Olympic Trials qualifiers?
The list goes on, and the sheer number of different ways a team can improve simply shows that there will always be more to strive for. Goals are limitless, and the beauty of them is that once one is obtained, it is so easy to find another to chase down.
Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
However, many of the top athletes seem to go one step further in the fight against complacency.
For the top performers, there is oftentimes an innate, never ending desire to simply go in each day and give each practice their all. These are the workhorses; the ones that do not know how to swim any other way besides with a sheer determination. They enjoy pushing themselves for the challenge of it, and for the love of the sport. They will never become complacent because they do not know how to not be determined, how to not be relentless in what they do.
So, how does the young swimmer fight against becoming complacent? Simply put, they need to stay passionate. They need to remember why they chose swimming, when they could have been a ballerina or a baseball player, or a runner, or really anything else. They need to remember why they fell in love with the sport, and why they are still in love with it.
Swimming is at times draining and exhausting, and without a true and sincere love for it, even the most talented athletes will become mediocre. Goals are fantastic and the best means of motivation, but there has to be more that goes into the day to day mindset of a truly successful athlete. There will never be contentment as long as there is passion, as long as there is still a relentless desire to move forward, to continue fighting and pushing. The love of the sport is everything.
Next season, many swimmers and teams will once again jump into hard training, trying to find different ways to make the new year better than the last. They will try to build their endurance, work on their head position, eat better, become stronger, sleep more, and the list goes on.
There are so many intricacies to becoming a better swimmer; no person can become a complete master of every aspect. However, at the end of the day, these athletes also need to remember to hold onto their passion, their never ending love for a simple sport that in many ways changed their lives. If they can tap into that passion, and hold onto it even when they go through injuries or plateaus, then there is really no limit to what they can accomplish.
All commentaries are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Swimming World Magazine nor its staff.