How to Journal Your Swim Journey
By Sadie Jones, Swimming World Intern
Taking a couple minutes after you finish a practice to write down how you felt during your swim can make a world of a difference in your performance in the pool. Journaling after your swim is a very easy way to keep in touch with how your body and mind are doing, and it helps connect swimming to your daily life by making you think more about swimming after you get out of the pool.
Where to start?
Journaling looks different for everyone. Do you want to write in a notebook or type it out on your phone? An important thing to think about when choosing where you want to journal is what is most accessible and easy to remember, so you can stay consistent and actually write down something after every practice. Your journal is something you will look at very often, and adding a motivational quote somewhere in your journal can help remind you why you love the sport and to keep going strong.
Things To Think About When Journaling
One of the first things to think about when journaling after a practice is: What was the set? Writing down the set you swam can help you write more about how you felt and how you can improve. Another benefit to this approach is if you swim the set again, you can look back and see if you felt any better when doing it a second time.
Tracking how your body felt during a practice is very important. Did anything hurt? Or was anything tight? Did you feel tired? How much did you sleep last night? Or did you eat well today? Writing these things down can help you make decisions on how to help your body feel better for your next practice.
In addition to writing down how you felt physically, tracking how you felt mentally is just as important. Ask yourself questions like: Did I want to stop during the set today because I thought I couldn’t finish it? Or, did I have a good day out of the pool? How did my day affect my swim? What’s going on in your brain contributes largely to your performance in the pool.
Communicating With Your Coach
A huge underlying benefit to tracking your swimming is the fact that it opens up a new door for communication with your coach. By realizing what you need to work on after journaling about your swims, you can easily go to your coach and ask for tips on how to improve. Knowing what the problem is, is a big part of the battle. After that, talking with your coaches and figuring out the solution will come naturally.
Stay Consistent
Being consistent with journaling and tracking your swims is crucial. If you only write down the set and how you felt during practice once a week you aren’t going to be able to pinpoint what problems you are having and how you can fix them. When you journal after every practice it becomes clearer what you need to be working on and how you are growing toward reaching your goals. Make journaling after practice a habit, and add it to your daily routine as a tool to help you grow inside and outside of the pool.