Whilst the weather may have been a bit damp and drizzly, it didn’t seem to dampen the spirits. Well done on another cracking weekend of swimming. It was lovely to see some new faces too.

Your pod leaders’ observations

As you can imagine, we put a great deal of planning into our approach each weekend. We’re starting to get to know some of you a bit better and characters are emerging on the beach. I still love the real team feel, and even poor weather hasn’t dampened that.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported another swimmer. It can be very comforting to have a buddy swimmer, some days you need support and some days supporting someone else actually helps you. Just like on the big day when you have your team, your crew, this is a team sport.

Have you noticed how some days can be good and some days just feel a bit harder. You are not alone. This is a universal truth! I remember my first year and I thought it was just me having a bad day (I had a lot of those that year!). When I wrote up about my experience after the event, I was stunned by how many people contacted me to thank me because they thought it was just them. So whether you are aware of other people having a tough day in the office or not, if that’s you, you won’t be alone. It’s normal.

The things you find tough today may seem easy in a week or two, and things you normally find easy can be tough for no apparent reason. As human beings we are very dynamic. A disruption in sleep, a stressful week of work, challenges with children, the list goes on, can put things out of kilter. The time will pass. If you are concerned, speak to your pod leader or a member of the beach crew after training. Or talk to each other. Join the community call. We’re in this together.

And then there’s the other type of challenge. The inner critic. The one who only ever sees fault and doesn’t praise. Does someone congratulate you and you find yourself saying or thinking ‘yeah but…..’. Know this, I don’t praise unless praise is due. If I say it, I mean it sincerely.

Your pod leaders have trodden the path that you are on. We are climbing our own mountains and when we look from our mountain to your mountain, not only can we see where you’ve come from, but we can also see your path. Keep the faith in the process and reassure that critic that you hear it and you are taking care of things. It’s ok to be kind to yourself. It’s totally appropriate to celebrate the small and big victories.

In fact I’d like you to create a memory jar of all those moments when things went well. Keep a jar where you’ll see it regularly with some paper beside it. Write down the good memories, be they small or large. Moments in a training session, something someone said or big victories & events. Fill up your jar with all these moments and then if you have a bad day, open that jar and take a look at all the moments that are yours and that are positive.

Feel free to do this in your mind in the water if it helps. These moments are all yours. They are moments when you showed what you are capable of and if all these moments are yours and you did these things, what else are you capable of?

A different type of session!

I wanted to achieve a couple of things this weekend. For those who train regularly with us, it’s our third week of progressively ramping up. As we get further into the season you’ll start to see the cyclical pattern of what we do emerge. Think of it like climbing Everest, you don’t just go straight up, you go part way up, and part way back down, you go a little further and back again. In the case of Everest you are acclimatising to altitude. If you look at elite swimmers, they too follow a cyclical pattern with recovery as an important phase. It’s not just the elite, many good masters squads also do the same, I know my club does.

So this week was an intense week, deliberately. It was a week to push on (goal one) and also to focus on pace and getting in and going quickly (goal two). Whilst everyone is starting from a different place, we aimed to push each of you to the right level for you and keeping you on track for the overall goal.

How did we do that? On Saturday the soloists got asked to make a decision: two moderate swims or one slightly longer one with something fun planned afterwards, everyone who was asked that question (it wasn’t the right question for everyone) opted for the longer swim (just as we thought) even though you didn’t know what the fun thing was (goal one achieved - intense phase of the plan). For some of you that meant doubling what you’d done before - a leap of faith. So what was the fun thing - it was a relay race in pods to and from the first yellow buoy (goal two achieved - quick entry, no faffing and pace work).

Please know that we will never ask you to do something that we think you’re not capable of. I know that some of you thought that you couldn’t and surprised yourselves when you did manage it. Thank you for trusting us. If it helps, you can borrow our belief in you until you find your own self belief.

I appreciate that it is a little different if you are an occasional dipper, we need to rely on what you tell us about your progress and plans and we’ll help you be accountable to that plan and push you when that’s the right thing to do or advise holding back if you appear to be over training.

Whilst on the subject of overtraining, I love it when you come in at the end of a session and want to do a little bit more to make up to the next milestone distance or time and we also suggest it when we see that the moment is right. What I want to watch is when this happens all the time and you end up smoothing out the training plan and don’t have those ever so important recovery days / phases. Over training is an easy thing to be drawn into, the desire to do as much as you possibly can to prepare. We aim to follow the science and leading practices in our periodised training plans. Enjoy the rest days, not only do they feel lovely, they are also helping you to leap forward in your progress and minimising the risk of illness & injury. If you want to read a very deep and complex book that looks at the science behind peak performance Peak is a good read.

Sunday we pushed on even more. Well done to everyone who swam.

Start of the relay race

Swim stats

Note: Water temperature taken during the swim session in the harbour. Air temperature, wind direction & wind speed taken from the Port of Dover app.

Saturday:

Swimmers: 40
Water temperature: 10.8C
Air temperature: 11.1C
Conditions: Rain, heavy at times. Swell in the water with a slight chop at the start. F2 SW.

Sunday:

Swimmers: 47
Water temperature: 11.2C by shore and up to 12C by ferry wall later in the session
Air temperature: 16.5C
Conditions: Sunny to start. The water was flat at low water and slightly choppy at ferry wall end as tide came in. F5 S

Start time

It wasn’t until I heard Mandi suggest ‘Singing in the rain’ as swimmers went in on Saturday, that I realised that I actually don’t know many of the lyrics! Just as well you got in and swam quickly!

Volunteers & beach crew

Thank you to the pod leaders and to our volunteers. Mel was on the rota for Sunday and thank you to everyone who helped out on both days.

Reminders

Remember to book your sessions online. Bookings close 24 hours before the session. We had quite a few people caught out this week and whilst I will gladly add you after the deadline, it saves me a heap of work if you remember to do it in advance!

The system doesn’t arrange automatic refunds, so please message me if you cancel ahead of these deadlines and I’ll arrange a refund.

You don’t need to sign into the website to book a session - just pop your email address in to the booking system and it will remember you. Remember to click into the discount code box if you are a subscriber and it will auto complete your discount code. If you are a pay as you go swimmer and are also a member, remember to use your discount code to get your membership price.

Please remember to give your number in when you get out, when you get back in for a second swim and when you feed. This is arguably our most important safety process. Please be patient too, we can only process one person at a time!

Remember to give your band in at the end, it is a back up check for us, as are all crocs being claimed.

Collect any shop purchases from Emma.

Remember to cancel any subscriptions when you no longer need them.

Pod Ponderings: Mental training

I think it was Alison Streeter who first said that the channel is 80% mental and 20% everything else. I think she’s right. When you think about how big the 20% is, it makes you realise just how important mindset is. So why is it that the focus for so many is just on grinding out the metres? Makes you think.

This week I want to focus on mindset as this could be the difference that makes the difference on your big day.

Mental training, what even is that?

If I need it, does it mean I’m weak or that something is wrong with me?

It’s a bit woolly, what am I supposed do actually do? Do I just sit around, close my eyes and focus on my breathing and stuff like that?

No, you don’t need mental training because you’re weak. Nothing needs fixing. And no, we’re not going to sit in a circle and ask the universe to give you what you need.

Mental training has stacks of research behind it. There are numerous techniques and tools including hypnosis, neuro linguistic programming, visualisation, or simply running the process, all of which can help you bring the very best version of you on the big day and in training.

When I was involved with the celebrity programme ‘Sink or Swim’, I had the privilege of listening to Linford Christie talk about his Olympic years. He told me that he was not the best runner in the world, he won the race in the call room, not just on the track. He told me about an event before the biggie where he was chatting to other competitors in the call room and told them that he wasn’t ready for the event and he didn’t think he’d run very well. He won! At the big event he chatted to the same runners in the call room as talked about how great he felt and how he was looking forward to the event. He won, right there. They made the leap from ‘if he was on bad form before and won, and is on good form now, we don’t stand a chance’. That was nothing do with running and everything to do with mindset.

When Roger Bannister was trying to break the 4 minute mile, most people thought it was literally impossible. Some people thought he’d even explode if he somehow managed it. He decided to break it down into seconds rather than minutes. Under 240 seconds was the target and he only needed to lose a couple of seconds. That sounded achievable.

There are hundreds of stories just like this. The shot-putter who used hypnosis to go from being unknown to Olympic bronze and then Olympic Gold.

So if all this is possible, how could you use your mind to great effect?

I see it each weekend in training. Sometimes we see something in you that you don’t yet see in yourself. Just borrow our belief in you until you find it for yourself. Just this weekend I saw people achieve things that they didn’t think they could (we believed in you all along).

Think of mental training as a series of cheat codes for your brain and emotions.

Here’s a selection of the ways that working on your mindset even just a little bit each day will help you become the swimmer you’ve dreamt of, and maybe didn’t dare hope to be:

1. You’ll enjoy your pool and open water training more.

I know, I know, that sounds impossible, yet it’s true. The secret to enjoying hard or mundane tasks is not letting your mind wander.

Be “present” and engaged with whatever you are doing, whether it’s a long swim at your ‘all day’ pace, a technique session in the pool or working on your ‘hour of power’.

When I first started working on my technique I saw the drills as a necessary evil. I absolutely love them now. I love to have one or two things to specifically focus on. On my best channel swim, I thought about my technique all the way across.

2. You’ll redefine how tough you are.

One of the peak moments in swimming comes when we surpass a limit or break past a plateau. These incidents are rarely by accident, and often come via bargaining with ourselves to push just a little longer. “Just five more minutes”; “Swim to the next feed”.

Improvement comes via slowly inching the line of what we think is possible each time in training, and this is difficult to do without the willingness to have the mindset necessary to do it.

I saw people double their swims from last week, yet the individual mental leaps in the decisions on Saturday were actually small, e.g. if you did 45 minutes last week and I gave you a choice of doing an hour followed by 75 minutes OR one swim of 1.5 hours, it wasn’t much of a leap from 45 minutes to an hour, from 1.25 hours to 1.5 hours, but the actual leap from 45 mins to 90 mins was seemingly large. We took you on a journey to get you there.

3. You’ll be less of a Debbie Downer when things don’t go your way.

How do you react when an event doesn’t go the way you hoped? Or when you have a really bad training swim? Does it linger, leading you to swim poorly in the days and events still to come?

An improved mindset means you have the perspective to bounce back—and seize the opportunities still before you.

4. You will learn to focus on the right things in training.

When you have a bad training session, does your thinking go immediately to: “Why do I bother, I’m never going to achieve any of my goals” or does it go to, “Okay, somewhere along the way my process fell off the rails.”

Don’t know the difference? Mental training will show you.

5. Be better positioned to deal with illness or injury.

Somewhere along the line you may tweak a muscle or get a cold and you have to train smart or practice your patience and not train for a while.

Approaching illness or injury with a better mindset not only helps you heal faster, but it also gives you some powerful ammo to bounce back stronger (a forced break can actually make you stronger)

6. How to set absurd and realistic goals (at the same time).

We all have dreams —whether or not we say them aloud is another matter.

Even though big dreams are common (let’s face it, the English Channel isn’t a small dream for most), the ability to pass through the ambitious and the ridiculous is something those swimmers who achieve big things understand.

Big goals matter, and so does the realisation that ambition must be matched with realistic effort. Though training smart is key. Recovery is as important as those big / long sessions. Over training can kill as many dreams as under training.

7. How to make perfectionism work for you.

At some point we all confront perfectionism: either we get down on ourselves because we don’t match our high standards (and give up), or we create such lofty expectations that we never give ourselves a chance to make meaningful progress (and give up some more).

Aim for high standards, ones that stretch and are still achievable.

8. How to make the voice in your head work for you.

Each day in practice you are telling yourself a story: I feel great in the water. I feel like crap in the water. I can do this set. There’s no way I can do this.

Back and forth goes your self-talk, usually unattended, driving the way you end up performing in the water. Self-talk is the key to your mindset.

Decide what to tell yourself, and your body will generally follow (as long as it’s realistic and relevant: I can tell myself that I’m a svelte swimmer with a triangular swimmer's shape, powerful shoulders and long arms, but that doesn’t make it true).

Mental training includes a heap of ways to re-frame your self-talk so that you can get more from your swimming each and every day in practice.

The key to a better mindset starts with the way you talk to yourself in the water.

9. How to manage pre-event stress.

Choking. It’s perhaps every swimmer’s worst nightmare. Training perfectly for months in all weather and all conditions, doing everything that’s asked of you —and then stressing out when you get on the boat and losing all your self belief.

I’ve been there.

There are things you can do—you don’t need to forever identify yourself as the kind of swimmer who chokes under pressure..

Mental training gives you the tools to help deal with the tension and excess anxiety before the big day so that you can reliably swim to the best of your ability.

10. Learn how to use ‘anchors’ to reliably reproduce powerful mental ‘states’.

If you can recall a time when you felt completely invincible, on cloud nine, able to take on the world, you can recall that state and recreate it using NLP or hypnosis techniques. If you can conceive it, you can achieve it.

**11. You’ll do the right kind of comparison making.**

Too many times people compare their worst traits (as they see them) with other people who have this trait as a strength. They rarely compare their best traits with others’ weaknesses. Often the best comparator is yourself or a perceived gap and how it changes.

In my best year of training I came to realise that most people were faster than me until about 3 or 4 hours and then, something magical would happen, and the gap would close or reverse. I don’t know if I got faster as I warmed up or others slowed down, maybe a bit of both. But it helped to learn that pattern and have the confidence to swim my own training session knowing that if I practiced a little patience that all would be well. It was that year that I did a negative split in the channel. I trusted that process all the way across the channel.

12. You learn to focus and build your process.

I think there are two elements to this, the process of good technique and the process of the big day.

I hear a lot of swimmers talk about how they need to be faster and simply put more effort in. To me, speed is an outcome, not an input. You can’t directly control the output (speed), but you can control the input (your technique). Work on your technique relentlessly and an increase in speed will be the likely outcome. If you are already a swimmer blessed with good technique, the gains will likely be less, but keep the focus and you’ll be less likely to be injured and can continue to enjoy our sport for years to come.

When I talk about process on the big day, if you have already experienced all the elements that you will face on the day and have worked out how you will react if things happen that you don’t want, you can simply run the process. Think back to last week’s post about Phelps.

Mental training helps you lean your focus on the process of being successful, and away from fixating predominantly on the outcome.

The difference may seem meaningless from the outside, but a process-oriented swimmer is far less stressed and far more productive than the swimmer who gets solely wrapped up in the results.

13. Confidence, supercharged.

Confidence is typically treated as an innate skill. Something we have, or we don’t.

But confidence comes from action.

There are proven things that you can do to be more confident, more often, that have nothing to do with the things we tend to assume represent confidence: bravado, talking a big game, etc.

When you spend some time on your mindset, you learn that confidence is something you can regularly build and deploy when necessary.

14. Build pre event plans that work for you.

Do you plan to show up on the big day with a plan for your preparation, or do you just kind of wing it?

By having a plan, as well as a pre-big day routine, you give yourself a powerful sense of familiarity and comfort, which can be a massive performance boost when you are under pressure.

Mental training means taking control of your preparation, and this extends to what you do on the day of the big event.

We aim to help you build a powerful mindset through the training you do at the weekends with us. If you would like more support than that, please get in touch. Our one to one packages or sports performance hypnosis may be the difference that makes the difference for you.

Next Week

Next week we can step down from some of our COVID-19 protocols. For those of you who want it, we will be able to provide vaseline. We will now conduct our safety briefings in person on the beach, please ensure you attend this mandatory element. Let me know if you still want me to update the website with the weather forecast.

Other than that, I predict swimming and probably a twist or two along the way, or will the twist the absence of a twist? I guess you’ll have to wait and see!