Building Mental Toughness

In your swimming journey, you're going to endure a lot more training, pain, and sacrifice than almost any other sport in the world. Human beings really don't belong in the water. This is not our habitat and the way we have to move through the water goes against our body’s natural design. Because of this intensity we can sometimes find ourselves wishing it would just stop. Some call this feeling “burnout”.

Unfortunately, so many of these similar phrases have been so overused and improperly used that what you mean by burnout may not be the same as what your coach or your parents consider it to mean. Through my medical school training, I never encountered “burnout” as a diagnosis. If you ask me what depression is or how to diagnose bipolar disorder, there are very concrete criteria to follow. But the constant use of phrases like burnout, wellness and mental health have muddied the water as to what a normal reaction to intense training is vs what is truly a pathologic feeling that causes the psychological fatigue we care about.

In our other books dedicated to coaches, we spend a lot of time talking about overtraining: what it looks like, how to find it, and how to fix it. This would be considered the physical part of pushing ourselves too far. We leave that for your coaches to worry about.

So that we are all on the same page, let us start by defining what burnout is. Burnout has to mean something serious. If you use this word, it means something in your training or recovery habits has to change. This feeling can't come and go on a day-to-day basis. It has to be something that lasts a long time.

For us, burnout is never wanting to be a swimmer again. It is a feeling that you are so fed up with the training and racing that you would rather pursue a different sports career or give up sports entirely. Feeling tired after a few weeks of hard training doesn't count. Having a bad swim meet or season doesn't count. This has to be a deep sense of….”I’m done, I give up.”

What is the cause of burnout? If overtraining is a chronic physical imbalance between training and recovery, burnout is a chronic mental imbalance between training and recovery. What this means is that the mind, like a muscle, tries to recover from each round of training. If recovery is greater than the tiredness caused by training, there will be no risk of overtraining or burnout. However, if the recovery is inadequate or the training is too much, this can lead to the problems we are trying to solve.

Burnout is a combination of mental weakness and physical overtraining. Just like a muscle that is well trained, a mind that is well trained can withstand a lot of mental training. But, there's also a physical component which feeds into and weakens the mind if it is overdone. The goal here today is not to give one final solution or antidote. The goal today is to understand what burnout is, more importantly what it is not, and what you can do to make your mind as tough as nails.

The first step is to understand that the mental aspect of swimming exists and it can be trained like any other part of the body. Being aware and mindful of this part of the body that needs training is the first step in building mental toughness. That’s what this chapter is about, building mental toughness in order to maximize our potential and helping others maximize theirs. Mental toughness is sometimes a vague and mysterious thing only “elite” athletes have, but none of that is true. Mental toughness is simply the ability to make yourself perform consistently at a high level in workout or meets. This requires motivation, confidence, self-control and control over your emotions. 

We are going to go through all four of these concepts, but first we need to break down the brain and learn how it operates.

The Brain- Animal vs. Human

Just like muscles, heart, lungs, and hormones there is a physical cellular machine that is responsible for doing every job in the Swimming Machine, including all the aspects of mental toughness we are going to learn about. There are two important brain parts that

we should know about: the limbic system and the frontal lobe. These two parts kind of have opposite functions and tend to fight each other which is a good thing because that is how the mind keeps balance.

The limbic system controls emotions, behavior, motivation and long-term memory. It has many little parts, like the hippocampus, that integrate like an electrical circuit board to regulate your mood and create memories. This is considered a more “ancient” and

“primordial” part of the brain that is responsible for our animalistic instinct. Fear, anxiety, happiness and satisfaction are all created here when the limbic system sends out signals to affect your hormones and nerves in other parts of the body. For instance, when you are anxious before a race and have butterflies in your stomach, that’s the limbic system telling your adrenal glands to release adrenaline and get the body ready for a showdown. 

The limbic system may be an old dog, but it can be taught new tricks. This circuit board receives information and reacts to it in a programmed way. Practiced and controlled training of how you feel can alter the programming of the limbic system and redirect its reaction. For instance, feeling anxious before a race can be an “unpleasant” feeling, but if you redirect your thoughts to believing that anxiousness is just the body’s way of getting ready for a race, then anxiety is really something you want. In time, this redirection of thoughts and feelings will become imprinted onto the limbic system and become automatic, just like a learned swimming stroke becomes automatic with practice.

So, which part of the brain is doing all this thought control that feeds into the limbic system? That would be the frontal lobe. This part of the brain is responsible for higher level thinking, planning, complex behavior, decision making and moderating your

emotions. If the limbic system is the animal side of us, the frontal lobe is the human side. Zombies don’t have a frontal lobe. They are pure animal. 

The frontal lobe makes decisions. It decides between right and wrong, chasing dreams or staying in bed, to set a tough goal or to “go through the motions.” It is the frontal lobe’s job to suppress emotional impulses that tend to drive us towards the thing that will satisfy us in the moment, but may be bad for us in the long run (like suppressing the urge to stay at home and watch TV instead of go to practice). The frontal lobe is the last part of the brain that fully develops as we grow up. You can see this in kids, they have a feeling (I want to chase a ball) and there is no frontal lobe to say “WAIT, STOP, THINK” which would have protected them from running into the street after a ball.

The same behavior is seen in patients who have a damaged frontal lobe. The most famous case belongs to Phineas Gage, whose left frontal lobe was destroyed when a large iron rod was driven through his head by exploding dynamite in 1848. Gage retained his normal memory, speech and motor skills, but his personality changed. He became irritable, quick-tempered, impatient and got into gambling and drinking. The change was so big, his friends said he “was not Gage” anymore.

Just like other parts of the brain, the frontal lobe can be trained! Practice, practice, practice can improve the frontal lobe’s grip and control over the limbic system. Getting a good scholarly education, reading books, arguing with friends about which is better (Star Wars or Star Trek) and forcing yourself to control your actions despite opposing urges are all ways that will help build up this part of the brain and make it easier in the future to make good choices (eating an apple) and control emotions (moderating anxiety before a race).

It may be easy to fall into the trap that the frontal lobe and limbic system fight each other and that we should only feed the frontal lobe and suppress the limbic system (become Vulcan… for the Trekies). But this would be a mistake. Emotions are where we get our power! They are our energy and, we need them to push the Swimming Machine to its breaking point. The key is to keep it under tight control and direction through the frontal lobe. If you let emotions run wild, over time they will control you and that includes the bad emotions. In a sport with more downs than ups, it is important to control emotions and not let them control you so you can maintain your long-term goals and not be lost to hopelessness.

Motivation- The Will to Do

The alarm goes off at 5:00 AM, and you JUMP out of bed excited to get to practice (ok… a little exaggerated). Why? What’s the motivation? More importantly, what IS motivation? Most animals on this planet need motivational feelings like hunger and thirst to make them get up and find the things that will satisfy them and keep them alive. Motivation is simply a search for satisfaction. When that satisfaction is achieved, the

motivation (the itch) goes away. But we don’t want our motivation to go away! We want to be motivated all the time. For that, we need a goal that can’t be achieved, but must be continually strived for. This is called “self-actualization,” and it is at the top of a pyramid, specifically Dr. Maslow’s Pyramid.

Before we jump to the top of this pyramid, let’s try to understand the lower levels first. And because you are a swimmer, let’s put it in swimming terms, specifically the questions of: Why do I swim? Starting at the bottom of the pyramid, the Basic Needs, we can answer our question.

As you might expect, if you had to swim and race well just to earn dinner from your parents, that would be very motivating. You may think this doesn’t apply to any swimmer these days, but college swimmers attending school on a swimming scholarship or professional swimmers earning a paycheck based on racing appearances and performance will feel this type of motivation. They are swimming to fulfill a basic need. There is nothing wrong with using basic needs as a way to be motivated, but likely it will be short lived and once achieved (you guarantee your scholarship or dinner), the motivation quickly disappears. Time for level two.

Psychological needs are more abstract and are more about achieving status and forming bonds with other swimmers (team). This is probably where most swimmers sit in their motivation to train and race. They want to swim because they want to win a race, earn a spot on the team or just make their coach/parents happy. Again, there is nothing wrong with this kind of motivation, but what happens when you lose a race? When you move towns and have to find another team? Or if your coach takes another job? Now you have two choices: you can lose your motivation and quit… or move to level three!

Being motivated by Self needs is the most powerful, long living and indestructible form of motivation a person can achieve. At the top of the pyramid, swimmers are now motivated by becoming the best swimmer they can be; they are motivated to reach their maximum potential. Of course, reaching your maximum potential is vague and unattainable, which is a great thing. A goal you can never reach is a goal you can always strive for. In addition, Self needs differ from the bottom of the pyramid. The more you advance and achieve, the greater the motivation is to continue.

Dr. Maslow called people who were motivated by Self needs “self-actualized” people. These people are motivated to grow themselves, they are dedicated to improving the group (the team or human society), and they enjoy facing challenges. Maslow believed that in order to reach the top of the pyramid, you had to have a mostly complete bottom pyramid. For instance, you can’t be a self-actualized swimmer if you’re missing meals or don’t have friends. Those needs need to be met first before you can move on to level three. And once at the top of the pyramid, the story is just beginning. Being motivated by Self needs is a continual process where the swimmer is always “becoming” and is never static. There is no “I reached the top and I’m happy forever.” It’s more of a “I can’t wait to keep climbing and to bring everyone I know along.”

A lot of study has gone into this concept of self-actualization that Dr. Maslow described in the 1970s and it was found that people who really were self-actualized shared a number of similar traits, which can be translated into swimming terms:

        Maslow’s Characteristics   Swimmer’s Characteristics

You probably recognize a few of these traits in yourself and in your teammates but having all of them is a challenge and a goal. People who were considered to be self-actualized scored better in many aspects of well-being like life satisfaction, curiosity, self-acceptance, positive relationships, environmental mastery, personal growth, autonomy and purpose in life.

Just because we know that we want to be self-actualized and what being self-actualized

means, how do we get there? How do we climb the pyramid? How do we build our motivation to swim, train and race on something solid? Here is where a clever summary of decades of psychological research can help. Daniel Pink found that there are three things that help build motivation in a person: Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose.

Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose

While a lot of the actual research focuses on motivating employees

in a corporation, the concepts work with everything from raking leaves to running for President. Let’s go through these three aspects of building motivation and lay out some concrete examples of how to implement them.

Mastery is the desire to continually improve. You have probably seen this as being a big motivator in young swimmers. Kids who are naturally good (masterful) at the breastroke for instance are highly motivated to train and race that stroke. That’s fine, but BUILDING mastery is what really drives people to become motivated, especially as they get older. Setting challenges that are hard but doable is key (daily sets or goals). Seeing yourself get better or helping your swimmers and teammates see themselves getting better is a great way to concretely build a personality of “always chasing achievement.”

Autonomy is wanting to have the freedom to control a piece of the story. Obviously, we all appreciate having freedom more than being micro-managed and directed at every turn (even though we sometimes need it). Large corporations like Google guarantee time during the week for each employee to work on whatever they want. From that, Google has produced a number of novel products that would otherwise have been lost. Utilizing structured time off during practice, choosing between multiple possible sets and occasionally racing the way you want can all improve autonomy and make you feel like you are swimming for yourself and not for anyone else. Doing “choice” drill or stroke during a set doesn’t count! Obviously, you have to OK all this with your coach, but you get the picture.

Purpose may be the most powerful of the three motivational building tools. People throughout history have spent and given their lives towards a purpose that was bigger than themselves. In every person (and swimmer) is a desire to be a part of something greater. That’s why kings and monarchies were so popular back in the day! Building this culture of “team” requires consistent outlining of the goals of the TEAM and how we are all working together to achieve that goal (winning State for instance). Another great way to build purpose is to be involved in regularly teaching the younger swimmers

 on the team. This makes practice bigger than just making yourself better, it’s now about leaving a legacy behind through an up-and-comer (kind of like having kids).

Going back to things we all do on deck already: goal setting is a classic and effective way to build motivation as well, and we already talked about that earlier in the book, so we won’t repeat it here.

Of course, sometimes (maybe most times) you just need to step up and endure it. That is where self-control and grit can be used to build success when motivation falters.

Self-Control and Grit- The Practice of “Overcoming”

A person can have a lot of motivation, but without a tenacity to work and the will to overcome temptation all the wanting in the world won’t get you that gold medal (or reaching your maximum potential as you ought to be motivated to do by now). Self-control and grit are two similar traits that have been shown to be more important than natural talent and economic opportunity at creating successful people in all aspects of life from school to the pool.

Self- control is the ability to control your attention, emotions and choices in the face of temptation. It is the short-term ability to choose what is best for you in the long run, rather than choosing what would satisfy you in the moment (the ability to avoid instant gratification). This can apply to attending practice instead of watching TV or doing four

 dolphin kicks off every wall and being uncomfortable holding your breath instead of coming up right away.

Grit on the other hand is the ability to work towards a long-term goal consistently and with great effort despite setbacks and years of challenges. People who have grit have dedicated their lives (or a large part of it) towards achieving a goal that holds great significance for them (making an Olympic Trials cut). By definition, you cannot be gritty about everything in your life (video games, music, swimming). You have to eventually choose a few select passions. There are only so many hours in the day and if you truly want to be the best swimmer you can be, at some point you have to choose to be gritty about swimming. People who tend to bounce between sports, hobbies and even majors in college tend to have little grit. If you lack grit, it is a reflection that you lack a goal or a purpose. That takes us back to building purpose behind what you do. A powerful WHY is necessary before anyone can endure any HOW!

Grit and self-control are not the same, and you can definitely have one without the other. A person may have great self-control and never eat a cookie but lacks any purpose or goal behind being healthy. On the other hand, a person can have a great desire to run a marathon (not you I’m sure) but lacks the daily discipline to stretch since it is not specifically in line with their goals (yeah… runners don’t stretch much either).

So, how do we build grit and self-control in ourselves in order to achieve more in the

pool and get the most out of ourselves? When we have the definite answer, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, my guess is that like everything in this world, practice is always the answer. 

Self-control starts by overcoming small temptations. For instance, cutting out junk food. Start by limiting to one snack a day, then every other day, then once a week. Force yourself to go to practice. Set goals for attendance, not just goals for swimming times. Just like building motivation with mastery, autonomy and purpose you can outline how you want to become more self-controlled (autonomy), why you want to (purpose) and measure how well you are doing (mastery).

Building grit is tougher and more painful. It requires failure. It is easy to stay on track towards reaching a decade long goal when everything is going just right. Grit, and practicing grit, shows itself in failure and in how you respond to it. Do you back down after failure or re-ignite your fire to overcome it? The starting point of building grit is to

realize it is a “thing” to begin with and that you may have lost your motivation or had a setback, but this doesn’t have to change the CHOICE you make. Revisit what you are training and racing for and remember that the harder something is, the more worthy it is in the end.

One known/up-coming way to improve these components of mental toughness is understand that the brain is not set and can be trained and that the nerves can re-wire and re-circuit themselves to create more self-control and grit. This is termed the Growth

Mindset, and when it was taught to kids in school that their brains grow in response to challenges just like their muscles grow with training, they were much more likely to persevere in their challenges because they no longer believed that failure was a permanent condition!

Many people like to pit motivation vs self-control/grit as to what is more important to attaining success and keeping people engaged in their pursuit of a goal. In reality, they are all important and play into and feed each other. Now, let’s take a look at a couple of very specific feelings and mental challenges every athlete faces.

Anxiety- Turning Bad Feelings into Good Ones

You are about to walk out the door to work and suddenly feel anxious. You check your pockets and discover you forgot your keys! Or you just sat down for a test that is going

to determine your career opportunities for the rest of your life and the butterflies are flying. But instead of freaking out, you focus the energy and crush the test! That is what anxiety is for, it helps us take care of business. A lot of times we consider anxiety as a negative emotion. In reality, anxiety can be a very powerful way to energize yourself. The problem is that too much anxiety or anxiety at the wrong time can interfere with life and performance. For that reason, we need to have ways to regulate anxiety.

There are two parts to anxiety, the cognitive part (worrying thoughts) and the somatic part (the physical feelings like butterflies, sweating, dry mouth…). Before a race, swimmers try to get themselves “psyched up” which is a way for them to increase their anxiety and help them perform. Since getting psyched up isn’t perceived as a bad emotion, psychology tends to call this “arousal” (yes, poor choice of words from the scientists).

There is a BIG debate on how much arousal an athlete needs for optimal performance

and there are about eight million theories to go along with the debate. There is the simple Drive theory which says anxiety is 100% positive and the more anxious you are, the better you will perform. 

There is the Inverted U theory which treats arousal like a bell curve and says there is an optimal amount of anxiety. Too much or too little will result in poorer performance. 

There is the Zone of Optimal Functioning theory which states that for each athlete there is an optimal amount of arousal for that individual person. 

There is the Reversal Theory which says the level of arousal is actually not important at all and that the only thing that matters is the athlete’s “interpretation” of the situation. 

And of course, there is the combination theory that cognitive anxiety is always bad while somatic anxiety acts in an inverted U way. This is called Multi-Dimensional Anxiety Theory. The goal here is to stay mentally “cool” which gets your body as psyched up as possible.

When science has a lot of theories to explain one phenomenon, that usually means no one truly understands what is going on and the reality is likely a combination of all the theories at play. In essence, all the theories are true! Why not? Depending on the race, your personality, your age, the time in the season… all the theories can be seen at play.

For races on the ends of the spectrum like the 50 and the mile, Drive arousal may be the most beneficial because you don’t want to hold back in a 50 and you want the anxiety to dull the pain in the mile. For in-between races like the 100s/200s that need some balance and pacing, the Inverted U model may work best to prevent going out too fast. For athletes that get very anxious about their times, practicing the Reversal theory may be best for them. No matter what theory you believe in, the most important thing to have is the ability to regulate your anxiety and arousal before AND after a race.

Most athletes that want to increase arousal before a race or big set in practice use music, moving around and visualization to regulate their mind and body. This is why you see a lot of elite athletes perform the same “rituals” prior to a race (like the famous Michael Phelps arm slaps). Try new things and test what works for you throughout the season.

Decreasing anxiety is much more difficult and requires more practice. Remember that anxiety starts in the mind (anxious thoughts and feelings) and then spreads out to have a bodily reaction (sweating, dry mouth, tenseness). You can decrease anxiety by running the system backwards. Practice controlled breathing and muscle relaxation to help calm your mind and get back to an optimal arousal state.

Controlling anxiety in the moment is important, but our goals should be bigger. We

don’t want to have to spend half a swim meet focusing on breathing or meditating in the corner. We want to make optimum arousal second nature and subconscious.

Confidence- Practice it ‘till You Make it!

Probably the best defense against bad anxiety is confidence. We have all seen that one swimmer who walks on deck with all the swagger in the world. Where does it come from? Why are some people confident in their abilities and others always doubtful of themselves? First off, let’s get a better idea of what confidence is.

Confidence (at least sports confidence) is the belief that your abilities are better than

your competitor’s and that you can beat them because of that. Your competitor can be the person in the lane next to you, it could be yourself, or it could be the clock or a time standard. Sports confidence comes in three flavors: confidence in your skills and training, confidence as a mental state and emotion, and resilience or bravery. All of these really play into each other and help build overall confidence.

Building skill confidence is easy: Go to practice! The more you practice, the more you know and improve your abilities and the more confident you will be in them.

Being brave and building resiliency can also be practiced, but it doesn’t feel good. You have to put yourself out there and live outside the comfort zone. Go to a lane with an interval you have never done before, sign up for races you don’t know if you are ready for, try a race strategy that is new… all of these are examples of how you can build a resilient personality that accepts change instead of fighting change and unexpected challenges.

As for building emotional confidence, part of it will come from the other two confidence factors, but part of it will just have to be there. For example, a new medical student helping out in a surgery may suddenly be asked to stitch up the incision site for the first time. Is it scary? Yeah. Is everyone in the room watching and waiting for you to take your sweet time fiddling with the instruments while wearing gloves slippery with blood? Yup. Is your job going to dictate whether this patient is going to heal right or

have a giant scar for the rest of their lives? You betcha. Are you going to let everyone in the room know how you feel? No. No you are not. You’re going to fake it and do the

job that’s in front of you. The butterflies may be trying to fly out of their cage and your hands may or may not be trembling but none of it matters because you are doing it and that is all that matters!

Let’s say you are already at the big meet and you are still struggling to feel confident for your next race. Is there a way that can help build confidence in the moment? Would this question be asked if there wasn’t? A couple of the best ways to build confidence in your own abilities are Imagery (visualization) and positive Self-talk (not self-help…  that’s different). The idea here is that what you do consciously is what controls the subconscious and transfers into the water and into your emotions.

Imagery or visualization of your race can physically activate the needed nerves involved in your brain. Imagining yourself racing the way you want to race can help your brain build a mental map of how to perform the actions you want it to. It also makes the goals seem attainable and therefore will help build confidence. Imagining yourself winning a race 30 seconds before you jump on the blocks is really a last-ditch effort. Ideally, imagery should be something you do daily at practice. At the very least, when you are doing all-out efforts from the blocks at practice, you should be imagining how you want your stroke technique and race strategy to be so that you can maximize the way you practice.

Another powerful way to build confidence is positive self-talk. It’s kind of like cheering yourself on in your head. In reality, we all do this all the time. “Come on! One more 100, keep the tempo up!” According to the research, it really does work when you bombard your subconscious ability with conscious desires. Some athletes like to use self-talk as a way to prevent burning out and to remind themselves that they enjoy swimming and that their performance and hard work is “enough.” That’s fine, but I would challenge that if you are needing to constantly talk yourself into liking what you are doing, that this may be a sign of an underlying problem. Go back to the basics and try to identify what’s missing: purpose, mastery, autonomy, grit, self-control, motivation? 

Remember that the voice in your head can go either way. It can build or break you

through positive or negative thoughts “I’m gonna die on this 200 fly!” Control the voice like you control your grit, confidence, motivation and emotions. You need to understand that the voice is never silent and will be with you forever, so you might as well have a friend inside your head instead of an enemy.

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