Don't Overthink, Just Race

Overthinking can be the most detrimental part of your race. When it comes to race day, you need to turn your brain off, trust your training and race the person next to you. The time for thinking and refining your technique and game plan is in practice, not on race day.

Practice

You train 10-20 hours a week in the pool, depending on what you are training for. Make sure you are maximizing this time to refine your technique and race strategy. I always tell my swimmers to identify their weak spots and pick three things to focus on each practice and do those three things to the best of their ability. You never want to focus on more than three things because you will become too scatter brained, unable to focus and unable to put the necessary brain power towards improving your technique. 

I personally specialized in sprint free and butterfly. I knew what I was great at and what needed improvement.

My three biggest weaknesses were:

• Bringing the last 50 of my 100 home strong AKA not dying 
• I created a minor pause in my stroke when I took my breath on freestyle
• I had very fast tempo, however, sometimes I slipped through the water without maximizing my catch and power per stroke, ESPECIALLY when I got tired in a race

Every day in practice I worked on the back half of each set, trying to hold pace and not "die". With every stroke, I focused on a smooth, flawless breath to eliminate my slight pause. Lastly, I focused on holding power while keeping my tempo up. I stayed present in each set, trying to get better. 

Race Day 

I know the negative effects of overthinking because I have been there. I have been in races where I started thinking about my pause in my breath or "this is where I usually die". Guess what, I wasn't happy with ANY of those races. At the end of the day, you have to trust your training. You have to know that you have put your heart and soul into every single practice. Your body knows what to do now. TRUST IT. Turn it off. Race the person next to you. 

-KF