Shifting Mindsets to Escape Mental Slump
Participating in an extremely time consuming sport all while taking the hardest courses your school can be very strenuous and tiresome. To all the student-athletes out there, I know how hard it can be — I’m currently a junior in high school, starting my first year in the full IB program. In addition, I am also a competitive swimmer who trains 15-18 hours a week for both my club and high school team. Although I am not planning on continuing to swim in college, I am still very much committed to my goals within this sport.
Of course, I am just one of the many, many hardworking student athletes out there. However, I believe that there are many unspoken challenges that we face on a daily basis due to our busy schedules. With this website, I plan to help many upcoming and current student athletes how to deal with this tough lifestyle in the healthiest way possible. But before I begin, I’d like to share my own story of how I managed to pull myself out of a seemingly endless mental slump.
It all started when I was around eight years old. I had begged my mom to put me on a swim team right after I passed every level of swim lessons. Surprisingly, within just a year of being on the team, I became one of the fastest swimmers on the team for my age group. To provide some context, my club team uses motivational time standards, starting with a B time and going all the way up to an AAAA time, which is a nationally recognized standard. A B time would be the slowest one, and each one after (BB, A, AA, AAA, and AAAA) would be progressively faster. At that time, the average time most of the swimmers in my group had was a BB time.
Initially, I was a backstroker, not because I was fast at it, but because my other strokes were far worse. However, during this one particular meet, my coach put me in the 100 yard breaststroke, and unexpectedly, I earned my first A time. This caught me completely off guard, as I had never imagined myself being remotely good in this event and stroke. At my next swim meet, I dropped even more time, earning a AA time. I soon began to realize that I didn’t achieve my time by pure luck, but rather due to the talent and skill I had in this stroke. From then on, I put all my effort into improving my breaststroke, hoping I could be the first to earn an AAA time in my group. I only had a couple months to do so, as I would soon turn 11, moving me to the older age group with faster time standards. My race against time was on.
Pacific Northwest Swimming 10&Under Long Course Champs. My last meet as a 10 year old. I only had two chances left to get this cut: the 50 and 100 meter breaststroke. I got on the blocks, dove in the water, and swam as fast as I could. Although I had just missed the cut by a mere couple of milliseconds in the 50 breaststroke, I made it in the 100. Words couldn't describe how happy I was — I was on top of the world. By the end of the meet, I earned myself two medals. Fourth place in the 100 meter breaststroke and seventh place in the 50 meter breaststroke.
Ever since then, I was pretty much known as the breaststroker of our group. Whenever the set included any sort of breastroke, everyone would immediately move out of the way and let me go first. My breaststroke grew to be as fast as the people several years older than me. The amount of confidence I had in myself was immeasurable. In less than a year, I qualified for my first state-recognized meet: Regionals. There were only two people in my group, including me, who had qualified for this meet. Saying I was proud of myself would be an understatement — I was ecstatic.
Unfortunately, that year's Regionals took place in March of 2020. I’m sure we all know what the year 2020 had in store for us. Covid-19 cases had increased to the point where everything had to be shut down, including Regionals. I was devastated that I couldn’t go — this would have been my first time experiencing a faster meet, and I couldn’t even swim in it. Unbeknownst to me, this is where everything started falling apart.
Thankfully, after only a couple of months we were able to go back to the pool, with many safety protocols, of course.
In addition to being out of shape, I was also completely unaware of the fact that at this age, the guys in my group would be starting puberty, meaning they would be growing and improving at a much faster rate than me. I watched the teammates who used to be slower than me rapidly reach times I’d never seen before. With my confidence plummeting, I stopped seeing improvement in my times, and my mindset quickly deteriorated.
I had gone from basically being at the top to now being at rock bottom.
““Why are they so much faster than me now?”
“How did I get so slow?”“How did I fall off this hard?”
“What happened to me?”
“Is swimming even worth it anymore?””
These questions rushed through my head. Where did it all go wrong? I knew I didn’t do the workouts, but even so, it couldn’t have made such a big difference.
So, why?
Why am I unable to do what I used to do? Why am I unable to swim fast anymore? What are they doing that I’m not?
No matter how hard I tried or how much effort I put in practice, they would always be faster than me. So I stopped trying.
Throughout the next couple of years, my teammates would slowly become faster and faster. Although I never fully plateaued, it was clear that I was improving at a much slower pace than the others. With that, all the motivation I had for swimming completely vanished.
I started skipping the portions of the set I didn’t want to swim. I saw a couple of my friends just sitting on the wall taking a break whenever they wanted to, and it wasn’t long before I found myself planning out and strategizing when to “go to the bathroom” or when to “get a leg cramp.” I just stopped trying altogether and fully accepted that I would never be as good as the others.
Clearly, during this part of my life, swimming was not making me happy at all. I dreaded having to haul myself out of bed for morning practices or having to sacrifice nap time for afternoon practices. And it got worse each day. I was staying the same speed while all of my teammates were improving to the point of qualifying for national level meets, such as sectionals and futures. But the only person I could blame was me. I wasn’t putting in the effort I needed to if I wanted to improve. I made excuses to skip the hardest parts of the sets, and avoided anything I didn’t want to do. What started as something out of my control became something I shaped and created. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to quit.
I felt as though it was too late for me to quit swimming. If I really did want to quit, I should’ve done so years earlier. That way, I would’ve had enough time to become good at another sport. But that was already out of the picture.
I mean, I wasn’t the worst at swimming. But I was also nowhere near the top anymore. I was just another average swimmer. After going from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, I didn’t think it could get any worse.
I was in a slump. Every swim meet, I would set my expectations so low, I was guaranteed to meet them. In my eyes, this was the only way I could be somewhat okay with my results. There would be no way for me to be disappointed in myself if I would reach my goal each time. Of course, I wasn’t happy with my times. But my goals of “gain less than a minute!” and “sub two in the 100!” weren’t exactly helping the situation I was in. I didn’t even understand myself. I didn’t hate how slow I was, as I had already accepted it. But, I wasn’t happy with my times either. I knew I could do better. But how? How could I get myself out of this deep hole that I had dug myself into. How could I recover when I was already so far lost?
My coach already knew about how unmotivated I was; it was pretty obvious just by looking at my meet and practice performance. However, all she said was a single sentence. A sentence I’ve asked myself many times. But this time, I really thought about it.
Why do you swim?
I’d already answered this question in my head so many times. Because I can’t quit. Because I have to. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized. Without any sort of goal, there really was no point in me continuing to swim. So, since I was so stubborn, I managed to find myself a temporary goal to keep me going.
Get the pink cap.
That was my goal. Yes, it sounds incredibly stupid, but I’d gaslight myself into saying that it really was my goal. And with enough time, it actually did become my goal. For context, our team gives out different colored caps for the people who qualify for larger and faster meets, and the pink one happened to be the futures cut (the official qualifying time for D1 athletes), which honestly is a bit of a stretch for me, but it was silly enough to go along with.
In the end, I honestly find that gaslighting works best for me. Although shifting my mindset is still very hard, whenever I’m at practice facing a seemingly endless set with pretty fast sendoffs, I try my hardest to think more positively. I just tell myself that I’m the best, and that this set should be light and easy – I was basically just giving myself a god complex, and repeating it over and over until I started to actually believe in myself. This strategy may not work for everyone, but I can say that it has definitely worked for me. Just changing my mindset from thinking negatively about everything to thinking positively has really helped me with getting through tough sets at practice and intimidating tests in school. It may sound quite basic and useless, but trust me, it really does help. Hopefully, hearing my perspective has helped even just a little bit. And whatever you may be going through right now, I can guarantee it will end.
