Tricks of the Trade

Chris is right, Pre-race plans are a personal thing. You can take 100 swimmers, and find 100 different ways of preparing. The goal here; find what works best for you. As for sleeping at meets, I hear ya man. One trick that seems to work; try to downplay the previous events. Instead of "dwelling" on success, (or failure), focus on what still has to be done. When you think about the mundane routine, like what lunch you'll pack, what time you have to wake up, how many hours are left in the night; think of how tired you'll be if you don't "let go" of the past. I'm not sure if this will work for you, but I've found that when it comes to sleep and competition, focusing on the "routine" and even the next training cycle, somehow this helps to bring balance back to the current moment. Preparation/warmup is indeed personalized. What's more, many of us have been racing for quite some time and will have settled on a routine and approach that works for us. It is still fun to read what others do. Fortress posting about "getting hyped" brought to mind a difficulty I sometimes have: getting enough sleep at meets. Paradoxically, the problem is worse when I am swimming well: I get excited about upcoming races when I should be sleeping! I'll read a book or listen to music to calm down but it can be difficult. And, of course, it never fails that I start getting sleepy just when it is time to leave for warmups. Any tips? I suppose reading old forum threads might induce sleepiness... :)

In a LCM pool look for ‘landmarks’ on the bottom of the pool about ¾ way down the length (when you are wondering when the hell is the end coming and might be tempted to look up). For a 50m it is important that you don’t even think about the end until you see your mark (e.g. the drain at the deep end). Looking for the end too soon just slows you down and checking for the lane’s ‘T’ on the bottom can be difficult in a deep pool, especially when bulkheads are involved. Ian, great tip! I have a meet every summer in a metal tank that has no markings on the bottom other than the black lines for the lanes and a big red line across at 15m at the starting end. It is difficult to find a landmark in the pool itself... the red line is great for everything at the starting end, but for the turn end, I look for lifeguard chairs and light poles on the sides.

There is not much you can do race day if you are not ready to race before race day. Be ready to swim when you are ready, you win. Be fit to swim fast.

We had the guys who meditated before a race. I always broke their deep thoughts by clowning.

Breaststroke and Fly:always touch with both hands every turn in practice. So true. However, I don't do this on fly. On some fly sets, I'll do flip turns in practice. Totally illegal of course, but I swear it's really increased my lung function/ capacity.

Okay. This is old school and possibly totally wrong now, but I like to do this. Clap hard right before hopping on the blocks. Improves your reaction to the beeper. Good for fast starts. :applaud::applaud::applaud::applaud:

You win? cool.. Do you have USMS records? Criminy. Is this the new requirement to post now? :frustrated: Where's the noodler forum? Drats! They threw me off for not having a national noodler record. :laugh2:

Haven't lost any forum grudge races yet. :lmao: With over 3500+ posts you must be a very good swimmer. I'm obviously not in the same league, with only 160+ posts. Happy swimming,

One trick that seems to work; try to downplay the previous events. Instead of "dwelling" on success, (or failure), focus on what still has to be done. When you think about the mundane routine, like what lunch you'll pack, what time you have to wake up, how many hours are left in the night; think of how tired you'll be if you don't "let go" of the past. Hitting nail on head here, especially regarding the percieved "failure" portion of this. Whats done is done, you can't go back in time (yet) and rerace, but what you can do is get fired up and rock your next race. Ask the blue muppet about our first day of 2007 SCY Nats. We both had a pretty blah outing in our first events. For my part, this was the first time I was ever disappointed about a Nationals swim. However, I think it served as partial inspiration as we came out and TOTALLY ROCKED our 2Frees that set a tone for having a great rest of the meet. :smooch: It was a great lesson for both of us on meet mentality - not one you want to learn at Nationals, but I guess you gotta learn somewhere.

If meets are in the morning, get up way early. Especially if you train in the afternoon or evening. In a strange pool practice a few *** stroke pull outs and take notice of the pool depth. I train in a shallow pool and when I was at a meet I went too deep gauging off the bottom.