The Swimmer

As a swimmer, you know that working hard is essential.

It’s usually the great equalizer, the key to success in the water.

But hard work is worth more than just fast performances on race day.

Here are six chlorinated thoughts on hard work for you:

Hard work expands your horizons. 

Consistently giving a quality effort shows you what is genuinely possible versus what you think is possible. 

Hard work gives you the chance to surprise yourself with how capable you are. 

Hard work helps you to work harder down the road. 

Today’s practices are built on the performances of the past.

When you have a deep history of choosing to do difficult things, it becomes the default setting.

More aggressive challenges become less daunting when you have a track history of confronting hard work. 

Hard work prepares you for difficult situations under

stress.

Race day nerves are something every swimmer contends with. 

Choosing hard work in practice helps you be prepared for those race-day nerves and moments of increased stress. 

After all, if you actively avoid doing the hard things in practice, how can you expect to do

something hard in competition while also under increased pressure?

Hard work is the thing you will take away from the season.

Swimmers value the medals, records, and PBs as the “why.”

But the hard work—the stretch of unmissed practices, showing up to early morning workouts when your teammates don’t, choosing the more challenging interval—these moments consolidate into something far more meaningful than medals or ribbons. 

Most swimmers fixate on those select swims at the end of the year, deciding that the result of these specific swims will be the sole source of value. 

But long after the season is over, the medals and ribbons collect dust, and your records and times are eclipsed, the warm burst of confidence and pride you will get from your hard work will persist.

Hard work makes you value your swimming. 

Doing the hard work in the pool means you value your swimming enough to risk failing or looking silly in an attempt to improve. 

And when you value your swimming, you protect it. You appreciate it. You don’t cheat it or avoid the demands it makes of you. 

Hard work is scarce. 

Many swimmers go through the motions at practice, daydreaming, yet still getting

a good workout, technically “working hard.”

Other swimmers do the hard work, making the breathing pattern they want to hold in competition, doing five dolphin kicks off every wall (even though the coach can’t see if they are doing it from across the pool), and putting their heads down and finishing hard every rep. 

Hard work is scarce. 

And scarcity is valuable and sets you apart.

Hard Work vs. Working Hard

I purposely used the term “hard work” and not “working hard” when talking to my swimmers.

Doing hard work is choosing to do the hard things:

• Holding the stroke count even when you exhausted

• Showing up to practice when you are sore

• Selecting the more challenging main set and interval

• Not shorting your effort because the coach isn’t watching

• Streamlining and not breathing into the wall at the end of a lung-busting main set

• Holding yourself to high standards even during a stretch of bad practices

• Sitting down with your goals and being honest about what you will have to do to achieve them

It’s a subtle difference that won’t matter to most swimmers.

But for the swimmers with excellence on their mind, the ones who want to explore the outer boundaries of their potential…

Choose the hard work. 

Something to think about when you hit the water today.