5 Ways This Mental Training Book Will Rock Your Chlorinated Socks Off

Ready for bigger and better things this season? Here are five reasons that this mental training book for swimmers will help you rock your PB’s and your mindset this year.

Mental training.

For most swimmers, it’s something they would rather not have to deal with, simply because they don’t understand it.

Whether it’s choking, giving up early in practice, or letting frustration getting the best of them when they are injured, their mindset is something that “just is” and can’t be fixed.

The new mental training workbook, Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High-Performance Mindset, is designed to help you demystify the most infuriating part of our performance in the pool: the mental side of our swimming.

It takes you, the enterprising competitive swimmer, and step-by-step shows you how to build a clear and confident mindset so that you can unleash a five-star butt-kicking on your personal best times.

Here are just five of the ways that Conquer the Pool will help you swim like your hair is on fire this season:

1. You will learn to set huge goals…and then forget them.

At some point your coach has told you to “trust the process.” Or to “master the process.” Or to “stop pulling on the lane rope and do the friggin’ breathing pattern properly.”

Although it’s become somewhat of a buzzword, the process is legit: it’s what drives results, it scares away excess anxiety and catastrophizing, and did I mention that it drives a 100-car choo-choo train full of results?

This book will show you just how crazy-fast of a swimmer you can become once you shift your mindset from fantasizing endlessly about your goals (and getting stressed all out of shape from worrying about whether or not you are progressing fast enough) to a mental outlook where you master the work right in front of you.

Sounds counter-intuitive, but not looking beyond today’s workout will help you maximize today’s opportunities while also helping you swim faster at tomorrow’s competition.

Conquer the Pool will give you the full rundown on what to include in your own process and how to build a bullet-proof process of your own.

2. You will learn how to “suffer” like a champion in practice.

Practices and the hard work required to make them effective are, well, hard. They are full of—dare we say it—ouchies. All the ouchies.

And no, I’m not talking about the pain that comes from stunting your finger into the lane rope. Or steaming headfirst into the bulkhead because someone didn’t put the backstroke flags up.

I’m talking about the deep, rich agony that comes with pushing yourself beyond what you think you can do. The stomach-churning that comes with repeated efforts off the block. And the mental tug-of-war that is happening over your effort the whole way through.

This book will teach you how to distract yourself. It will give you things to focus on so that you can outlast the pain for just a little bit long—just long enough to hit that last rung of improvement you want so bad.

You will learn how to make discomfort an ally, and not something to be feared.

At the end of the day, that suffering ends up feeling pretty good: sure, it hurt, but the pain passes quickly, and in its place, a resolute and un-fakeable confidence that only comes from giving a full-throated effort in practice.

3. How to master the mental misery of injury.

We are athletes, and athletes get injured. For swimmers, in particular, this means a banged-up shoulder, knee or back. Usually the first one. Sometimes both at the same time.

Let’s just come out and say it: being injured blows.

We feel left out of the group. We are gripped with uncertainty about whether or not we will be as fast as we were. And of course, there is the stress and anxiety that comes with wondering how long we are going to be all sorts of banged up for.

The fun fact of the situation is this: when you have a plan in place and use the right mindset you will not only experience a metric-ton less stress while you recover, but you are far more likely to heal faster and more completely.

If the unfortunate happens this season (and it likely will at some point), and you find yourself on the short end of the injury stick, this book will help you keep your mindset tight so that you can focus on the productive aspects of your recovery so that you can get back in the pool faster.

4. Unlock Pro Mode: Mental Toughness.

People talk about mental toughness like it’s this natural gift that some swimmers just have and others don’t. While it’s true that some swimmers have come across elevated mental toughness more naturally than others, the reality is that mental toughness is a skill.

Mental toughness is something you can improve on and work on each day in practice.

There are a heap of ways to do this: better self-talk, strategically using visualization, and even dropping in specific psych-up techniques when you need an instant jolt of intensity and energy.

There are so many techniques and tools in Conquer the Pool that it could easily just be called, “Howdy-Ho: Mental Toughness for Swimmers.” (I like the other one better. Sorry not sorry.)

Being mentally tough is something you can already do: this book will just reveal how to do it more often and for longer. (How much more do you think you could accomplish in your practices if you improved your mental toughness even just a little bit?)

5. How to be a Zen master behind the blocks.

We’ve all been there at some point: trained our butts off, worked really, really hard, did all the right things in practice, dumped half a pay-cheque into a new racing suit, only to get up on the blocks and throw down a stinker of a swim.

We choked. We don’t know exactly why, or how it happened, or what more we could have done about it, but we stunk up the place like that soggy towel that’s been rotting under the bleachers for the past month.

Conquer the Pool will help you do three things in particular to help you ward off the pesky choke:

1. You’ll learn what works best for you (not everyone performs best under the same circumstances)…
2. Figure out what emotions and mindset propel high-grade performances in your specific case…
3. And you’ll get a collection of tools and weapons to help make sure that you land butt-first straight into the emotional state where you consistently crush it in competition.

That’s just some of the hot-blooded goodness within the pages of this book.

Oh, one more thing…

This bad boy was also put together with the input of 200+ NCAA division I and USA Swimming head coaches. Half the Olympic team staff from Rio sent over their notes and thoughts. That group includes a ton of former world record holders, Olympians, and NCAA champions.

So, there’s that too.

Want to learn more about how Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High Performance Mindset will help you swim like a greased-up lightning bolt this season?

For more details, click here to learn more about how Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High Performance Mindset will rock your chlorinated socks off.

ABOUT OLIVIER POIRIER-LEROY

Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national level swimmer. He’s the publisher of YourSwimBook, a ten-month log book for competitive swimmers.

He’s also the author of the recently published mental training workbook for competitive swimmers, Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High Performance Mindset.

It combines sport psychology research, worksheets, and anecdotes and examples of Olympians past and present to give swimmers everything they need to conquer the mental side of the sport.

Ready to take your mindset to the next level?

Click here to learn more about Conquer the Pool.

COACHES & CLUBS: Yuppers–we do team orders of “Conquer the Pool” which includes a team discount as well as complimentary branding (your club logo on the cover of the book) at no additional charge.

Want more details? Click here for a free estimate on a team order of CTP.