A Simple Way To Improve Your Training Session

The mind sometimes can be a limiting factor. So before you blindly head into your next training session, make this simple change to how you kick things off and see if it makes a difference to the overall outcome. It doesn’t matter what sport you are training for, or what your goals are, if you get your mindset right at the start of your training session it can make all the difference in how you complete it.

Follow these simple steps:

1. Stop: Sometimes this is the hardest thing but even if you are running late or have a coach yelling at you to get started, trust me, they will appreciate your effort afterwards. Even if you are running the following steps through your head during your warm up, just stop and try to clear your mind before proceeding.
2. What do you want to achieve from this training session: You may have goals set for what you want to achieve for the season, or month or week. But have you even broken it down further and thought about what you want to achieve for your training session. It could be that you want to improve your stroke or power output, it could be that you want to stick to an easy pace to recover from your previous training session or race, or it could only be that you want to enjoy your training session(ultimately, that’s what we all really want).
3. How are you going to achieve it: Moving on, you may know what you want, but how are you going to achieve it. This is the next step to break things down one step further. When I’m on my bike, if I am wanting to improve my power output, I know I need to brace my core, push the pedals harder, but also in an efficient and controlled manner.
4. Visualize yourself doing it: Just as you now know how you’re going to achieve your goal for the session, how does this look in real life. Can you use imagery to visualize yourself putting this into practice. Can you see yourself using perfect technique to reach your goal for the training session. Can you visualize yourself improving and becoming the athlete you want to be.
5. Do it: I am sure it hasn’t taken you longer than five minutes to get to this point so this is where you take the plan that you created in the few minutes prior and put it into practice.

The key here is to always be striving to improve.

For more stories on open water swimming go to Open Water Magazine, a free online magazine specializing in open water swimming and being active outdoors, the magazine is a quarterly publication that can be downloaded as a PDF from the website www.openwatermagazine.com