With our team, we are always trying to remind ourselves what we are training for. Our conference meet is 3 1/2 days (7 sessions) and our NCAA meet is 4 days (8 sessions). The fast swimming is hard to ignore and easy to train for, however, the enthusiasm that is needed and the energy that it takes to create enthusiasm over that time takes effort and practice as well. In other words, you have to be in shape emotionally as well as physically. In my experience, when you get to the morning session of the last day of a championship meet, everyone is walking in with very low enthusiasm, and that can block what an athlete can do physically during that session.
This is what we are trying to do over the last 3 sessions of the week this week to try to work on our enthusiasm.
Thursday Evening: We had a great broken swim/lactate set in which we saw everyone swim very hard, we some some emotion, and we saw some very fast swimming. I prepped them for this, and any team can embrace a fast set, so we are off to a good start.
Friday morning: It was a typical morning workout, where the athletes were walking in with very low enthusiasm. We did a very good stretching routine, some dryland and got a long warmup in. Then I got them out of the water, and we had a 15 minute swim meet. It wasn't hard physically, it was just 3 (4 X 25) relay's, and I randomly selected athletes and we got some team cheers going, and some cheering on the deck, and we worked out our enthusiasm. It was 7:15am and we wanted to get our enthusiasm as high as we could. I will admit, it was not as it will be for our championship meets, but the team did a pretty good job, and it was a fun morning.
Friday evening: Dual meet. I chose this meet to use enthusiasm as a goal with the team because it is one of those meets where not many people are looking. We are swimming our 3rd or 4th events, we have a long bus ride, it is a non-conf. meet, you get the point. Our goal is to swim enthusiastically, and to train that part of our fitness. It is going to be a big challenge, but that is the goal. It takes energy to create enthusiasm and we are going to use this meet to work on that part of the process. By Friday night, we will have been forced to get to an emotional high 3 times in a little over 24 hours. If we can pull it off, we will be better prepared for the end of the season.
It is easy to be enthusiastic for your rival meets, but success depends on being enthusiastic on a consistent basis, even when no one is looking or when the meet results don't mean much at the time.
Good things often come from Enthusiasm!
Psalm 98: 4-6
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music;5 make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing,6 with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn— shout for joy before the Lord, the King.
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