These are some of the things I’ve learned over the last few years when it comes to being a successful swimmer. It doesn’t mean being a world championship swimmer or breaking world records – it’s whatever success in swimming means to you.

Invest in knowledge and experiences rather than things

Having the latest gear can be good if it serves a purpose. The right paddles, pull buoy and fins for example.

But what you really get a return on is investing in your knowledge or experiences; training camps, swim clinics or training under a different coach with a different perspective.

Spend your time and energy investing in your knowledge and experiences rather than having the latest gear.

There’s always more than one solution to a problem

There is no swimming style that works for everyone. Different people have different styles. Watch the World Championships and you’ll see a lot of different styles of stroke especially in the distance freestyle.

As soon as a coach tells you ‘this is the way to swim’, that’s when you should run the other way because everyone has a different type of stroke and different things work for different people. Find a coach. Find a style of swimming that works for you. Then work at being good at that.

How you feel doesn’t matter

It doesn’t matter how you feel because it doesn’t affect your swimming.

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve gotten into the water, I’ve jumped in and felt like absolute crap in warm up before a race. I feel like I am not going to have a good race because I am heavy and I am tired. When I do my warm up, I may still feel like crap, but when the time to race comes around it could be one of the best races I’ve had.

It doesn’t matter how you feel because it doesn’t affect your swimming. Same thing goes with training. If you feel like crap when you jump in, chances are after you do 500 or 600 meters of warm up, you’ll realise that you probably just felt heavy when you first got in..

Don’t get caught up on how you are feeling because most times it is not going to affect how you perform.

Mindset is the master

Whatever you’re thinking will normally play out. If you go to a race and you know that you are going to be anxious or nervous and you know that someone is going to swim on top of you, then chances are (because you are thinking of it) it is going to happen. Somehow, it will eventuate into your race. If you can control what you are thinking, that can make a big difference to your swimming.

If you let your mindset take control of you in a negative way, there’s a good chance that’s what’s going to happen.

We help triathletes and swimmers become the master of their mindset in our online coaching program. Swimming can’t be looked at as simply technique or workouts. To become your best in the water it takes more than that.

In the Effortless Swimming Membership we help you do this through video analysis, answering your questions and helping you achieve your swimming or triathlon goals.