During my coaching career I have come across many swimmers that are
scared about winning a race, often feeling too scared to finish a race off, or
pass a particular swimmer in a race or during swim practice. I’m sure you’ve
come across athletes with such ‘problems’ too. This is the result of a variety
of reasons like intimidation and fear but the bottom line is that these
swimmers are simply scared of success.
Some swimmers find that they have more stress with success rather than
with failure. These swimmers who experience fear of failure often find that
success might bring things they don’t always like, such as unwanted attention from
spectators, and this make them believe that it is easier to finish second or
third than win the race. This belief often creates a recurring pattern, such as
losing races even if they are leading, or not willing to pass a swimmer, even
when they know they can. This means that the swimmers have connected pain with
winning and pleasure with failure. Humans tend to move away from emotional pain
and towards pleasure. In this case they move away from success.
The way to overcome this is by reversing the situation, and associating
pleasure with success. Coaches should help their swimmers to consciously
thinking of all the good things that winning will bring. These things might
include ‘being congratulated’ by fellow swimmers, coaches or family. Coaches
could also add the negative effects that failure brings, such as the feeling of
not being good enough. If swimmers work on that over weeks or months, they will
naturally move towards pleasure, and in our case that means towards success.
Help them add pleasure to their goals watch them move in that direction
confidently.
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