When staring across the abyss of a full season of training, swimmers can get discouraged and intimidated by the work and effort ahead.

Relying solely on motivation to hammer all the work necessary to achieve your goals is problematic for a couple reasons.

For starters

On your best days, when the motivational tank is full, you are fully energized, and you wake up with a fire under your chlorinated bottom.

But the rest of the time, it is hard to guesstimate how motivated you are going to be feeling.

Ifyou are tired, motivation and mental toughness suffers. If you are sore, stressed out, having a bad daythese things affect motivation, too.

Because of its fickle and unpredictable nature,there will be times where your motivation is running on fumes.

And thats where things can really take a turn.

When motivation is a whimper, you end up deepening your motivational woes by telling yourself that an elite swimmer wouldnt be struggling with motivation, and that becauseyouare struggling with motivation, by definition you are not elite and will not be elite.

Oof.

Youve successfullypancake-stacked low motivation on top of a flawed understanding of how motivation works, resulting in peak levels of discouragement and un-awesomeness.

So what do we do?

Instead of depending on the flakiness of motivation, build better habits, systems and routines.

Using them short-circuits the need to feel completely motivated to do the things that will help you swim the way you want.

These habits and systems look simple.

So simple, that they might get dismissed as being pointless.

Not grand enough for your grand goals, right?

Butthe gap between knowing and doing lies in the systems, routines and habits you use.

You can be the most motivated person on earth, but if your systems, routines and habits suck, things are gonna fall apart like a cheap training suit the moment your motivation isnt red-lining.

If you are struggling with something in the waternot showing up to enough practices, losing focus mid-set, giving up when things get toughcheck your systems and routines.

This is almost always where the problems originate.

Swimming is hard enough.But building simple routines and habits?

Systems thatcut down on your dependence for more motivation?

Things so small and easy that its almost impossible to say no to?

Thats something you can stick to for long stretches of time. And low and behold, quite motivational.

Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national level swimmer. Hes the publisher ofYourSwimBook, a ten-month log book for competitive swimmers.

Hes also the author of the recently published mental training workbook for competitive swimmers,Conquer the Pool: The Swimmers 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 aboutConquer the Pool.

COACHES:Yupperswe do team orders of Conquer the Pool which include 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.

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Struggling to Stay Motivated? Try This Instead - SwimSwam