the pressure of swimming competitions

My relationship to competing

This weekend I raced at the Swim England Masters SCM Nationals. Big picture it was all about the team and swimming relays. Relays were my main inspiration for starting to compete somewhat regularly again. I always yearned for swimming to be more of a team sport and find I perform so much better when going to the blocks with my close friends in opposed to in my own little bubble. A perfect illustration of that is back the British LCM Masters Championships in June I swam a 23.1 anchor leg then 90 minutes later was 24.3 in the individual.

This weekend I opted to lead off a 50 & 100 Freestyle relay at a tapered meet for the first time. For the last few years I would shave and prepare for meets and just swim amidst a relay, with no indvidual glory even possible.

I have always struggled with finding the perfect balance of pressure. I know I am not alone in that regard. Nerves, pressure, adrenaline, anxieties can ruin a race but also if you tapped into correctly can be the biggest weapon we possess as athletes, creating results we could only deem impossible.

Throughout my 20 years of competition, there have been I have simply not cared how I would swim on race. At these times that was probably reflected in subpar training. A good example of this was towards the end of 2022, I competed at both the English & Scottish National Championships (open not masters) with the best swimmers in the UK and didn't even shave.

On the other end of the spectrum i have cared too much. Training hard, making sacrifices and ultimatley succumbing to the pressure. My most memorable example of this was at the British Summer Championships 2019, where I travelled with my family to swim just a 50m Butterfly. On paper I should have finalled (my PB would have been 3rd seed to final) but instead I ended up 12th and an early flight home.

While the above scenarios featured very different training ethics and life choice the results can often end up being equally bad. For me somewhere in the middle is the optimal.

My reason to race

After the national meets in 2022 I was completley against competing. I was out of shape, had no goals and most importantly didn't enjoy going to meets on my own regardless of the outcome. In my mind I would happily not compete again for a long time.

6 months later two of my best mates (Reg and Kieran) asked me about competing anytime soon at a masters meet. I checked the calendar, the British Masters LCM Championships were a couple of months away in Sheffield and had relays. I made a group chat, recruited a 4th mate Matt to fill out our relay, booked us all an Airbnb and the 4 of us and my dad went and had an awesome weekend. I only swam middle legs to relieve any unwanted pressure and surprised myself with how I swam. As a team we even swam some Masters British Records.

This was the start of truly embracing the masters swimming community and making both the Long Course (June) and Short Course (October) Nationals the first weekend I added to my calendar each year.

Swimming relays with my closest friends had given me the most desire to race in years, perhaps ever.

the annual trip to Sheffield

This weekend was my 3rd year in a row heading to Sheffield to race relays with my friends at the short course nationals. These weekends have genuinely become one of my favourite of the year (SCM racing is just better than LCM racing). This year was no different from an overall good time perspective, we even stayed the sunday night in Sheffield to decompress a little bit. As for the outcomes of the relays and our dreams of 8 World Records, you will have to wait for my vlogs to release over the next couple of weeks on my YouTube channel.

But today I am talking about my individual swimming, of which I was less happy. My times were by no means tragic or bad, but I had put a lot of pressure on myself to swim the fastest times of my life. I am glad I believed in the possibility of PBs. If you shy too far away from the possibility of failure, you will never succeed. That being said I allowed to much anxiety and pressure into my head.

Here is a breakdown of how I approached each year, both physically and mentally.

2023 Nationals

• I made a point of not leading off a single race.

• Put myself 2nd & 3rd legs to relieve pressure.

• Raced 9x over 3 days, main events only in relays but also off events individually.

• Had spent the 8 weeks prior to meet coaching on camps internationally. Got back to the UK 4 days before meet. Here is a YouTube video from just before the meet.

• Wouldn’t call my preparation training, more just swimming 2/3x a week when I could find a moment.

• No Land Work

• No Prep Meets

Outcome

• 22.71 Free Relay Split (Fastest Ever at the time)

• 51.43 Free Relay Split (0.03 off flat start PB)

• PB in 50 Breast and 50 Back

Mindset

• Had so little expectation I was blown away by how well I done. I had zero pressure or stress. Just excitement to race and see my mates. I also was stoked with life after an awesome trip. The whole of September I was finding a pool every 4 days and just getting a quick 1500 in, the hardest thing I would do was descend a few 50s. I did swim a bit more at the beginning of October when visiting Brett but the main aim was making content, not training. I don't think I could have swam any less and still performed remotely as well.

• I had to step in and swim fly in medley relays and witout exaggerating I had not swam a stroke of fly in the 6 months leading up to this meet. My PB is 55.41 and on Day 1 split 56.6 in a relay, Day 2 I split 55.8. I think I dropped 0.8 simply because I had now swam some fly.

2024 Nationals

• Gave myself the option to lead off a relay if I felt good in first races. It was not locked in. I Ended up leading the mixed 4x100 Free on last day after fast swims on first day.

• First day only raced middle legs of relays.

• Raced 5x over 2 days, no more off events, but still busy schedule.

• Had spent 12 weeks prior to the meet training. Good routine but just doing sessions based on how I feel, deciding what I would do while in water.

• Swam 3x a week.

• Climbed 1x a week and gymed sometimes.I actually gymed the whole time I was coaching Kregor and Siobhan in Gloria as was joining Kregor for his sessions.

• Had stopped eatingf sugar for 10 weeks.

• Had been away coaching on camps, 2 week camp, 5 weeks before meet. Had great access to pool/facilities but when coaching 5 hours a day harder to train myself.

• 2 Prep meets.

Outcome

• 22.5 Free Relay Split (Fastest Ever - Was DQed in Medley Relay but Think I Was 22.3)

• 51.17 Free Lead (New PB - First Time in 6 Years I Believed I Could PB Main Events).

Mindset

• Had done just enough more training than last year that I was confident that I would swim faster without thinking it would be a guarantee.

• Was overwhelmed by 100 free PB.

• Both this year and the previous year swimming was just something I was doing like you do a hobby, it didn't dictate decisions. It didn't dictate what I done on the weekends. I had some cocktails while in Gloria with my girlfriend.

• Was purely excited about the weekend and curious to how I would swim. I thought it was possible to be at my best ever based on the year before but was more occupied with racing Woking, East Leeds and Trafford and how we'd swim as a team rather than me versus me. I simply wanted to swim fast for my team mates.

  
  

2025 Nationals

• Decided before I started preparation I would lead off a 50 free and 100 free.

• First race of meet was leading off a 50 free, where I had put the most pressure to swim a PB. I was only 0.3 off my PB 7 weeks out which made it feel like anything but a PB would be a failure.

• Raced 4x over 3 days, no off events, everything high pressure. Less racing so we would be more likely to “succeed”. It ended up feeling like just another reason I couldn't not be faster.

• Started training 17 weeks out after our Winchester AP meet was cancelled. Wanted 0 excuses not to be faster than I would have been at that meet.

• Swam 4x every week with 3x gym. Planned all sessions in advance.

• Saw a physio weekly.

• Turned down all offers of coaching on camps or basically any other reason to leave home so I could not miss training.

• Stopped eating sugar for 8 weeks.

• 2 Prep meets.

• I should note two things out of my control. Tricep tendonitis that peaked at being unbearable. I also developed an allergy to goggles which meant my eyes were constantly red and eyelids would sporadically swell up completely.

Outcome

• 23.37 Free Lead (truthfully not a bad outcome but 0.11 slower than my first meet of the season - in previous years after my first race of the meet I felt brimming with confidence, this time I felt like I had failed and was not in good form).

• 22.81 Free Relay (Slowest of all 3 years)

• 51.7 Free Lead (one of my fastest time ever and big season best - wasn’t a PB like the year before but by this point of the meet I was very happy with this swim, more so because I was petrified I may go 52 and let my teammates down).

Mindset

• I didn’t think it was possible to do anything but PB. Instead of confidence it was more of an obligation. I was very stressed before the meet. Not just a week before, like 4 weeks into the meet.

• I was especially fearful of the first race being a lead off 50 free. This had changed my mindset of the relay being successful to my time being the main factor and I did not like this at all.

• Everytime my tendonitis flared up or my eyelid swelled it felt like the end of the world and I was fighting to stay a float. This was happening so reguarly that it was affecting me a lot. This picture was taken 9 days before my first race.

  

• The biggest and most detrimenal element of my mindset was that I now was a swimmer again. Instead of a coach/youtuber who was prepping for a relay, I was now a swimmer who did some coaching and YouTube. Now I would have a non alcholic beer when out for a meal with my girlfriend. Turn doing a weekend away because I needed to train. Skip doing fun things in case of an injury. I am not sure the last time I was like that, probably before I moved to Oman to coach full time in 2017. That way of thinking has never worked for me before and certainly didn't this time. I need the balance. I lost the balance.

But we need to care

I have written this up mostly for me to decompress and go through my meet and my prep. My race seasons are short and I won’t race for quite some time now. Maybe its as clear to you as it is to me by just reading the above but the extended prep, while may have truthfully been better physiologically, provided too much pressure and I succumbed to it on a personal level. But I am excited with this information because it will lead to me being better and faster.

I do also want to note that the moral of this article is not to simply not care, because without pressure we are better. Instead it would be to mitigate any negative emotions but still tap into nerves and adrenaline, because these really can make the difference.

Remember beack when you was an age grouper how anything was always on the cards. I remember in 2023 coaching DDA and 16 year old Alex qualified for British Summer Nationals in 24th for the 200 Breast. His main goal was just to qualify and it took a 4 second PB for him to do just that. But he was excited to be there and wanted to swim fast. He dropped 5 seconds in the heat to get first seed to the final and then dropped another 2 seconds in the final to win the title. In May 2023 Alex swam a PB of 2:36 yet by August was a 2:24 and national champion. Yes his prep was good but not 12 seconds good, thats a mixture of everything, his brilliant mindset but also the adrenaline of a first race at nationals.

On a much bigger scale its the same as Chad at the 2012 Olympics. Swimming an impossible last 50 to beat the GOAT, Michael Phelps in his best event. While Chad has been quicker to the 150 mark of a 200 Fly many times since than he was that day, he has never come back faster or even close to faster enough to swim a PB. He probably will never get that adrenaline ever again, the adrenaline of being within striking distance of Phelps with 50 to go. But if we can learn to use that, anything is truly possible.

So next year I will come back better. I will keep the elements that I think went well, like the sessions I was doing in the pool but bring back balance into my life. I will keep swimming as a fun hobby and outlet and not as my only purpose.