I was recently asked an interesting question by a person who trains with me but never competes. She said "I'd do a competition if it wasn't for the nerves, how do you make them go away?" It made me think about the whole "fear" aspect of competition and I discussed the idea with a number of other masters swimmers. We all concluded that we were all nervous before a race irrespective of the event, the level of competition, the conditions or even our own fitness. What I think is even more significant is that we all agreed that we've never tried to make the nerves go away.
If we try to analyse what we are nervous about we'll come up with many different answers. Fear of losing, fear of being disqualified, fear of not being able to finish the race, fear of the pain we are about to experience, even the fear of looking foolish. I'm sure it's different for different people but I've recently done an event where I was the only person competing in it and I was still nervous so I don't think I'm afraid of losing. I think the fear of being disqualified isn't one that worries me before a race - in fact it works in reverse because that fear makes me concentrate even more during training.
Sometimes the fear of the pain or the fear of not being able to finish (actually they are closely connected) are very real, especially if I'm doing a 400m or 1500m event which requires pacing. If you go out too hard then the second half of the race can be very painful, however, again, I think this fear motivates me to concentrate even harder on the pace work I do in training so I don't think that one troubles me much in races these days either.
That only leaves the fear of looking foolish or to put it another way the fear of being seen by other people to have failed in some way. If we look at what stops salesmen from selling it's usually either the fear of rejection (which fortunately as swimmers we don't have to contend with) or the same fear of failure. In fact in any walk of life the fear of failure is usually the thing that holds most people back from even attempting something. I put this to the lady who wanted to get rid of the nerves and she agreed that her problem was fear of failure.
Now the interesting thing here is she's had no experience of swimming a race. In fact she'd never even been to a Masters swimming event. She'd never done a swim under race conditions and so she had no personal best and didn't know the standard of any of the people she'd have to swim against. So just how would she know that she had failed? What experience is she drawing on to make the judgement that her attempt was not a success? When I questioned her at length she told me that she assumed that everyone at a masters event was a super fit, ex-Olympic swimmer, who trained 5 times a week, swimming world record times at every competition they attend. Now those of you that do competitions regularly know that nothing could be further from the truth! Many masters swimmers swim purely for the social aspect of the sport - the after event parties are great! Some even train and compete just so that they can go out and drink with the team! Even at the World Champs in Italy last year in some races nearly a third of all the people competing didn't even make the qualifying time.
This lady hade made her judgement about her ability to achieve something based on guesswork and, as is usually the case, she'd made an extremely bad guess. I've heard fear described as F alse E xpectations A ppearing R eal which applies perfectly in this case. This lady invented false information in her mind and then assumed that this information was real. She then made her decision based on this rubbish that she'd made up! The worst thing about this is that this is the way most of us work. If you are reading this and you haven't ever swum in a masters competition, let me ask you a question. Why not? Is it because you've assumed similar things to the lady I've been talking about? Are you scared that you'd make a fool of yourself amongst all these super fit ex-Olympions? If you think of yourself swimming in a race do you picture yourself coming last by 10 minutes and everyone laughing at you? Just how have you made that judgement? What information have you used to make your decision?
If that is a description of your thinking then perhaps you could try making some decisions using the following ideas: Swimming in races at a masters event might be fun. There might be a great social side to the events that I've never even considered before. I might meet some really nice people that have similar fears and aspirations to me. I might actually enjoy swimming and learning what I'm really capable of. Perhaps I won't come last in every event and one day I could even win a medal. I may even enjoy the concept of setting new personal best times and completing events that are new and challenging to me. It might give me a bit more motivation to go training more often which would help with my weight and fitness. It might even help my levels of motivation in other aspects of my life. Masters swimming competition could open up all sorts of doors to me that I'd never even considered before.
The lady who asked me the question eventually took the plunge, tried swimming in an event and now they can't keep her away. Perhaps you'd enjoy it too.
How do you make the fear go away?
