Mac is a 9-year-old boy. He speaks at the speed of light and finds it impossible to sit still and quietly. So far, he hasn’t been able to speak out loud and verbatim, the sentences he hears in his mind when thinking. This being an essential skill for mental training, my priority with him during this race feedback was in helping him become aware that what we call thinking is really just a dialogue in our minds.
This race feedback is for a 200 free at a regional meet.
“So, Mr. Mac, tell me about your race.” I said giving him my full attention.
“I think it was really good.” He said smiling, all happy.
“What makes you say that?”
“I think this is probably the best freestyle I’ve ever done.”
Without giving me any chance to say something, he added: “One thing which I’m really proud of is because normally whenever I use my arms, I just like push them back like here but now I’m like this, like what I’ve been practicing.” He said gesturing frantically.
Not really understanding what he was saying, but understanding it was important for him I answered approvingly.
And continued with: “Now let me ask you something, do you have to go somewhere right now? Are you in a rush to leave the pool? So, you can talk to me slower?” He was talking so fast, it was hard for my ears to keep up with him.
“Yeah sure.” He answered making a funny face.
“Okay thank you.” I said giggling.
“So, take a look at your splits, what’s the difference between your fastest and your slowest 50? How many seconds difference?”
Most of my swimmers were at the stage where they learn to spread their efforts wisely within their races. They were taught that it is more efficient to swim at one speed than to change speed several times within a race.
“Six.” He said looking at his splits.
“Six and what are we looking for ideally?” Asking to see if he remembered.
“Actually 5 and a few milliseconds.” He added clarifying with better precision.
“Yes, Okay. So, we’re looking for two. So, it’s between your first and second 50 the biggest difference. What was going on for you in that second 50, what were the sentences you heard?”
“Go faster you need to, cause how you gonna win?” He answered right away.
“Take the time to remember exactly the sentence in the second 50.”
“I heard inside my head hurry up Mac, you’re losing, use all your energy so that you can win this.” He was speaking fast and it gave me the impression that he was saying what he believed he SHOULD say to be good, liked.
“Okay, so how do you explain that it’s six, five and a half seconds slower than the first 50?” I asked probing him further.
“I think because, on my first 50, I was trying to save my energy, so I was at a medium speed.”
“On your first 50 you were trying to save your energy?” I asked him to clarify hoping he would think deeper.
“Yeah, and then on the second one I just heard the voice and then I’m like Oh! Oh! So, I just went fast.” He said without breathing once.
“What voice did you hear?” I asked intrigued.
“I think it was the devil.” He said referring to the little devil on our shoulders.
“What did it say?”
“It was saying “Oh my god you’re losing, use a lot of energy right now.” So, then I started going really fast.”
His answers did not match with the splits. I was trying to bring this to his attention but he didn’t seem ready to see that yet. Whenever he answered my questions, I couldn’t help but have the feeling that his answers were a narration of a story in his head. I didn’t feel his answers were coming from within him, they were not 100% genuine.
Mac had missed a lot of practices and swim meets and as such had missed a lot of the opportunities given to the swimmers to develop their awareness of their internal dialogue.
“Alright, then what about the third 50? What happened there in your head?” I said trying from a different angle.
“I was, nothing really happened after that in my head. I was just starting to get really tired. I was just feeling really tired and then I was still trying to use all my energy, although I didn’t have a bunch of energy, so I used all the one that I could.” He answered again without breathing.
Although this answer felt more genuine it wasn’t what I was looking for, it still wasn’t a verbatim replay of the thoughts/sentences he had had during his race.
“So, I wonder if you could tell me the same thing but as if you had recorded the sentences that made up your thoughts, the ones you were hearing in your mind and just play those sentences back. Because right now you’re describing what was going on, but I don’t want to hear the description, I want to hear the recording itself.”
“I didn’t really hear one for the third 50.”
He added seconds later: “I was just feeling tired so I was losing a lot of my energy but because I used it all in my second 50, I didn’t have as much energy.”
Changing angle again, I said with my finger pointing at the pool: “Show me in the third 50 where you were in the pool exactly when you felt tired.”
“Well on the first part I think it was around the middle buoy right there.” He said pointing at the spot.
“So, what did you think about just before you became aware that you were tired?” I asked as usually this question is very helpful in getting young athletes to understand what I mean by sentences.
“I was thinking oh my gosh I could do! I should go fast. Because I was thinking well, I only have 80 something meters left, I could do this. I can use a lot of my energy, keep on going work as hard as I can, nothing to lose.”
Seeing we were not going to get there today and that my time with him was approaching its end I changed approach yet again and said: “All right so do you know why I asked you to tell me the sentences you heard?”
“Not really.”
“Okay so maybe we can start with that. So, to go faster you need to move your arms faster, right?” I asked encouraging him to answer.
“Yeah.”
“So, when you’re really really tired and you want to move your arms faster, what’s gonna come first? What’s gonna make your arm, who’s gonna make your arm move faster?”
“Myself.”
“Okay the person inside the body, right?”
“How does the person inside the body make his/her muscles move?”
“By thinking!”
“Yes, we move our muscles by thinking to move them. When we think, we think with sentences, we talk to ourselves. So, there’s a special way of thinking/talking to ourselves to enable us to move our arms when they don’t want to move. So that’s why it’s so important to explore those sentences because they’re the key to moving our arms even when they’re too tired to move.”
Feeling earlier as if he was censoring his own sentences, I felt it would be good to add: “Sometimes Mac, the sentences you’re gonna hear, you’re not gonna be happy with. What you’re going to think. You’re gonna feel a bit maybe ashamed or embarrassed that you heard them. Do you know how I know?”
“Cause you were a swimmer?”
“Exactly! So, in those times it’s gonna be important for you to get over it and be able to talk about those sentences anyway. Do you know why that’s important? Even if you don’t like the sentences to talk about it? It’s because if you pretend or when we pretend that we didn’t hear some sentences because we don’t like them, is it possible to make adjustments so that next time we have a different result?”
After starting the stopwatches for the next heat, I continue: “Okay so does that make sense?”
He was nodding at me and looking at his mom waving at him to get his attention.
“We’re good this weekend, you did very good Mac. It’s the first meet in a long time where you’ve had a lot of training before doing the swim meet. You’ve been on and off a lot this year. So now until the end of the year, stay on top of your game, no more getting sick, you gotta be careful about that.”
“Yeah.”
“No more bumping your head or breaking a bone. The reason is so that we can train more, so that we can get you to be even faster.” I said referring to the broken elbow and concussions ha had earlier in the year.
“Okay, all right see you Tuesday!”
Although Mac had not yet reached the milestone of being able to say out loud verbatim the sentences of his internal dialogue, the work I had done with him in this race feedback would add up to all the other instances where we worked and would work on this again. Inevitably, a time would come where doing this would be a piece of cake for him.
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