Susan is a 14-year-old swimmer who has yet to qualify for provincials. Going well out of her comfort zone is not something she allows herself to do very frequently, it’s rather rare. The effect of this is that it has created evidence to her (swimming slow in practice), that she isn’t really good enough to ever make the provincials. Something which she says she wants to do.
She understands that making the provincial time is like her Brutus in the story (The goal is so big that it seems truly impossible to achieve), however she has yet to truly understand how she can break down her goal to make it more manageable, seem less impossible.
She also understands from her own experience, that she is the one building her self-confidence and that she does this by giving herself, evidence that she is progressing towards her goal (swimming faster in practice).
The set was designed to place her in a situation where her Brutus could show up. The set was four rounds of 3 x 100 free with a 50 easy on 2 minutes between rounds. The first two 100 were on 1:30 and the third she had to come in at 1:19.99. I knew setting the standard at under 1:20 would challenge her to a greater degree than what she had shown to be able to handle recently. It was very likely that 1:19.99 would feel to her as if she was fighting Brutus.
After the first two rounds, it was clear to me that she was facing Brutus. She had missed the mark for both 100 by 3 and 5 seconds respectively and the effort was lacking.
I asked her to come out of the water for a half-time meeting.
Half-time meeting
“Now that you’re halfway, if you analyze your first two rounds, is there anything you feel you need to adjust to get better results?”
She answers right away that she needs to control the first 50 of the first 100 much better.
“That’s great, because you don’t need to go 1:23 on the first 100. In the second round, your first 100 was your fastest. If we look at the last 100, your first 50 was 42, so that means you need to start way more aggressively to be in the game for a 1:19.99.”
She is nodding as it clearly made sense to her.
“Now let me ask you this, on that first 50, did it feel to you, you were going to make it?” I asked curious about what she would answer.
“On the first one, I though I might make it, but on the second one I knew.” She answered without hesitation.
After a short interruption I resumed our conversation by asking her: “When you realized that you were not going to make it, how did you react?”
She answered right away: “It’s ok, you can stop trying now, just take it easy.”
“What I would like you to become able to do, is when you have this type of realization (that you’re not going to make it), because that will happen again, it is normal when we play at pushing back our limits, sometimes we take on a challenge that seems like Brutus. When you realize you’re facing an opponent like Brutus, instead of quickly going to where you went today (giving up), you need to become able to fight it as if it mattered whether or not you beat him. It doesn’t matter at all, it’s just swimming. But when you do that, you end up fighting longer, and it’s that struggle that gives you the evidence you are looking for.”
She went back in for the third round and she shyly added some gusto to her third 100, enough to go 1:23.
Final adjustment for the last round
After she did her 50 easy, I said to her: “Let’s make an adjustment for the last round. Right now, 1:19.99 seems to be like your Brutus. The fastest you’ve gone so far was 1:23, so choose yourself a target that will make you feel like you’ve accomplished something special. What time do you want to challenge yourself with? What’s going to be a victory for you?”
After some reflection she says 1:21.
“You need to be more precise though, 1:21.00 or 1:21.99?” I asked to insist on a clear objective.
“1:21.5” she answered smiling.
“Alright, so anything below 1:21.5 means you’ve beaten Brutus.”
She started her last round and on the last 100 she went 1:21.29, but more importantly, she had gone much closer to the out of comfort zone than in any of the other rounds and her heavy breathing and the color on her skin were unmistakable proof of that.
After congratulating her, I asked her to analyze her approach in this last round compared to the other rounds while doing her 50 easy. She got out of the water after the swim down to make it easier to have a conversation.
“What did you come up with?”
She
answered that her first two rounds had been much slower.
Seeing she had not captured yet what I was trying to bring across to her, I said:
“I think this set can really help you understand how you are being inside affects
how fast you swim. Have you noticed any distinctions between how it felt inside
you for the first rounds and, for example, how it did in the last round after
you adjusted your target? How did lowering the target, affect the way you swam the
last round?”
She said without needing to think about it, that in the third round, she had known she was not going to make it and had not really given it her best shot. But with the target at 1:21.49, even thought it was just over a second slower than the original target of 1:19.99, she felt the odds were better for her and she pushed herself a bit more.
“What I noticed by simply looking at you, is that after the last 100, you were panting and breathing unmistakably faster and louder than any of the other 100s!”
I explained that since what makes someone become better, isn’t whether or not they achieve their target, but is in the struggle they allow themselves to go through to achieve their target, it makes sense to understand clearly, how you did it this time, so that you can do it again, any time!
Making Brutus more manageable
“Today what you did in the last round is like you took Brutus’s nose off. You know, he’s got a huge nose and without it, it seems less scary to fight him. In other words, you broke down your target so that it would seem to be more manageable and doing this allowed you to increase the degree to which you were allowing yourself to struggle. Which is what really matters.”
To conclude the intervention, I explained: “You can apply this strategy whenever you recognize that in the pursuit of a target you have a tendency to give up without putting much of a fight, as this behavior is a clear sign that whatever target you’re aiming for at the moment, seem to you like you’re fighting Brutus. At these times, simply break down your target to make it more manageable.”
“How do I know how much to break it down?” She asked genuinely wondering.
To answer I asked her to imagine had she chosen her target to be 1:25, would it have helped her to struggle more? She understood then, that breaking it down in more manageable parts simply meant to lower the odds against us, not all of them, as doing this would neither be fun, exciting or build evidence that we can.
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