The information below has been slightly adapted from the Adam Peaty Race Clinics Covid-19 Resource Pack as developed by the Adam Peaty Race Clinics Team. AP Race Clinics

The resource has been put together for the swimming community to make sure you stay in the swimming game physically, mentally and emotionally.

Through this time where pool access is very limited for swimmers or even not available at all, it can be very hard to stay motivated or engaged with the swimmer in you. The AP Race Clinics have put together this pack which includes some of the methods that they will be using themselves.

How to Stay Swimming Engaged by Adam Peaty, Edward Baxter & Tim Shuttleworth

“It is so hard to stay engaged with swimming mentally and emotionally when you can’t get into a pool for the foreseeable future. As with anything, keeping it simple is often the best. 

There are five great ways you can keep in the swimming mindset through these tough times.

       1. “Control the Controllable” 

Swimmers are often highly analytical thinkers; we focus on trying to take tenths of seconds off our best times though 10 months of solid training. It is very easy for swimmers to overthink and worry about events which are often out of their control. The concept of “controlling the controllable” has been one of the key elements to success at the Olympic level.

Worrying causes a huge amount of stress so why worry about something that you have no control over? We are in a very rare scenario for sport where everyone is in the same boat. If you are worrying that other swimmers are training when you aren’t, and they could be making gains over you … they aren’t! If you aren’t training, they aren’t training, so this is an uncontrollable. What is controllable is your attitude and your approach to this unprecedented situation, stay positive and don’t try and control something that is out of your power.

2. Visualization 

Visualization is a tool that every high-performance swimmer uses. If you as a swimmer disengage mentally through this period of rest, then you lose your swimming mindset and all the progress you have currently made with it over the start of the season. Taking 5-10mins out of your day to just go though some visualization of a training session, a race or even the timing of your stroke and how it feels in the water could make a huge difference when you manage to jump back in the water. 

3. Routine 

As swimmers we are creatures of habit. We wake up at a certain time, we go to bed at a certain time and always train and go to school at the same time. We are used to having everything in a routine. During this period try and hold onto a routine as much as possible. Make sure not to go to bed too late nor wake up too late. It is a chance to mentally refresh but try best to stick to a routine which will keep you healthy mentally and physically. Once returning to the pool you will find it much easier to drop back into a normal routine if your life hasn’t be TV and Xbox until 2am every day to only wake up at 11am and repeat the whole cycle again.

4. Stay Active 

When we as swimmers go through a training regime of 5, 15, 25+ hours of training a week, our bodies are trained to be put through a high level of physical work week in week out. If we now just start to lie on the sofa or bed all day our body will go into a detraining mode where all of the physical p0rogress you have made will be reversed and lost meaning that when you come back to dive into the pool, your body simply won’t be ready to train. Make sure to stay as active as possible with plenty of fresh air and exercise (within the guidelines from our government).  We have created a series of exercises and ideas that will help you with this while also keep you going through swimming specific movements to keep the muscle memory ticking over.

5. Learn your Craft 

It is very rare for swimmers to have free time, with school, training, racing, social lives… It is very hard for swimmers to find time where they relax but over this period with nothing but free tie, why not take the opportunity to learn more about swimming? Watching videos of some of the great technical skills, their mindset and some of the greatest races of all time is a great way to stay engaged through the period without any training time. With YouTube we have unlimited access to races over the years and video resources to keep you motivated and learning about your sport. Below we have compiled a list of some really good videos to get stuck in to!