[Click Brad's picture to read his athlete profile]
(photo provided by Ron Phillips)
We just finished up perhaps the toughest month of the season – a phenomenon known to college and high school swimmers as “Christmas training.” This is a month of class-free, distraction-free (but certainly not fun-free) training to prepare us for our upcoming championship meets. It’s an essential part of our season, but is no more important than the work we do in earlier months.
We have been practicing twice a day with a mix of swimming and weights/dryland sessions. Our head coach, Mark Bernardino, has spoken a lot about the importance of mental toughness during these practices. If we can focus and push ourselves to new heights, our team will be able to reach our goals we set at the beginning of the season. The constant mental and physical intensity of the onslaught of practices can be mind numbing, but they provide great opportunities to improve as an athlete.
One way I’ve found to make the most of the challenges given to me is to set very short-term goals, everyday, that help me not lose sight of the bigger picture. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the training grind, thinking, “it’s only one practice and it doesn’t really matter,” or just losing mental focus of our end of season goals. By setting daily goals, I’m able to remain more mentally sharp and it helps me to not just go through the motions everyday. For example, before practice I’ll think of a few stroke technique problems that I’m experiencing at the moment and focus on them the entire workout.
The team swam against Virginia Tech to open up the 2012 portion of our season, and won a hard-fought meet that wasn’t decided until the last relay. VT jumped out to a huge early lead, and we had to battle from behind and fight for every point we could get in order to catch up. Our divers helped us out big time by winning their portion of the meet, and the men’s team built off of this by slowly coming together and bringing up our enthusiasm and excitement as the meet went on. Personally, I swam a demanding event lineup: 1000 free, 500 free, 400 IM, and then I anchored the 800 free relay. Although my times were far from personal bests, I learned about a few issues with my stroke technique that I’ll be able to fix before ACCs.
Also, a major benefit from swimming at VT’s brand new facility is that we were able to familiarize ourselves with the pool because we’ll be swimming in it again soon. The Hokies host the ACC Championships next month.
Tags: 2012 Olympics, Amanda Kendall, Behind the Blocks, Bradley Phillips, Michael Flach, NCAA, Team USA, US Olympic Trials
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