Lockdown has required a lot of swimmers to press ‘Pause’ on their athletic ambitions.
While training and competitions continue to be cancelled in many areas, setting realistic personal goals during lockdown has become increasingly difficult.
In order to help athletes navigate these rough waters, we turned to Health Psychology PhD candidate Bradley Crocker for his advice on goal setting. Below we share with you some of his insights.
Create a connection between your training and your goals
It’s easy to just mindlessly go through the motions of an exercise. This likely won’t lead to quality workouts, though, and it certainly won’t foster internal motivation. It’s therefore important to understand how your training is connected to a goal that you’ve set.
Say your objective during the pandemic is to be physically active in order to maintain a base level of fitness. Most forms of fitness will do the trick here, so you can get creative in finding fun activities that will get your heart rate up.
If you have instead decided (in cooperation with your coach) to strive for a more elite level of fitness over lockdown, then your remote training will need to be more rigorous. All workouts should be designed to nurture your development as an athlete,…
