Soul Crushing

Wow, what a session this morning. An absolute killer. Almost nobody walked away unscathed.

Yesterday I mentioned that the Swim Smooth squad better like 200s, because they had a lot coming and I wasn't kidding. 15 x 200m to be exact, broken up into 3 lots of 5 with some other stuff in between. Each block of 5 was done on descending times, with the last set being particularly tight, just when the fatigue was at its worst, 4000m deep into the session. It sounds tough and you bet it was. The session absolutely devastated some lanes of the pool, with most lanes just managing to limp to the end. Ka-Boom.

Interesting I hear you say, but really, is that helpful? What is the point of setting a session that is clearly so close to the limit for most people?

Fair question.

For sure, it would be silly to set a session that is beyond everyone's reach all the time. Continuously failing to achieve the target times would get pretty demotivating and eventually people would stop coming. Bad for people and bad for Swim Smooth.

However, I think setting a session that challenges people and is occasionally too much for people isn't a bad thing. In fact I think it can be a really great thing. Why is that?

Well for one, it makes you faster. Being challenging is sort of the point of the Wednesday Morning Red Mist session. You turn up to this session knowing it is going to challenge you and push you to your limits. That is the entire point. Sometimes with this session you are the hammer and sometimes you are the nail, but that challenge is the reason people turn up because they know that with challenge comes improvement. The Wednesday morning session is the single most popular session that Swim Smooth does, and it isn't because it is easy. People know it is hard and they come anyway, in fact that is why they come. Everybody wants to get better and most of the people at the pool on a Wednesday morning know that the Red Mist session is a great way of doing so.

As well as that, as an athlete I always liked those sessions that pushed me right to the edge.Well I didn't like them at the time, but I was always thankful for them afterwards. Deep down as an athlete we want to be challenged and to over come that challenge, that is part of why all athletes do what they do. When you come against a tough set that is the test in front of you. Can you overcome. Whether you beat that test or not, you always come out feeling better for it in the long run. Knowing just how far you can go, how deep you can push, there is something very satisfying about that. The knowledge that when it really got tough you were able to persever and make it through is a very powerful thing.

Somebody once said to me that when you are preparing for a race there should always be a moment. That, 'if I can do this I can do anything' moment. That is the moment that the hope of doing something extraordinary becomes knowledge that you can. For me those moments always came in the sessions that pushed me the hardest, the ones were I got the closest to my limit. Those session may have been horrible and tough at the time, but they always made me stronger and more confident in the long run. You don't want those sessions all the time, that would be very wearing, but I think it is important to have them from time to time to demonstrate to yourself just what is possible. For me, the value of the confidence that came from these types of session was actually more valuable than the fitness gains.

For the people in the pool today, the session may have been successful, or it may not have been. However, for every single one of them I can guarantee that they are stronger athletes for the experience.