Building a Nationally Impactful Swim Club

Every day at BridgeAthletic headquarters, we hear tales from organizations across sports of coaches building better programs, athletes training smarter, and teams coming together to set new records. These are stories of championships won, obstacles overcome, and goals achieved. It’s what keeps us doing what we do every day, striving to build better athletes across sports and around the world. Instead of keeping these tales of glory and greatness to ourselves, we’d like to share them with you through our #BridgeBuilt series featuring a team or athlete that has achieved great results while using the BridgeAthletic platform. 

This month’s edition of Sports Psychology builds on the Plan stage of the Learn, Plan, Perform Model, discussing how mental training through the practice of imagery is a fundamental part of achieving long-term skill goals.

It’s that time of year again. The good vibes that accompany long summer days, offseason training, and vacations are replaced by excitement and fear as the imminent return to school approaches.

4 Steps to Better Championship Preparation

Championship season is the time of year when you put even more focus into swimming your fastest. As the physical demand of training lightens, how you manage the remaining hours in your day becomes more critical. Making your meets a priority doesn’t mean skirting other responsibilities—it just means planning ahead and practicing your best habits outside of the pool. Here are four ways to optimize your time as you prepare for a championship:

The BridgeAthletic Building Block Series is a set of 5 exercises that can be performed by swimmers of all levels on the pool deck.

Welcome to our series of swim building blocks. This edition will focus on breaststroke-specific exercises to fine-tune your body position and power in the water. Add these exercises to your power days in the pool and focus on them through the off-season to come back stronger and ready to push hard going into next season.

In elite competition, the pool of athletes at the top is small, the margins of improvement narrow. What more can you do to maximize your performance when changes in your training and recovery methods are so incremental? Turn to your nutrition—the aspect of performance with a constantly evolving landscape. As research continues to inform our recommendations, it is up to you to determine your nutritional needs and how to obtain them. Let’s dive into what you need to know now.

All successful performance starts with clearly written goals. The greatest athletes in the world have an established system in place that helps them plan for growth and improvement in their sport. Developing your own improvement plan through appropriate goal-setting is a fundamental step on your athletic journey that will help you know you are on course to achieve your performance potential.

You’ve arrived on the big stage. Now what? Unless you’ve been competing for gold before, this is probably the biggest meet of your life. At first, it may seem as if the lights are all brighter and the other swimmers are all bigger, stronger, and faster than you imagined. Don’t let these distractions and worries get into your head. Take these first 24 hours to settle in. The more you’re able to replicate your home training environment and schedule, the better you'll perform come race day.

The big stage. Whether it’s your first time under the bright lights or your third, the next week is going to be a whirlwind. But first, you have to get there. Traveling is an often overlooked part of the experience but definitely affects your performance on race day. So don’t shortchange yourself by losing focus on this important part of your overall experience.