News

Kia Ora Submerge Aquatics Families,

Happy New Year and welcome to 2025! We trust you are having a great summer wherever you may be, and dipping your toes into any water you come across!

We’re kicking off the year with some meaningful family time, enjoying the beach, sea swims, and quality moments together. For us, the perfect way to start the year!

As we start this year we wanted to provide our families with some of our own ‘thoughts and processes’ to help support our swimmers and generate some chat around the dinner table or in those many car trips to and from the pool! These will hopefully provide helpful insights, and spark conversations that can benefit everyone. This series of posts will not only encourage thought but we hope will serve as a great reference when needed, whether for motivation, strategies, or tips related to swimming and training.

So without further ado, here is our first post of our series 'Stroke by Stroke':

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The time will pass building up to your target event. Make it count

We’ve often found that athletes underestimate the time it will take to accomplish a goal, allowing themselves justifications for not attending as many sessions as they probably could, not trying as hard as they could in sessions or being scared to give it their all in case it hurt or saving their energy for something else. It can start to get frustrating with a seeming lack of progress and results and you may start to wonder if it’s all worthwhile. These are all fair and natural thoughts.

The time is going to pass by no matter if we show up or not, so how do we make it count?

During November and into December the Gold-1 squad implemented a new system where at the start of every session each athlete's name was written on the whiteboard, and next to each name two boxes that said 'pre-session' and 'post-session'. In those boxes swimmers could put a number between 1-5 to see how they were feeling and what they achieved regarding training. The Coaching team used this as a tool that gave us important data to help understand the team and the trends they were going through to be able to keep working on our support for them whilst holding themselves accountable too. We found that it created new conversations with more open dialogue about how swimmers were feeling and aligned with the theory that the time in training was going to pass so let's make the most of the day right in front of us.

For the Gold-1 swimmers, having their commitment written up on the whiteboard created a firm sense of accountability to be doing something that helped them become a better athlete and the best version of themselves in the set and that day.

Swimming is a tough sport that requires many hours of consistency to make a step forward, and while that may seem tough on the outside, the feeling of accomplishment is second to none! We believe it's worth it and we'll support you every step of the way!

Your goals aren’t just about becoming a fast swimmer, but learning what you are truly capable of. Hold yourself to a standard and sticking to it. Learning what your limits are and how tough you really are.

So:
Work Hard.
Be Consistent.
Reflect on the small things you have achieved.
Enjoy the journey.

The goal at the end of your target event isn’t just a time, record, medal, or creating great friendships with your fellow competitors. The main one is to be the best version of yourself.

Time is surely going to fly!