How does a swimmer overcome intimidation from a competitor?

Have you ever felt that a swimmer scares, intimidates or just bothers you? Do you ever feel that you just don't have what it takes to beat them? Well, join the club! Many swimmers experience this at some time in their career.

It can happen in many different forms too. Intimidation can be intentional (such as teasing, verbal abuse, and even bullying), or it may simply be the intimidated swimmer's own negative thoughts which have turned into mental monsters. Either way, these can definitely prevent a swimmer from performing at their best, and must be rectified before they seriously impact on a swimmer's career.

I worked with one State level swimmer who was the 'star' performer in her club, but unfortunately she attracted a lot of negative abuse from swimmers who were jealous and feeling left behind. This began to affect her times, and she eventually had to change clubs, as neither she nor her coach could seem to alleviate the problem with the other swimmers. She's now much happier at a new club and swimming better than ever.

But here is a better way, if you feel this can be of help to you.

A National level 16 year old swimmer once came to see me because he had not beaten a particular competitor for 4 years.

Many times he would decide to himself "this time I'm going to beat him", and sure enough, he'd go out hard and be well in front, until his own lack of belief would sabotage his performance - causing him to make silly errors (which he'd never normally make), lose his rhythm, and sometimes he'd even stop swimming completely, to allow his competitor to win. Of course, every loss only reinforced his belief that he 'wasn't good enough' and his confidence was disappearing rapidly.

We managed to reverse this situation in three weeks - he beat this swimmer twice in one day, through using a simple but little-known technique.

Firstly, I tried to get him to visualize (or imagine in his mind) beating this competitor, each day for 5-10 minutes. However, this didn't work because whenever he 'saw' this person in his mind, he would completely freeze up and couldn't think straight.

So I asked him what his favourite animal was. He looked at me as if I'd gone completely mad, but told me that a rabbit was his favourite animal. So I employed some imagery into his daily visualization, and asked him to imagine daily 'seeing' this swimmer with cute big ears, long teeth and whiskers!

Despite the fact that he thought I was utterly crazy, he did this each day, visualizing swimming against this cute cuddly animal, and mentally he had no trouble winning the race because he knew that rabbits couldn't swim very well!

Three weeks later he walked into the pool area, saw his dreaded competitor, and just broke out into a huge smile. All he could think of was a rabbit, not an unbeatable swimmer! He had lost all fear and respect for this competitor, by reversing the mental 'programme' running through his mind.

He went on to beat him twice that day, and hadn't lost to him for the following six months.

This method has worked many times, so give it a try. But remember, it needs to be done regularly.

Your mind is the most powerful computer in the world. You can use it any way you choose. Remember that you have the power to overcome any problem to achieve your dreams, by using this secret weapon inside you.

"These 'Mind Training for Swimmers' tips are
written by Craig Townsend from It's Mind over Matter, who
runs mental training programs from Sydney, Australia.  You
can subscribe to his free swim tips at his website
http://www.swimpsychology.com or send an email to
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Each tip is Copyright © Craig
Townsend and is fully protected by Australian and
International Copyright Laws."