How to Prepare for a Successful Swim Meet

Ready to uncork some best times at your next swim meet? Here’s what you need to know to prepare for a swim meet.

Swimming fast at swim meets is why swimmers go to all of those training sessions over the course of the year. It’s what drives us during long aerobic sets, lactate-swirling sprint sets, training camps, and soggy, cold mornings at the pool.

While most swimmers have no problem putting in the physical work in training, often it’s done to get better at training and not to prepare for competition. They go through the motions, working hard but never really working towards executing a specific performance on race day.

You see this often with swimmers who struggle to switch between a practice mindset and competition mindset. Or swimmers who have unrealistic expectations for a swim meet when measured against the work done in training.

Ultimately, the swimmers who excel at swim meets are building those performances in training, day in and day out.

In this article, we will look at how you can prepare for success in competition from the first day of training all the way until the moment you step up on the block.

Let’s dive in.

How to Prepare for a Successful Swim Meet

To prepare like a champion for your next swim meet, you should get ready by:

• Set the big goal for the swim meet
• Use short term goals to stay on track
• Build a process for success
• Train to race
• Prepare for pressure
• Use mental skills for competition
• Sleep like a boss
• Eat clean and hydrate
• Pre-race routine
• Have fun and compete
• Warm down properly
• Reflect and review

Beginning of the Season

Alrighty, it’s the beginning of the season, you’ve enjoyed some time off from the pool, and it’s time to get back to work in the pool. This is the perfect time to do some quick goal setting and planning in regards to your target swim meet.

• Set the big goal. What is your goal for the swim meet? Write out goal times, splits, and other relevant goal data. The more analytical swimmer will include things like key things to improve, stroke rate information, and so on.

• Work backwards from the big goal. With the big goal in mind, work backwards and set short term goals for each training cycle, other swim meets, or even for each month. Short term goals, which service the Big Goal at the end of the season, help keep you focused and motivated over the season.

• Build a process for success. Elite swimmers understand the power of routine and process. By creating a simple process for themselves, they help automate the productive actions, behaviors and thoughts that lead to success in swim meets. This means tracking your swim workouts and having a schedule for your training to stay accountable.

Preparation

Over the course of the season, swimmers should be focused on executing on a daily basis in training, which means eating well, training at a high level, and continually pushing themselves to improve.

Preparing for a swim meet means that you are building the performance you want and preparing you physically and mentally for the specific rigors of competition.

• Race training. Fast swim meet performances are built in practice, and this means preparing yourself for the same pace, stroke count, stroke rate, and skill velocities of competition. Train at target race paces, do flip turns at race speed, perform starts and relay takeovers at maximum speed to build race-specific skills.

• Prepare for pressure. Increase the pressure and stress regularly in training with get out swims, challenging new intervals, racing teammates, etcetera. The pressure of competition is vastly different from the relatively comfortable environment of training. By introducing increased pressure in practice, you’ll better be ready for the flood of nerves and stress at swim meets.

• Use mental skills to bulletproof your confidence. Mental skills like visualization and self-talk can be very helpful for managing pre-race nerves and responding to adversity at swim meets. In the weeks and months leading up to the swim meet, spend a few minutes each night mentally rehearsing your ideal swim performances.

“It’s weird because I didn’t really get that nervous during the Olympics. I’d swum that race a thousand times in my head. I’m a big fan of visualization so I’ll always visualize my race before hand.” – Adam Peaty

Race Day

Once all the training is locked and loaded, and swimmers have completed the taper phase, it’s race day. Time to unleash all of your hard work and have fun competing!

• Sleep like a boss. Get lots of sleep, not only at the swim meet, where you will be busy with racing, warming up, warming down, and experiencing the emotional roller coaster of competition, but in the days leading up to the race. Sleep extension (8+ hours of sleep) is a proven way of getting more out of your swimming, particularly in competition.

• Eat and hydrate. Eat clean and stay hydrated on race day. Avoid the urge to get adventurous with your diet when at swim meets, sticking to easy to digest and familiar foods and diets. Nobody likes the combination of the butterflies with swirling guts right before competing, so keep the diet clean and familiar at swim meets.

• Pre-race routine. Pre-race routines are an invaluable tool to help install some certainty to your meet preparation. Every swimmer’s pre-race routine is different and unique to their goals and needs, but it should include everything you need to physically and mentally prepare for success. Things like a swim meet warm-up, setting aside time to visualize, and your racing schedule.

• Have fun and compete! Swim meets can often be wildly stressful, but remember: the sport and competing is supposed to be fun! Remember to smile and get after it and enjoy the moment. You’ve worked hard to be here, so soak it up.

After the Race

Alrighty, the race is over. Win or lose, adding or dropping time, medal and dead-last finish, you pull yourself out of the water.

• Warm-down. There are significant advantages to warming down properly, including providing a natural mental reset between races, flushing metabolic waste (enhancing recovery), and returns your body to resting levels.

• Reflect and Review. No matter how the race or swim meet went, take some time to review and reflect on how you performed. Swim meets are a reflection of our preparation and training, for better or worse. If things went well, leverage the things you are doing right and keep charging. If things went poorly, use the meet as a lesson and motivational fuel moving forward.

Wrapping Things Up

Swimmers invest heaps of time in practice, during those countless sets, long threshold sets, kick sets, to perform at a high level at swim meets.

Match your hard work in the pool with the tips for how to prepare for race day success above, and you will see yourself swimming faster when it matters most.

Ready to take your mental game to the next level?

Swimmers frustrated with underwhelming performances on race day and want to conquer their mindset will love Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High-Performance Mindset.

Written with the feedback of 200+ Olympians, NCAA champions, and head coaches, the book is the complete blueprint for an unbeatable mindset in practice and training.

From learning how to build a killer pre-race routine to everything you’ll ever need to master pre-race nerves, Conquer the Pool gives swimmers the tools to swim with total confidence on race day.