Manage your emotions and you will maximize your energy

Training & Technique
Written by: arena coaches at 30 September '15 0
You are reading: Manage your emotions and you will maximize your energy

The management of our emotions is certainly a very complicated aspect to deal with. Imagine our body as a race car, which has a tachometer counting engine’s revolutions. The best performance results from the alignment of your engine’s revolutions (emotional energy) with your gears (physical energy). Keeping engine’s rpm low at the beginning and gradually raise it when the race starts is a must.

This means knowing how to manage your energy, how to align emotional with physical energy in order to be perfectly prepared for the competition. The end result is an increase in strength while using less energy, and avoiding the danger of over revving, or using the reserves.

To ensure correct rpm for your engine, you have to do the following:

1. Check your heart rate several times a day. In the morning as soon as you wake up, in situations of emotional stress, during physical effort. This will help you understand how to manage different situations and therefore, control your heart rate.

2. Listen to music. As already seen, music may have positive effects both on our psyche and our bodies  (Swim to the music). Create a playlist to accompany your swimming or having the same rhythm as your stroke. Music has the power to increase and decrease your emotional energy, depending on what you are going through at that particular moment.

3. Learn how to breathe. Our usual breathing is an involuntary act. By learning to breathe voluntarily, using diaphragmatic breathing, you’ll be able to control your emotions.

4. Surround yourself by people who exude a positive energy. Avoid, if possible, congested places, noise and people causing tensions.

5. Think positive. Try to always see the glass half full and don’t be deterred by negative events. Learn to use regularly positive strategies; if they are not part of your routine you’ll never learn to use them when needed.

Why is energy management so important?

Because knowing how to manage your energy is equivalent to being confident, or self-assured, ready to tackle the challenge. The lack of confidence is synonymous with failure; it is an indicator of some underlying problem. Therefore, being confident is perceived as not having problems, or being healthy. On the contrary, the lack of confidence may reveal a problem and therefore bring a feeling of malaise, as when you are sick.

To solve the problem, you’ll have to find the cause. If you are an athlete and your confidence is lost, the problems may have different causes: past performance, lack of preparation, gap between expectations and real performance…

In this situation you don’t have too many choices, either decide to be part of the solution or remain part of the problem.

If you want to be part of the solution, try the following:

1. don’t ever give up, but don’t be too sure of yourself either. Play, compete and do your best in every circumstance; this will be your victory.

2. give 100% of yourself in every situation and try to do more and more, this will take you on the right track.

Finally, define what success means to you. The inner dialog is the fundamental way to understanding the surrounding world and yourself. This will help you build up confidence.

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arena coaches

Swim coaches, trainers and experts will give you all kinds of tips for performing at your best in both training and races.