Practice during the first week of the school year is always slightly different than the two to three weeks that come before it. It’s not that the swimmers are more tired because they are coming from school; in fact, it’s the opposite. The chatter is through the roof and getting everyone to listen and to focus seems to become a challenge.
I have found this very curious, so I started listening to the chatter to see what it was all about. It was simply the kids “unpacking” their day verbally to their teammates. It was school, it was homework, it was teachers, it was social interactions, it was upcoming sporting events, it was whatever someone posted on social media, and on and on and on. I was exhausted just listening to it all.
I started to think…. how can they focus at all on what we were going to be doing at practice with so much other stuff on their minds? The short answer was that they can’t, and that’s a problem when it comes to practice. I started to think of what a good solution might be and ended up with two answers.
The first was to move practice back 15 minutes. Give them the time with each other to verbalize and get some of it out of their brain. Now, 15 minutes isn’t nearly long enough to allow them to get it all out. We would have to start practice at midnight for that. But it is a good start and it does allow the time for “unpacking” the items at the top of the pile.
The second was to talk about and teach them the life skill of being able to mentally shift gears. Like many of these softer skills, some people have more of a natural ability for it than others, but everyone can learn it. It’s like toughness, or courage, or patience.
Teaching skills like this always start at the same place for me. Define what it is, have examples of what it looks like, and understand what the impacts are. For “switching gears” or cognitive flexibility, it’s learning how to put a hard stop on your activities from the day and switch over to being able to focus on what you need to for the next two hours.
We have adopted the analogy of leaving “it” in your locker. Physical and tangible cues and triggers are effective tools in teaching behavioral skills. Everyone goes into the locker room to change every day, and they put all their items from school that day in a locker. It stays there until they are done and when they are done, they take it out and take it home with them. During practice, they don’t obsess over the things they put in their locker, in fact, they most likely don’t think about them at all.
This serves as the model for not just our in-school items, but our in-school thoughts, aka the “it.” Granted, it’s not as easy to put your thoughts away in a locker, but the model has served us well. They will be there when you get out. You can leave them there safely and focus on what we need to be doing in practice, enjoying time with your teammates, and letting go of it for a couple of hours.
It’s a skill we know as adults you have to use in a variety of situations and one of the many that swimming can teach kids.