What goes into making a champion? Are they born that way? Or are they forged? Is it talent that they are born with? Skills they acquire over countless hours of mindful practice? Is it sheer luck? Just being in the right place at the right time? Perhaps it’s some strange mystical combination of all of these factors and more.
The life of a competitive swimmer is grueling. The countless hours in the pool, lap after lap, racking up kilometers, 25 meters at a time. The dryland exercises to stretch every possible muscle group. Finding the right balance between building core strength and flexibility, without bulking up. The obsessive attention to nutrition. The endless heats at swim meets, waiting all day for your 50 seconds in the pool. It’s a lonely existence.
And let’s not talk about the permanent smell of chlorine that permeates every pore of your skin. The hair that is never dry. The endless grind of chasing a personal best time. Even when you are doing well, the effort that goes into making a million different adjustments to shave seconds off your time. Before winning any medals, a competitive swimmer has beaten themselves in the pool countless times. They have bested their own time, before they can win over anyone else.
Are you a champion because you won a medal, or because you showed up to the pool in the summer break? When everyone else was lounging by the pool with a fruity drink, and you were doing laps and practicing your turns. Did we know the champions all along because we saw them working hard consistently? Or is it the other way around? Their work ethic and discipline left them no other option but to succeed.
I don’t know when we became that swim family. The ones who plan everything around the swim meet schedule. The family that doesn’t make any summer plans, in case our swimmer qualifies for a regional meet. All our weekends start at the pool, and all our breaks revolve around training camps. It all started innocently enough, with Mommy and Me swim lessons. There are so many reports of accidental infant drownings, we thought our kids should learn this crucial life skill early on. From that 30-minute class, swimming has morphed into this all consuming activity. 6 days a week, 90 minutes each session, swimming 60 kilometers in a month, 800+ kilometers in a season.
As a swim mom, I wonder if this is too much pressure on her young body. I worry about muscle spasms, overused shoulders, and skewed priorities. I agonize over every calorie I put into my swimmer’s body. Is there enough carbs? Is it the right type of carbs? The skeptic in me questions if all this effort is worth it. The millennial mom in me wonders if I am living vicariously through my child’s achievements. At times, I really don’t know what she gets out of the sport.
But then I realize that she doesn’t look at swimming from an ROI point of view. She doesn’t swim for the medals, or to win, or even to compete. She swims because she can. When she swims, she is one with the water, her head is underwater and all the noise of the world does not matter. I can see the focus and the discipline that she gets from the sport. I am awed by her commitment to keep showing up in the pool, no matter how disappointing the previous meet was. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but I am always amazed at the composure and maturity that she brings to every room that she steps in. She gets that from her sport.
So, what are champions made of? They are made of grit and commitment. They are shaped by 4 a.m. wake up alarms and 9 p.m. lights out. You can tell the champions apart when they arrive 15 minutes earlier than the call time, every time. You can see the single-minded attention that they give to every task, no matter how small.
Will she continue to swim and compete? For her sake, I really hope so. She has never weighed her sport, or her effort through the lens of gain or loss. And I hope she never will. For as long as she wants to swim, I hope there will be a lane open to her. I’ll be there to drive her to the pool.