Sudbury - It’s a rare day when all my worlds - swimmer, writer, mother – collide. But this wet spring morning is such a day. The wind gusts to 68 kilometres per hour. I’m walking to the Ben Avery Physical Education Building on the campus of Laurentian University that, besides being home to my pool, houses the offices of LU’s sports psychology department. I am in a journalist’s guise but under that thin garment is the exhausted Master swimmer and mother. I have not been in the pool since helping to organize the Ontario provincial championship three weeks earlier…

In 2006, Laurentian Masters bid on the 2007 provincials. And while it’s one thing to dream about hosting the event, it was another matter to actually organize a meet for 350 people from 33 teams and dozens of volunteers. March 23 to 25 all our Master’s friends came to our pool and partied as hard as they swam. Our tiny club did it!

Then for a time, I didn’t ever want to swim Master’s again.

And so, the plan was to talk to Dr. Mark Eys, a professor in Laurentian’s sports psychology program, on how to refocus after such an intense experience. Somehow the plan blended into a story so that I was helping myself, while helping others.

Eys teaches courses in group dynamics and exercise psychology, as well as an introduction to sports psychology. He was once a varsity basketball player during the winter and a top-level soccer player.

It’s okay to experience a letdown, he says. The amount of time it takes to recover and be motivated again is very individual and depends on how involved the athlete was in the process. Athletes should give themselves permission to feel let down.

“It’s important that we try to reduce the anxiety of that letdown. It’s a natural thing that I am prepared to accept and not be too stressed out that this letdown has occurred.”

It’s key to keep a balanced perspective after any major event has occurred, he adds.

For Eys, a lot of athletes don’t set goals properly and focus too much on the outcome, and not the process.

In other words, they set outcome goals of, for example, competing at a national championship (which is generally a fine goal to have) but often athletes don’t look at the process within the goal leading to this end point.

“The issue with outcome goals is that we lack some control over achieving them because we must compare ourselves against other people; for example, your opponent may have more skill, strength, etc. No matter how hard you train you may not beat them.

“Consequently, it is important to set other types of goals, such as those for performance and underlying processes to keep us motivated,” he says.

With performance goals you are setting standards that will be compared against yourself and not someone else. An athlete can say, I want to set a personal best. For Eys, "No one can prevent you from achieving this. It’s dictated by the training."

Process goals are more specific and help you to achieve your performance goal, he says. Athletes may set some goals for the number of training sessions they will put in and the specific activities (e.g., number of repetitions per weight activity) as part of the process. Process goals are more controlled, measurable and "they should lead you hopefully to achieve the performance goal you are striving for."

In the meantime, athletes riding the letdown wave would do well to talk to their coaches and maintain a schedule that will retain a certain fitness level, he says.

The extent of that letdown depends on the situation and the time investment made, he says. So the worry becomes how does the athlete re-motivate and refocus especially when, in this case, the sheer force of the letdown caught this swimmer off guard.

“If we’re not expecting it, we worry, ‘how do I deal with it?’ If we look forward and see it, allow a rest then we’ll get geared up again. That could be part of the whole goal-setting process,” Eys says.

He also expects that, in the context of Masters swimming, a lot of our fatigue stems from the other things Master swimmers do: family commitments, jobs, volunteer work. “It’s balance. If we look at all we do, we’re working hard and doing multiple tasks. We do need to take breaks.”

That ghastly word balance enters the picture. And what he says does sound so simple, really. Yes, he agrees, it does make sense. “It does sound easy. But we tend to bounce from thing to thing.”

Making swimming fun again, well, that again is a personal issue.

For Eys, it’s important to re-examine the reasons we swim: the social life, the friends, the actual swimming.

On one level, it doesn’t make sense to push our bodies to the limit as we tend to do in the pool. Obviously then we swim because somehow we enjoy that work. Inserting a fun element to the training can be part of the planning process, he says.

Refocusing is part of the goal-setting process. One of the faults with goal setting is that many people don’t monitor their goals nor adapt them to reflect what has been going on, he says.

“The results in a previous event will influence to some degree how you will set your next goals. They are always being shaped.”

True enough.

The other day I rose from my workstation to stretch. The arms automatically went into a tight streamline position. The thought of a breaststroke clinic at workout was intriguing, attractive. The entire executive committee, coaches and fund-raising team headed out for dinner after workout. Among the toasts to everyone came a cheer for next season!