TRAINING AND TECHNIQUE P erformance slumps are sneaky. They hit out of seemingly nowhere when you thought your training was going well. And when your performance starts to drop, your enthusi- asm for getting in the water starts to wane or maybe goes AWOL altogether. If the situation sticks around for more than a week or so and can’t be explained in other ways (the all-nighter you pulled for that crazy client/sick child/”Game of Thrones” binge watch), it’s worth putting these slump-busting strategies into play. TAKE STOCK OF YOUR RECOVERY “If you were an athlete at the Olympic Training Center, one of the first questions that would be asked is, ‘How are you recover- ing from the workouts?’” says Sean McCann, senior sports psy- chologist for the U.S. Olympic Committee. Coaches would do a careful review of whether the training was benefiting the athlete or just fatiguing him or her. That’s because for athletes at any level, a slump is often the result of being under-recovered; you’re not letting yourself adapt to your workouts. “We used to call it overtraining, but we don’t use that word so much anymore, because people feel like they can never train too much,” he says. The point is, are you pushing, pushing, pushing and not letting your body adapt to and get stronger from that push? Swimmers are famous for ascribing declining performance to some- thing else—new responsibilities at work, a messed-up schedule, and the like. These can be instigators of slumps. But what often incites a full-on slump is that “athletes don’t listen to their body or their mind or their emotions,” says Jim Taylor, a sports psychologist who has worked with pro and world-class athletes in many disciplines, including swim- ming. “At first, your body, mind, and emotions are saying, ‘Excuse me, this is wearing me down, can you take a break?’” Your body rebels with slower times and less motivation. Basi- cally, when you’re under-rested, it does what it’s supposed to: tries to preserve itself. “Because we’re tired and sore and in pain, it thinks that life is threatened,” Taylor says. So it sends a signal to the brain to stop training. “As cave people, our instinct was to sur- vive,” he says. The brain doesn’t really know it’s 2019 and that an- other 3,500 meters probably won’t kill you as a mastodon may have. But your body does know that something’s wrong, and it knocks on your brain’s door to appeal to it and get some relief. But not every swimmer hears the knock, and that lets you go even deeper into a hole. The first thing to do when you find yourself in one: “Stop digging,” McCann says. “This is something Masters swim- mers have a very hard time with, because they like to dig—the work is what makes them happy.” But when a slump has you in its clutches, you have to put the shovel down and rest. There’s no prescription for exactly how long to rest, but you need to give in and do it. GET YOUR SLEEP It’s possible to get the Zs you need, even if you get up at 5 a.m. The trick is making it a priority. “Sleep is now gigantic for all of the Olympic swimmers,” McCann says. “The science is really pretty remarkable in terms of how much positive impact it has on performance and on the ability to benefit from training.” Stop the Slump PSYCH SHEET Here’s how to get back on track after a lackluster performance Peter H. Bick 8 usms.org