How to prepare yourself as a person, an athlete and a performer

Swim England sports psychologists Hannah Stoyel and Helen Davis are back with a new series of support videos.

In their opening video, the pair focus on what makes a swimmer great as well as helping you identify your skills, behaviours and characteristics as a person, an athlete and a performer.

Everyone has the will to win. But very few have the will to prepare to win. That is what makes the difference.

You will also see how to create your own performance profile and once you have watched the video below, you can have a go at this by following the steps further down this page.

For now, hit play.

Creating your own performance profile

Step 1 – Identify eight characteristics that you think make a great swimmer and write them in the outer circle.

Step 2 – Now rate yourself (with one being ‘I am not good at displaying this characteristic’ and 10 being ‘I am great at this characteristic’) and colour in the bars to show your rating. Do this for all eight characteristics.

Step 3 – Now look at your performance profile. How close are you to having great swimmer characteristics? What do you notice? Can you improve? How can you do it?

Topics covered by Helen and Hannah so far

• Processing emotions in times of uncertainty
• Using grounding to stay in the present
• Focusing on process goals
• What is self-talk and how can we use it?
• Applying psychological skills
• Sports psychology questions and answer session