Just keep swimming

Overcoming adversity in a regatta has everything to do with how you react to it, and this mental skill-set needs as much work as boat preparation and physical conditioning. In this report by professional sailor and coach Chris Snow, he advises on how to just keep swimming:

Want to quickly improve your regatta results? One of the best ways to do that is to develop the ability to recover from a position down in the fleet. The best teams can turn a bad start, OCS or any other mishap into a decent finish. Instead of being stuck in the back of the fleet they seem to always find a way to advance forward. Sounds easy, right? We all know it’s not.

How to turn that bummer of a start (everyone gets one from time to time) or boat handling screw-up into a keeper? You’ll need some skills and boat speed for sure, these can be practiced and developed over time. What you really need is the ability to focus mentally.

To dig yourself out of the back and move towards a keeper finish you need to master the real mental challenge of sailing, and learn how to make lemonade out of lemons. Sailing can be an incredibly frustrating sport, learning to deal positively with the adversity that constantly gets thrown your way can really set you on the path to improving your results

Following are four ideas that I have found that can help you do just that. I’d welcome your comments at the end.

1) Focus on the task, not the result: You’ve been improving and now some of your buddies in the fleet start telling you that your time is coming to win or place in a regatta. Of course, this makes you proud. Next time out, you visualize yourself actually picking up a trophy at the end of the event. The first start happens and in all your excitement to get a good finish, bam, you are over early. You circle back around the ends and now you are at the back of the fleet to start the first race. Your dream just went up in smoke.

How to avoid this? – Full report