Developing Mental Toughness Through Swimming

Swimming is a very intense sport.
If you want to excel in it, you need to really commit to constant training.
As it turns out, this training is not only beneficial in strengthening your body, it can also help strengthen your mind. After all, its just as important to have mental toughness as it is to have a fit body.
 

MEMORY

As you work to fine tune your stroke, you will adjust tiny angles and body movements. You will probably read blogs, like this, and take what you learned to the pool with you. Or, you will follow a coaches instructions.
Seemingly subtle differences in technique can make a large impact in speed. In order to be effective, you will need to make each adjustment permanent. This takes a lot of memory power.
The increased blood flow to your brain from the swimming will actually help your ability to remember, too. A study conducted showed that post exercise, people scored 10-15% higher in memory and attention tasks. 
 

DISCIPLINE

If you are truly committed to improving your swim technique, it will take a lot of discipline.
This is also good for your mind! As you build habits to develop your self discipline, it will benefit your body and your mind.
Planned behavior develops the pre-frontal cortex in your brain. This is in the frontal lobe where all of your executive processing take place.
As you develop your prefrontal lobe, you will have a greater ability to control your behaviors and reactions in general.
 

FOCUS

Swimming is not only a cardiovascular workout but also a strength training exercise because of the water resistance.
University of Iowa researchers concluded that strength training exercises help improve your brain’s ability to focus. So, if you start your morning with a swim, it will improve your ability to focus the rest of the day at work.
 

Your Personal Training

If you want to build your muscular strength and develop your brain, head over to the pool a few times a week. And to make it more entertaining, bring an Underwater Audio Waterproof iPod Shuffle.
That way, you can listen to music while you swim and the time will fly by twice as fast.
If you have any suggestions for training your body and your mind through swimming, please leave a message in the comment section below.