Raising Elite Competitors

Athlete of the Month: Ella's Mental Routine For Personal Best Performances

• Coach Bre • Season 2 • Episode 273

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Join us for an inspiring conversation with Ella Wiley, our November Athlete of the Month. In this episode, we explore her journey as a swimmer, the importance of resilience, and her effective pre-competition routines.

In This Episode:
✔️ How supportive coaching has shaped Ella's mindset
✔️ The role of mental training in enhancing performance
✔️ Ella's approach to pre-race preparation
✔️ Strategies for coping with nerves and building confidence
✔️ The importance of teamwork and camaraderie in sports
✔️ Tips for athletes to bounce back from disappointing performances

Follow Ella on her journey and draw inspiration for your own athletic path!

Episode Highlights: 

[00:00:00] Introduction to Ella, November Athlete of the Month, and her remarkable story.

[00:01:00] Ella shares her journey into competitive swimming and highlights her experience.

[00:02:00] The influence of supportive coaches on Ella's work ethic and resilience.

[00:03:00] Transition to her involvement in mental training and its impact on her performance.

[00:04:00] Details about her recent meet experience, achieving PRs in 6 out of 8 events.

[00:05:00] Ella reveals her pre-race routine and the strategies she uses to prepare mentally.

[00:06:00] The effectiveness of box breathing and its role in calming nerves.

[00:08:00] Importance of reflection and bouncing back from subpar performances.

[00:09:00] Ella discusses her high school season and the shift in competition dynamics.

[00:12:00] Tips for creating strong bonds with teammates and fostering a supportive environment.

[00:13:00] Ella’s advice for athletes struggling with nerves or mental challenges.

[00:15:00] Final thoughts on embracing challenges and learning from every experience.

[00:16:00] Ella shares her perspective on finding motivation and support in team sports.

Next Steps:

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Hello Ella. You are our November athlete of the month. We are so proud of you and really excited to have you on and hear more about your story. And I know that we were just chatting a little bit and you have even more wins to add on to your champion board submission. We're super proud of you and what really stands out to us the most is your work ethic and your resilience and. Just being able to push through when things are tough and challenging and continuing to level up. So really excited to have you here as our athlete of the month. Let's start by having you do a quick introduction of yourself, who you are, what sport you play, what level you play at, how old you are, all the things. I am Ella Wiley. I am a sophomore in high school and I am on the swim team. Awesome. And how long have you been doing swimming for? I pretty much been doing swimming my whole life, but I really started competitive swimming about two years ago. Okay, sweet. You've been able to like really level up quickly it sounds like. Tell me a little bit more. Where have you got your work ethic and resilience from?'cause again, that's something that really stands out to us. So where do you think that comes from? I feel like a lot of my worth, ethic and resilience has come from, a lot of my past coaches. Mm-hmm. I have had the honor of having some really nice swim coaches who have really helped me, not just with swimming, but also with kind of like having the correct attitude, the correct, like go at it for each of my races and meets. Yeah. Oh, that makes such a difference, like having those coaches who really believe in you can help you believe in yourself, and it sounds like you've learned how. To be a great teammate, to be really coachable, to continue to work on yourself and improve like day in and day out, which is super great. Okay. And then tell me a little bit about how long you've been a part of the elite mental game and how long you've been really working on your mindset? I don't think it's been about a year yet. Maybe just a few months. I'd love to know like what brought you into wanting to work on your mindset too? So I started the mental game about a few months ago and what started it is my mom found this, I think she saw like one of your Instagram posts and decided that we could try it out. And that really kind of like made me realize that there was a lot of things I could work on, especially with like my mental attitude towards swimming and towards meets. And that's kind of where like the whole thing started. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. And were you able to, no pun intended for the swimmer, but were you able to dive into it right away? Or like what did that look like for making it a part of your consistent schedule? I feel like it took us some trial and error.'cause I had to, I actually like try to figure out one, what I wanted to do, and two, how I could include it in my pre-race. Kind of like warmup situation. Which I'm excited. We'll talk more about your pre-conference team. I wanna hear all about what you do and you can share the tips with other athletes who might be listening as well. Before we get too far into it, I want you to share your story, and it sounds like you've had some more wins even from this meet that you had. But I'd love for you to take us back to. The meet where you PRD in six out of eight of your events, which to me reading that is just like mind blowing. It's crazy. Again, we're super proud of you. It sounds like it was a highlight competition, so amazing. But take me back to that meet and like what helped and how did you perform so well That was about a month ago and I hadn't been swimming that many meets that I have been around that time doing a lot of practices and like really trying to up my practice and just kind of like how much work I'm putting into each one of my practices. And at that meet I just felt like I was so ready to just swim and I was so like, I felt really good, especially with my pre-race routine. I feel like that helped a really good amount. And just with like all my coaches and my teammates and all of the hard work, I feel like it truly led to me being able to do my best and more. Which led to a good amount of personal records. Six out of eight is Yeah. Like next level for sure. So it sounds like you were being super intentional and focused going into your practices leading up to that meet, and then you had a lot of support and your routines were dialed in, it sounds like as well. I was trying my best to go as hard as I could, even if there were maybe days where I felt slower or days where I may have felt a bit more sore. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Which is super important.'cause sometimes we don't control all of those elements and we still have to show up and make it happen. Okay, tell me more. You need to give us all the secrets. Ella, what does your pre-con routine look like? Your pre-race routine, what do you do? What helps you? What gets you ready to compete confidently? So before my races, I typically, I'll go to look at my time and where I am placed in that event compared to other swimmers. And that kind of gives me the idea like, do I have somebody I can try to compete with? Or is this more of a competition against my own time? Hmm. And I kind of think back to when I had originally swam that time and maybe like a few things that I did that could have been different from last time or maybe just. Kind of trying to like replay that race and find what went so well and make it go better. Yeah. Okay. I love that. So you're kind of taking two different routes of one, am I competing against myself and how can I improve and still work on my goals? Or two, like am I competing against. Somebody else and I'm out to win and beat them. And then being able to reflect on what do I need to do? What has helped in the past, what's went well, or maybe what you need to improve off of as well. Awesome. And then I think you had hinted that you use some sort of like breathing and visualization. Tell me about how you incorporate those things into either like race day or practice schedule. So I do a specific breathing pattern called box breathing. Mm-hmm. Which is where you breathe in for 4, 5, 6 seconds, hold it for the same amount of time, and then exhale for that same amount of time. And there's some sort of scientific study behind it where it helps you really catch your breath and helps you calm your nerves. And my mom taught me how to do that, and it just really helped. I try to do that before each of my races just to kind of help ease the pre-race nerves and kind of like anxiety that I normally get. Another thing I do is I like to. I'll feel my cap. I'll fix my cap, make sure my goggles are in the right place. It just kind of gives me a sense of security that all I need to worry about is racing fast and doing the best I can. For sure. I love that. And box breathing is something, that is in the elite Menzel game too. we have like a little module, a little section on that. But I'm so glad that your mom gave you that tool because it does just calm your nervous system right down, especially if you are having a lot of nerves and pressure before a competition. So I love that you have your kind of like go-to tools that. You're using to calm yourself down, center yourself, and then it sounds like adjusting your cap or your goggles helps you just get settled and situated and kind of have some physical grounding moments, if you will, before you, go out there and, and take the water. And then do you feel like there's been a moment that you can remember where your, like mental game really kicked in, where you have felt like your mindset has been really strong and consistent? I'm really thinking about this at my kind of two meets ago. I swam a race and it was not a really good race. Mm. Afterwards I was kind of disappointed in myself and I just, but I had a race so soon afterwards, so I used some stuff that I've learned from the elite mental game program and just kind of bring myself back and tell myself that like, that is just one race. I'm gonna do hundreds more in my lifetime. And it just using all of, like fixing my goggles and caps box breathing. All of that just brought me back and almost made me forget about the original disappointment I had in one of my races and brought me back to do another personal record. Which is great. You were able to bounce back so quickly, and that is really what happens when you have a strong mindset. The lows don't shake you, and you're able to continue chipping away and gaining momentum so that you can go out there and continue getting those personal vests that you've been able to stack and stack and stack over the last month. So being able to bounce back quickly is. It's a simple skill, but it's not an easy skill, and that's something that you've been working on over the last few months of, you probably reflected a lot on that, like meet that didn't go so well for you and you thought about, okay, how can I improve? You stayed really present and you knew that there was more to come, and that one meet does not define who you are as a swimmer and as an athlete. Awesome. Okay. And then what would you say is different for you now that you do mental training? Like was there something that you used to really struggle with mentally and now you're not struggling as much with? I feel like going back to the last little conversation we had, I struggled a lot with, I would just continuously reflect on my last race. Mm-hmm. And I would. It would be hard to get out of that mindset that if I raced once, like if one of my races were bad, then I would have a bad meet. That was probably one of the hardest things to get out of, and also just like trying not to let the pre-race nerves get to you to probably the two major challenges I really had, which are big ones for sure. What do you feel like has helped you the most with that reflection piece and not. Going down that spiral'cause it's really easy for athletes to do. So what has helped you stop that spiral? What has helped me is imagining my next race. Typically, like when I'm behind the block or just going to talk to my coach about things I feel like I did wrong and things I feel like I could improve on, just to kind of change that kind of, oh, I did bad to, oh, there's some things that I can improve for next time so I can do even better. That's a huge shift to make. Like instead of beating yourself up, now you're turning that into a moment of inspiration or a moment that you can look forward to of, okay, I'm actually gonna grow and improve versus letting that moment really define me. And then same thing with nerves. I know that we already talked about like pre-race routine, but is there anything else you do specifically with dealing with nerves and pressure in really any moment in your life? Really in any moment, I just try to think of kind of like the positives in that situation. And instead of thinking, what if this happens, just try to think of this is happening right now. Mm-hmm. And another big thing, this is going back to my meets or in school, maybe if I'm giving like a big. Presentation or if I'm standing in front of a block and I find that nervousness, I'll typically go look at my teammates or my friends and just get a sense of reassurance, seeing that they're there cheering for me and just kind of there to help me. I think the themes that I'm finding from you that are really helpful for you as an athlete and probably a lot of athletes is being really present. I always like to say be where your feet are at, right? A lot of times our head is in the past or it's thinking too much about the future. So being able to have your mind exactly where your feet are at so that you can be present and win this very moment. And then also being able to lean into your support system and having really strong connections around you so that you can. Have that reassurance, and people to like either hype you up or calm you down when you really need it. And then tell me about your high school season. Your high school season just started. So tell me about how that's going so far and what goals you have going into this season. So we have only really had one meet so far. But I feel like something that's majorly different for me about swimming club versus the high school, like the big difference is just in high school, a lot of things, they go really fast, they go a lot quicker. Mm-hmm. And your competition almost steps up going from swimming against your teammates to going to swim against other high schoolers from other schools. It's gone pretty well. I feel like I've bonded with my team once again after taking a little bit of breaks from them. And it's really nice because our team is like, our coach, kind of makes us feel like a big family. We're always cheering for each other. We're always. Trying to hype each other up. Mm-hmm. I feel like all of that has just been amazing so far. It led to our win at that meet, some goals that I have are really trying to focus on improving events that I don't normally swim, because in swimming it's pretty common to want to just focus on one or two events that you may really love or enjoy and. It's probably, it's a pretty big goal to be able to go good times at some of the events that I may not be as good at versus only being good at the events I am. It's something special to be able to take that, like beginner's mindset again of, I call it being a sponge learning everything you can. Right. There's something special about doing that.'cause a lot of times we just wanna improve on like the skills that we're already really good at. We don't want to fail or we don't want to go backwards in anything. So that's exciting that you can like lean into those skills that maybe you're not as strong at, but you can keep on. Both raising the ceiling of your level and raising the floor and the foundation that you've set as a swimmer already, high school season does sound very different for you of you're competing against other schools and more like alongside your teammates. So have you thought about a plan to like really navigate that challenge that might come up and just like the difference in transitioning from club to high school season? I feel like so far I've kind of thought about just. Trying to be like one with the team, trying to make sure that nobody on the team is really a stranger. Mm. And just kind of understanding that they are nine outta 10 times. Always there. Or maybe like 10 outta 10 times. They're always there. Yeah. Like and just kind of realizing that, especially'cause club is more of an individual sport and high school is more of a team sport. So a really big transition is just. Really getting used to knowing that they're there for you pretty much a hundred percent of the time. And that there's always gonna be somebody that you can find cheering for you or that you can go to. Yeah. That's great. And I know that a lot of athletes struggle with making connections on their teams. What would you say, is there a tip that you have to have really strong bonds with your teammates? I would say. Try your best to just talk to everybody. If there's somebody that maybe is not getting cheered on, go cheer them on. Yeah, just when life gives you the opportunity to be able to go and have a conversation with somebody, it's really good to be able to do that. Just kind of like maybe break the nerves that you may have of not talking to like maybe a senior as a freshman, or maybe trying to make friends with like the new people on the team. It's always a good thing to try your best to just. Get to know the team as a whole. Yeah. And just be there for everybody. So being really inclusive and pulling other people in, and it sounds like that's a good strategy to help overcome nerves too, like putting your focus and energy into cheering on and supporting other people on your team. And then last question that I have for you. What advice would you give to an athlete who is maybe struggling with nerves or struggling with their mental game to help them reach their goals and level up just like you have? I would say find methods just try to search for methods that can kind of snap you out of a bad mood or that can lock you into your next race or to your next meet or. Your next play, whatever you're going to be doing, I feel like in always treating even individual sports as a team sport. So even if you're racing by yourself against other people, always looking out and being like, I'm also racing for my team. I'm also doing this for my team. And I feel like just thinking of sports more as a group. I feel like that's helped a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It makes it seem not as lonely, right? Like you're not on an island all by yourself. You actually have people all around you, and that's a great line of playing for other people, and competing for other people. I think that helps tap into this like gratitude mindset that pushes a lot of athletes to do their very best. Okay, Ella, and then any final words of wisdom or anything else that you would like to share? I feel like getting started, not procrastinating, trying out new things, and really just go for it. Just do it. I love that. Yeah, do it scared sometimes too. You don't have to be a hundred percent ready or really know what you're doing, but you can do it scared and just make it happen. Ella, thank you so much again. We just love your story and are really proud of you. Keep on pushing and working on your. Mental game. And we're really excited to see you keep on crushing it and keep on getting more prs as you enter your high school season. So keep working and again, congrats on being our athlete of the month. Thank you. You're welcome.

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Coach Bre Smedley

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