3 Lessons I Learned Swimming 10,000 Meters Daily

"Chanimal!! Chanimal!! Are you...ok???" - My swim coach, Eric.

"Uhhh....I'm ok...I think...what happened?" - Me

I was 16 years old and was a competitive swimmer. We swam year-round and we were one of the top teams on the west coast. We out-trained everywhere and put in more time in the pool than everyone else. We out-hustled and out-worked EVERYWHERE. To a FAULT.

11 practices per week and 5.5 hours of training per day during the week day! We averaged 10,000 meters per day in the pool and that did not even include the hour to hour and half of dryland training. (Which was a mixture of running, weights, pilates, etc.) To add to this, we trained year-round in an outdoor pool so when it was 15 degrees in the winter or 110 degrees in the summer, we were outdoors! Rain or shine, we trained.

Let's go back to what happened:

We were there for our typical morning workout at 5:30 AM at Echo Hollow Pool in Eugene, OR. We swam outdoors year-round in a 25-meter pool. It was about 20 degrees out in the dead of winter but fortunately the pool was heated.

We were in the middle of our school winter break but we still trained relentlessly as we had district championships two months away. I had woken up with a 103 degree fever and was feeling very lousy.

However, we always talked on the team how "pain was weakness leaving the body" so I got dressed and made my way to the early morning practice. The warm-up was fine and I was about half-way through our main set for the morning when I started to feel even worse.

I pushed on for as long as I could. Suddenly I blacked out.

I woke up on my back in my speedo on the frozen pool deck with my coach, lifeguards, and my team around me looking freaked out. I literally had no idea what just happened!

Turns out I passed out mid-set and started sinking to the bottom. They literally dragged me out of the pool unconscious. I had pushed too hard for being feverishly sick. I had not eaten breakfast and I was massively dehydrated.

Fortunately, I recovered fine after a few days rest.

As I look back there are many lessons I learned from my time in the pool that have transferred over to the professional working world (including don't be a bonehead and workout with a 103 degree fever)! The lessons I have learned have applied across the board and have helped me achieve some cool things and have helped in creating a bulletproof mindset! Let's get into them:

1.) All Games Are Won Off the Field – When you see someone with massive success whether it is sports, in sales, business, music, etc., it fools you to believe success can be easy or they got lucky. This could not be further from the truth. In swimming, those that win the awards and swim meets usually put in the most work in the pool. The focused on training the muscles and MIND to fatigue – and then pushed harder.

I remember we had one swim meet on Saturday that started at 12 PM. We usually had practice at 8 AM on Saturdays so naturally we all assumed that we didn’t have practice that day since we were competing – how wrong we were! We put in over 10,000 meters that morning before 11 AM and then we went to the swim meet. We ended up sweeping the entire meet and won every single category as well. The lesson our coach taught us there was that we often underestimate what our bodies can do and the mind fails first before the body! And yes, we did scare the heck out of our competition as a result!

When you look at high performing sales professionals, they put in more work in mastering their craft. The practice relentlessly with their scripting until it is buttery smooth and roleplay for mastery. Those in the top of of their fields do ALL the work when no one is looking so they WIN when everyone is watching. If you want to create that bulletproof mindset, put the work in during the off-hours and off-season!

2.) You Can Outwork Your Lack of Talent – Even though I swam competitively for years, what a lot of people didn’t realize was that I failed my swim classes leading up to it 4 years in a row! I wasn’t able to join the swim team until I was 9 years old because I was terrible at swimming. Once I was able to make it onto the team, I was the WORST kid on the team.

Turns out, it’s really not fun doing sports when you’re not good…however, fortunate for my Tiger Mom, I kept doing my best and put the work in. A year and half later, I was one of the top 5 fastest 10 year olds in the State of Oregon in the 50 yard breaststroke!

So at that point, it still hadn’t kicked in as I figured, “Ok, maybe I’m decent at this single event and my hard work made me better than most…I’m pretty sure I’m not that good at any other event…” As I got older, my coach continued to push me and develop me in other events. 7 years later and I qualified for Sectionals in close to a dozen events and was fortunate enough to break almost every single school record.

No matter your talent level in anything you do, if you put the RIGHT WORK in with the right coach, you can always take your game to the next level! If you are not naturally talented at closing, then practice relentlessly until it is smooth! Master objection handling until you can do it without thinking.

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3.) Habits Are Everything – When you do that much repetitive motion in the pool, you realize after a while that whatever you consistently do will eventually become a habit! For example: I HATED waking up early – in fact, I still do! However, at an early age when you are waking up at 4:30 AM and you can’t hit snooze since it’ll make you late, it creates a habit! It created a habit that no matter how I felt whether it was tired or sick, to get moving once the alarm goes off! This habit carries over to this day!

However you start realizing that there are many micro-habits that can help you or hurt you. I started creating small micro-habits to help myself such as:

• Pre-packing my training bag the night before with clothes ready to go for a fast change before taking off in the AM!
• A mental warm-up routine to get myself fired up before a race!
• A physical stretching routine to get myself in a peak performing state!
• Reading books that allowed me to think deeply about when training 10,000 meters in the pool! (You get lost in your thoughts and you need to focus on something else outside of the muscle fatigue)
• Etc.

These are the good habits. You also realize you can create bad habits as well without realizing it and those are harder to break. Ex: not eating breakfast in the morning. (Now I eat 6 times per day) What you truly realize is that if you can create enough positive habits, it kicks your brain into auto-pilot for whatever you want to accomplish! If you don’t like a certain bad habit, build a new way to “out-habit” that bad habit!

If you have a bad habit of wasting time on social media during the day to the point it impacts your sales productivity, what are you doing to change that and create a new habit? Ex: easy way is to remove the distraction! Delete the apps that waste your time and make it HARDER for yourself to do it! Create the right habits and it will pay you back tenfold in the future!

So there you have it – 3 Lessons I Learned from Swimming 10,000 Meters Daily! Although at the time I didn’t appreciate it, now these 3 lessons have carried through and positively impacted me as a sales professional and leader! If you liked this article, please share, like, and comment below!

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Marcus Chan is an award-winning results and people-driven executive sales leader. Over the last decade, Marcus has been promoted 10X in 10 years and has been ranked in the top percentile of every company and every role he has been in. He is passionate about helping others reach their maximum potential. You can follow him on Instagram here for daily motivation! Please re-share this article if you found value in it.