The 80/20 Mind-Body Split in Open Water Swimming

From the mid-1990s until her record for the most English Channel crossings was broken in 2021 (by Australian Chloë McCardle), Alison Streeter, MBE, was hailed as the Queen of the English Channel. Over the course of her illustrious career from the early 1980s through the early 2000s, Streeter, an International Swimming Hall of Fame inductee, swam the Channel 43 times and dominated the sport of marathon swimming.

Clearly, Streeter knew as well as any swimmer what it takes to complete a big open water swim, and she’s long been quoted as saying “channel swimming is 80% mental, 20% the rest.”

But what does that mean, exactly, and how can open water swimmers leverage that mindset to achieve big goals?

Physical vs. Mental Prep

Naturally, training for a big open water swim like a solo English Channel crossing is going to require a big commitment of time to swim. Whether in the pool, lake, ocean, or a combination of many locations, you’re going to have to be spending lots and lots and lots of time just plain freestyle swimming to get your body—in particular your shoulders—ready to withstand the many miles to come.

But the physical preparation for a grueling swim isn’t the only factor you need to consider; indeed, you need to get your mind ready for the adventure and the potential hardships you’ll face along the way as well. This is where Streeter’s simple formula comes into play—the 20% means the physical and logistical preparation. That means your yardage and training plan, your sleep and nutrition, even sorting out your transportation and lodging at the swim site and figuring out how to stay limber while waiting for your chance to swim. A lot goes into swimming the Channel, and all those elements must fall into place for the swim to even start.

But the much bigger aspect of whether you’ll be successful in the Channel comes down to “getting your head right.”

Getting your head right can mean different things to different people. For some, it’s finding the joy of swimming so you can just keep going no matter what Mother Nature and your crew throw at you. For others, it’s setting and committing to a goal bigger than yourself so that when the going gets tough, you have a deeper reserve of motivation to power through.

Still others focus on making sure their home and work lives are in balance so that they can pursue their swimming dreams; a happy swimmer is a strong and fast swimmer, and taking care of your whole person is an important piece of making sure you’ll be ready when your pilot says go.

Training that giant muscle between your ears—your brain—also means getting comfortable with being uncomfortable in a test-your-limits sense. Long-distance open water swims often transpire in cold water, and if you’re following traditional rules, no wetsuits are allowed. Learning how your body responds to cold stimulus and learning how to manage that fine line between top performance and hypothermia requires a lot of time and energy.

Similarly, coping with changeable and sometimes very difficult conditions, such as wind, waves, and tidal fluctuations, can be very challenging for some swimmers, especially those who are used to the controlled environment of a swimming pool. There is no black line in open water, and that lack of control can be a challenging experience.

For other swimmers, facing down fears of marine life can be the biggest mental challenge. When you enter open water, your senses of sight, hearing, and smell are all blunted, and that means it’s harder to detect a threat approaching. For many people, that loss of orientation can be upsetting enough to set their mental balance off kilter. Not being able to see much beyond your hands can make some swimmers especially skittish.

Still other swimmers need to get more comfortable with facing down their own inner demons of doubt. These are the voices in your head that question your abilities and hypercriticize any mistake. For many swimmers, gaining hegemony over these challenges proves to be both the biggest challenge and the greatest reward of long-distance open water swimming; once you figure out how to quell the demons’ voices in the water, you’ll have a fighting chance getting them to shut up on land in other situations, too.

Clearly, there’s a lot happening in that 80% of swim training that transpires inside your head and heart. And as with physical training, how you train your mind will play out on the day you get the green light to perform. In other words, during training, you need to seek out conditions that make you anxious or uncomfortable—conditions that cause your inner demons to stand up and start chattering.

In addition to logging lots and lots of yards in the pool, you need to find cold water, swim in lousy conditions, and train your feed plan so that you know how to react when something goes wrong. You need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When going out into challenging conditions becomes just another day at the office, you’re well on your way to open water success.

Alison Streeter’s mother, the inimitable Freda Streeter, who ran an informal training camp in Dover for aspiring channel swimmers for several decades, also had several memorable quotes, and one of them fits well here. She regularly told swimmers that when it came to preparing for the conditions they would face on the day of their swim “hope for the best, but train for the worst.”

Training your brain is less visible work than the physical effort you outlay to swim many miles, but the dividends this work can pay often echoes throughout the rest of your life. Do the work, and you’ll be ready to ace your next big swim.