Pursley Pep Talks: The Pack Mentality

Pursley Pep Talks are a collection of coaching perspectives written by Alabama head swimming coach Dennis Pursley. This is the 22nd installment of a series that will be rolled out throughout the coming months.

The Pack Mentality

The sport of swimming has evolved in many different ways over the decades. One of the most noticeable changes in the daily training environment has been a gradual shift from a group approach to training to more of an individual approach. In many cases, the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other. Since both approaches offer obvious benefits, it seems to me that a combination of both would produce the best results.

The benefits of an individual approach to training are obvious. A program designed to address the individual needs and unique physiology of each swimmer certainly makes sense. However, mental toughness and competitive instincts are also important to success in any sport. Just as technical race skills are developed through constant repetition in training, so, too, are competitive instincts. The group approach to training can more effectively facilitate the development of these attributes.

I have been fortunate more than once in my career to have the opportunity to coach a large group of highly competitive swimmers, both at the developmental and world-class level of our sport. On these occasions, the aggressive pack mentality that evolved in these groups served to enhance race toughness and to push each individual in the group to levels of performance beyond what they would have achieved on their own. It should be no surprise that a competitive environment will bring the best out of a competitive swimmer!

This same pack mentality can enhance the performance of each individual on the team in major competition. Athletes will be motivated by—and feed off of—the successes of one another. The desire to compete and to respond aggressively to the challenge of competition becomes contagious. It is this group dynamic that produces the greatest team performances in any sport.

Although the individual approach to training has much to offer and is here to stay, it does not have to be used exclusively. There is a time and a place for everything. The individual approach integrated with the group approach will give us the best of both worlds: physiologically-enhanced preparation combined with stronger competitive instincts and mental toughness. An emphasis on both will better ensure that an athlete will step up rather than give up when confronted with a competitive challenge.

About Dennis Pursley

After getting his start as a volunteer coach on Don Gambril’s first Alabama staff, current Alabama head coach Dennis Pursley has gone on to one of the most extraordinary careers in the sport of swimming, a career that led him to be named one of the 25 most influential people in the history of USA Swimming in 2003.

Pursley has helmed coaching staffs throughout the world, including stops as the first head coach of the Australian Institute of Sport, the inaugural director of the United States National Team and most recently the head coach of Great Britain’s 2012 Olympic squad. Pursley returned to the deck in 2003 as the head coach of the Brophy East Swim Team in Phoenix Ariz., before becoming the head coach of British Swimming in 2008.

Pursley and his wife Mary Jo have five children, Lisa, Brian, David, Steven and J.J. Lisa and David have joined him on the Alabama staff.

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