The new star of French swimming could have ended his career quickly.
Being a top athlete is a passion, but it also involves many sacrifices on a daily basis. Whatever the discipline, there are of course advantages, but above all there are constraints, particularly on the pace of life, marked by a specific diet, daily training, weight training sessions, etc.
In swimming, this constraint is very high. Even if we like contact with the water, swimming lengths, including in winter when it is cold, is not always easy and the constant search for performance can be destructive for many swimmers.
For several years, the list of athletes who go into depression, who want to stop everything, has continued to grow. We remember Laure Manaudou at the time who decided to stop everything overnight. We also remember her brother who decided to take a break to start handball. But we also remember international stars like the British Adam Peaty, breaststroke legend, who had to take a break because of his mental fragility, Caeleb Dressel, Kristof Milak or Michael Phelps, who explained that he was close to suicide on many occasions.
This mental load must therefore be understood by swimmers and our French star, Léon Marchand, huge favorite during the Paris 2024 Olympics, has done a lot of work on this aspect after a complicated period where he was burned out and close to giving up everything. But should we compare him to others? No for his mental trainer. “Léon works on himself, he takes ownership of the training. He is not going to blindly follow the instructions. He wants to be the master of his destiny.”
However, in 2020/2021, “Léon was burned out,” Thomas Sammut explained at the time. “He contacted me, he was at an impasse, on the verge of quitting. He may have put pressure on himself to achieve results. At some point, it’s extremely tiring mentally. Performance must revolve around the individual, according to their personality.”
To get rid of this depression, Léon Marchand now devotes 50% of his working time to his mental load, but not only that. Unlike Michael Phelps, the swimmer spends time doing other things and is not in the pools 24/7. “Michael [Phelps]when he was swimming with Bob [Bowman]he did nothing but that. A bit like what we did during a training camp in Colorado in May: eat, sleep, recover, all the time. This year, I had a good balance between my friends that I saw every day, my classes and training,” explained Léon Marchand in 2023.
In order to break his routine and avoid getting stuck in an oppressive daily routine, Léon Marchand also made several changes before starting his races. “I liked to always play the same music by the pool, I had to have the green cap, not the white one, lots of things like that,” smiles Léon Marchand today. “Now, there’s nothing. It’s simpler. It’s just swimming, you don’t have to worry about all that.” And for the moment, this approach is paying off!