GOATnotes
Just Add Water: My Swimming Life
By Katie Ledecky ∙ Simon & Schuster © 2024 ∙ 256 pages Welcome to GOATnotes. Where we read the best books written by athletes and coaches and provide our version of a hat trick. First, we have some fun alongside our GOAT with a random tidbit we found interesting or amusing from the book. Second, we feature an idea from the text to provide a nugget of mindset wisdom straight from the GOAT’s mouth. Third, is the mindset challenge where we triple dog dare you to apply the featured idea to your mindset, starting today. In this GOATnote we are covering the book Just Add Water: My Swimming Life, written by Katie Ledecky. Let’s get things started with an introduction to Katie Ledecky and summary of the book from the inside flap of the front and back cover:
Katie Ledecky is one of the best swimmers ever to compete. She has won more individual Olympic races than any female swimmer in history. A three-time Olympian, a seven-time gold medalist, a twenty-one-time world champion, eight-time NCAA Champion, and world record-holder in individual events, Ledecky shares what it takes to compete at the most elite level. Again and again, Ledecky has broken records: those of others and, increasingly, her own. She is both consistent and innovative—consistent at setting goals and shattering them, and innovative in the way she approaches her training. A true competitor, she sets her goals by choosing the ones that feel the scariest. But, crucially, she never sacrifices the joy of competition, even in the face of adversity. Her positive mental outlook and a great support system provide the springboard to her success. This candid and inspiring memoir charts Ledecky’s life in swimming. It details her start in Bethesda, Maryland, where she played sharks and minnows and first discovered the pleasure of the pool; her early foray into the Olympics at the tender age of fifteen where, as the youngest member of the American team, she stunned everyone by winning her first gold medal; her time balancing competition and her education at Stanford University; how she developed a champion’s mindset that has allowed her to persevere through so many meets, even under intense pressure; and how she has maintained her dominance in a sport where success depends on milliseconds. You learn how every element of her life—from the support of her family to the tutelage of her coaches, from her childhood spent in summer league swimming to the bright lights of Olympic pools in London, Rio, and Tokyo—set her up to become the champion she is. In the end, Ledecky’s story is about testing yourself against the difficult, and seeing who you become on the other side.
My Springsteen education started early, when my father would drive me to and from swim practice. Dad would be up at 3:45 a.m. to get me to the pool on time. I’d shuffle out in my sweats and coat, climb into our family minivan, and settle in for the half-hour ride to Georgetown Prep. Dad would use the time to extoll the many virtues of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
For my dad, Springsteen’s message actually cut deeper than the music. It was about community and bringing energy to one’s community. My dad wanted me to bring that approach to my own communities. Learn how to do things. Learn how to be a good classmate, be a good person. Participate. Be a good sport. Be of service and try to help other people if you can. This was the abiding ethos of our schooling and our family. Though Springsteen music is a bond I share with my dad, I relate to Springsteen in my own way. Metaphorically, I identify with Springsteen’s legendary endurance. He performs three- or four-hour shows. He breaks records for the length of his gigs, and he’s been doing it for years. There’s a correlation there for me in terms of how he pushes the limits of what he’s done before, giving it everything he has, every time. His work ethic is incredible. Watching him sweat and run around decade after decade is impressive. He provides a model of what a career can be if you never stop trying, if you never cease growing.
The whole night was incredible for us. Meeting somebody whose creative work you’ve admired for so long. Getting to have a conversation with them. Being able to express gratitude.
From the beginning I saw myself as my competition. My goal setting has never been “I’m going to beat so-and-so.” Or “I want to break so-and-so’s world record.” Instead, starting at about age seven, I set specific objectives for myself that I called “want times.” Scribbles on pieces of paper I kept by my bed or taped to my bathroom mirror. Like the 25 free: 15.99. The 25 back: 17.74. After a meet, I would pencil in my actual times to see how much faster I needed to be at the next race to make my goal. I didn’t really share that I was doing this exercise. It was my own private project: mapping out ambitious goals that seemed unreasonable at first, then, as I worked toward them, became more realistic. These were goals I set for me and me alone. I loved being in the water. I loved practice. When I wasn’t logging laps, I thought about the next time I could. Twenty years later, that pattern remains exactly the same. I challenge myself to improve, to grow, to push. What everyone else is up to in the pool is not my business. The more far-fetched an objective appears when I come up with it, the better. If, when I say my goals out loud to my coaches, they sound unfeasible—that’s when I know I’m on the right track. The impossible is what motivates me every day to go to the pool. It’s so satisfying, so epically rewarding, when you start chipping away at those idealistic goals. Nothing has made me more committed to my training than choosing a scary goal and taking the steps to go after it.
What Bruce came to understand about me is I don’t quit. Once I decided to learn a new skill, I’d practice off on the side, usually during my warm-down laps, until I could do it. Which resonated with his prevailing coaching mantra, “Just do the damn work.” Bruce totally got me. He knew my biggest internal motivator, deep down, was not Olympic gold or breaking world records. It was setting goals and going after them.
One of my favorite swimming mantras is “no shortcuts.” The “no shortcuts” part happens every day. All the hours of challenging work, alone in the pool, pushing myself. Those times I want to quit early or take a day off or give less than 100 percent, I tell myself, No shortcuts, and I press on, knowing the end goal won’t happen without the incremental gains only I can control. Basically, I refuse to cheat myself. I recognize I can do things in training that other people can’t. I can go longer distances than most people. I have an engine that rarely conks out. Training with the guys is part of what pushes me. As I told a reporter at a meet a few months before the Rio Olympics when I was questioned about racing against men, “I’m not afraid to beat them.” Which doesn’t mean I can beat them, necessarily. More that my psychological game doesn’t limit what my physical game can accomplish. The mind-body connection is essential to breaking through self-imposed barriers. I find that if you dream it, very often you can, in fact, do it. I experienced this phenomenon in a major way after London, when I started getting into harder training. A lot of my newfound physical prowess was mental. I had Andrew Gemmell (Coach Bruce’s son) swimming in the lane next to me. As I was grinding away to keep up with him, I would ask myself, Why not? Why not? became another mantra circling my brain. Keeping pace with the male swimmers? Why not? Shaving time off my records? Why not? Doing something significant every time I swim? Why not? I knew if I visualized those goals, if I created an expectation for myself that I would improve, the odds of my doing so rose considerably. I applied this mentality whether the swim was a practice, a stop on the domestic Pro Swim Series tour, or a World Championship. I trusted that every time I stepped onto the blocks, there was zero reason why I couldn’t make magic happen. Of course, you can’t break a record every swim. But having the mindset that you can do something memorable will produce results—if you’ve done the work. And I always do the work.
The biggest thing Bruce did was help me to think bigger. For Rio, we set lofty goals. Very specifically, the goals were to win the 200 free; to go 3:56 or faster in the 400 free; and to go 8:05 or faster in the 800 free. My world records at the time we set those goals in 2014 were 3:58 for the 400 free and 8:11 for the 800 free. We didn’t even have to say the goal was to win a gold medal in those events, because I knew and Bruce knew that there was no way anyone else in the world was shooting for those insane times. I mean, these targets were out there. Bruce liked to call them “big fat hairy goals.” We weren’t approaching my swimming like “Let’s shave off a teeny bit of time.” It was full-out, Back to the Future “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” pie-in-the-sky stuff. The objective was to take me to the next level in the sport and see what I could do. Back then my psychology was still at a place where I felt like I needed confirmation from my coaches that these outsize ambitions were possible. I don’t think I necessarily came up with 3:56 or 8:05. I backed into it, asking Bruce, “What do you think? What time is feasible? What do you believe I can do in Rio?” Bruce volunteered the range of numbers. Of course, I certainly could have pushed back, offered alternative times. But I wanted to hear what he thought was possible. When Bruce and I made our Rio plan, it shared echoes of the goal meeting I’d had with Yuri back in 2011, where I timidly admitted I wanted to make the Olympic team. I needed to hear Yuri say it first, just as I needed to hear Bruce offer far-out times before I could really allow myself to commit to those objectives. I kind of relied on him to put those numbers out there. To crystalize our intentions. Again, knowing that he believed I could meet those times gave me the confidence and ability to rise to that level. Once he did, I was all in. Let me back up and tell you about Beilke the pull buoy. The story begins in March 2011. I was swimming a Junior National meet in Orlando, my first at that level. I was fourteen years old and racing against eighteen-year-olds. Yuri was my coach at the time, and he’d brought a pull buoy that he’d retrieved from the lost and found at Georgetown Prep, where I trained at the time. Yuri told me to use the pull buoy to warm up. The pull buoy had somebody’s last name on it, “Beilke,” written across the foam. I had no idea who that was. No matter. I used it as Yuri instructed. When you train with pull buoys, you hold them between your upper legs, near your thighs. You squeeze them so you can’t kick. That hoists your legs a little higher in the water, so you can pull fast as you swim even without a kick. Distance swimmers really love pulling. It’s a thing. Occasionally, I put a band around my ankles, which really prevents kicking. The most important part of this aside: after warming up with this random buoy, I unexpectedly won the mile at the meet. After that Junior National victory, Beilke the pull buoy became a talisman for me. I took Beilke everywhere. Even to London. When Yuri left for California, I got custody of Beilke. In the fall of 2014, after I sat down with Bruce to set my Rio goals, I took a Sharpie and wrote on Beilke the numbers “565,” to indicate 3:56 or faster in the 400 free, and 8:05 or faster in the 800 free. The “56” referred to the final seconds of the 400 free, and the second “5” referred to the final seconds of the 800 free. I was entirely focused on those final seconds in each race. I didn’t have anything on there to signify the goal of winning the 200 free, but I had that in my head, too. Only Bruce and I knew what the figures meant. Every practice, I’d take out Beilke and stare at those numbers: 565. Every single day for at least two years, 565, 565, 565… I’m discreet about my goals. I don’t share them publicly. Not prior to a competition. Not even with my teammates or my family. Is it superstitious? Possibly. A lot of Olympians share their goals in advance. I don’t like to advertise my objectives, because then the media hypes them up and adds unnecessary pressure. Then, if you fall flat, well. That’s disappointing. And sometimes if you put time goals out there, it can motivate competitors or be used as locker-room bulletin board material. I learned discretion from that initial meeting I had with Yuri about making the Olympic team, where he told me, “Katie, you don’t have to share this with anyone else.” My “want times” when I was a kid were private, too. The more you’re in the public eye, the safer it is to keep your goals to yourself. Fast-forward to Rio, and I go 3:56 in the 400, I log 8:04 in the 800 free, and I win the 200 free. Exactly on the money. Of course, afterward I couldn’t resist posing the question to myself: What if I’d written 553 or something faster? Could I have gone 3:55 or 8:03? Hitting those exact numbers cemented for me the power of goal setting and visualizing your aims every day. Keeping them top of mind. Or, in this case, top of my pull buoy. After my last race in Rio, Andrew texted me, “I had guessed on the meaning of Beilke—we have a lot of time to think sometimes! But knew you liked keeping that to yourself.” Lol. With all those years and hours in the water, Beilke eventually grew old and gross. He had to be retired. I got a new pull buoy, Beilke II, and I rewrote the numbers on it. That Christmas after Rio, when I came home for the holidays, I gave the OG Beilke to Bruce as a Christmas gift. He was touched. Only a true, down-to-the-bones swim coach could be touched by a cracked, mildewy pull buoy.