The Power of Tiny Gains

 

The first full day of rain paused the competition at the Skanes Magic Hotel & Resort in Monastir, Tunisia. From the first light to sundown, whipping winds and raindrops off the Mediterranean consumed the hotel and surrounding tennis courts. Without many options for indoor activities, nearly all the players faced an ambiguous day-off from practice…

After aggressively competing with my roommates in the lobby in games of UNO for an hour after lunch, I couldn’t bear to spend another minute in our hotel room. We scoped-out the hotel gym and two out of three of us made the decision to go for a workout. Within 15 minutes, the gym went from moderately full to packed. I was still getting physically warm on the rower as my options for exercises declined. I did my best to squeeze in my workout in the corner of the gym, AirPods on max volume, drowning out the gym clatter. I felt as if I was the only one in the gym, locked-in to my strength training routine. I was about to leave the gym following up my workout with 3k on the treadmill in 20 minutes, when I opened the doors to a monsoon of heavy rain and wind bashing the stone tile. I thought of how it reminded me of Florida summer rains, except a bit colder, giving me an idea…

I ran over to the locker room and threw my stuff on the ground and beelined to the pool. I jumped into the freezing pool water for recovery. I hadn’t a clue how cold it would actually be, with the air temperature being around 60 degrees. The water felt a bit cooler than that, perfect for a cold tub. I walked down and back the entire length of the pool twice fully submerged up to my neck. The wet and rainy walk back to my room was accompanied by the euphoric rush of blood back to your muscles following a cold tub.

I now not only felt like the only one in the gym, but I was also the only one crazy enough to go for a cold tub in a rainstorm in the dead of the Tunisian winter. Little moments like these are the mental separators I gain confidence from off-court. Typical confidence boosts come from winning matches and good practice sessions on court, but these little wins add up. As mentioned in Atomic Habits by James Clear, getting 1% better each day compounds to 38% improvement annually. The physical and mental daily habits I establish throughout the week in Tunisia will either help or harm my success on match day, it’s up to me to ensure they positively impact my performance.