Your Training Progression

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How to get the most out of your local training experience with Mediterra

Skills You Can Progress Through

What Skills Should You Work On First?
The most important prerequisite is an open mind to a (possibly) new way of paying attention, and a new way of training your body to master a complex movement art. Through this training you will develop an improved relationship with your body and with the water.

The categories below are one way of organizing swimmer needs. If you have questions about where you fit, please contact us to help you identify your highest priority needs and a training path suitable for those.

Our private training opportunities are suitable for those who are:

Fearful

We are pleased to work one-on-one with anyone who feels strong anxiety or fear in the water, and confident that we can guide you into much greater peace and pleasure. We recommend this be in a one-on-one arrangement rather than a group workshop. At your own pace, you can work with our coach to acquire the underlying skills that establish your comfort and confidence. With those in place, you will have a much easier time progressing in the Levels Of Proficiency, or to enjoy a group-learning setting.

Ready To Learn Freestyle

We are ready to work with those who cannot swim across the pool, and those who can swim one length of the pool in any stroke style, any speed. You do not need to have prior experience with our methods. We will teach those to you!

And, there are those who may be able to swim with some form of crawl stroke, but you would like to learn how to do it better – faster, more efficiently, with less stress. We will show you how.

Please review the Levels Of Proficiency page to see where you may begin your training.

Ready For Advanced Training

We can take you as far as you want to go in performance, sprinting in the pool or long distance in open water, or just freedom to swim when and where you please.

Regardless of previous accomplishments and capabilities in swimming, all swimmers who are new to our neurologically sensitive methodology are encouraged to experience the Level 1 training to get familiar with the fundamental drills, focal points, concepts and principles. All advanced training is dependent upon this foundation of understanding.

Ready To Learn Different Strokes

The same teaching method and principles apply to all four standard strokes – crawl, backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke. We do recommend that you get acquainted with the method and principles by learning freestyle first, but we are pleased to teach you and train you in all four of these stroke styles.

Additional Resources

For every swimmer, we recommend the valuable resources found in Total Immersion.  You can purchase and study the TI Perpetual Motion Freestyle Drill Series (download $30 USD), or the new TI Ultra-Efficient Freestyle Video and Workbook Bundle (download $50 USD). Their material will help put you in a much better position to receive the benefits of a training session, and it will provide the perfect review for your practice afterward.

 

Preparing For Your Lessons

Preparing For Your Lessons
No doubt your desire to get live personal coaching attention from us is going to be very effective.

But it could be advantageous to study concepts and practice on your own before you invest in live coaching. We would like you to show up to your live event ready to absorb more of what we will teach because you have some understanding of methods already in place.

If you would like to view a mindful technique and approach, you may purchase, download, study, and practice with either Total Immersion’s Ultra-Efficient Freestyle or the Perpetual Motion Freestyle (our old favorite) video series.

By practicing on your own for some time using these other resources, you will start to get familiar with a neurologically sensitive approach to learning that we will use in our live training. Because these will already be familiar to you, your brain doesn’t have to get bogged down on that part. You will gain many new skills on your own, and more importantly, you will start to see what specific areas you are having problems or uncertainty about – this will get you ready to know what you need to emphasize during your live training experience. You can better filter the new information you will receive.

Working With Another Coach

Working With Another Coach
One potential conflict to your progress is if you are continuing to work with another coach that has different views about how you should form the stroke, and about how you should train.

Some coaches focus much on fitness and may not offer much opinion on your technique or what you should focus on during fitness-oriented sets. Some of these coaches acknowledge they don’t know much about technique and may even gladly refer you to certain methods for technical guidance. But other coaches may have strong personal opinions about your technique and their advice may contradict what you’ve been taught in our framework.

What do you do?

You may take time to try both programs in order to compare effects and see what you think. Out of respect for either coach, you may need to commit yourself to one or the other for a period of time so that you give that program a sufficient opportunity to produce the promised benefits, or not.

One you’ve spent some time under our influence to gain a new level of proficiency, it is possible that you could then return to your former training setting. Perhaps your obvious improvement will be respected and you will be permitted, without hassle, to include your new technique and focus into the original practice culture.

If not, then you may consider joining us and help build a new tribe of swimmers who share these different values and unique path for swimming efficiently and training.

Live Training Sessions

Live Training Sessions

If it works for your schedule, then joining one of our scheduled group training events may be your next stop – a lesson series or weekend workshop, or a camp.

If you are one who has trauma or great fear associated with being in water, and you know this will hinder your ability to learn in a group setting, we highly recommend setting up a series of private lessons. This way we can go at your pace to gently reduce or remove the underlying fear and stress, and reprogram your brain a bit so you will be able to participate in regular group lessons more comfortably. We are patient, skilled, and pleased to work with people in this position.

If you prefer private lessons, then we have the opportunity to set up a convenient time for your lessons. We can move along the skill progression at your pace of learning, taking more time on those areas of most importance to your particular needs.

Online Training

Online Training
Our online training site – the Mediterra Dojo – is not designed to replace your live training experience but to supplement it. The online format is not adequate to teach people fundamental skills for the first time, but it is good at supporting your ongoing training in those skills once you have had a live coaching experience.
 
On occasion, we do accept students who have not had reasonable access to a local TI Coach or live training experience, and have instead invested much time self-coaching as far as possible with other resources. We interview each person to understand how prepared they are to continue with our online resources.
 
Our goal is to set you free, as much as you desire, to swim and train on your own. We don’t want you to remain dependent on a coach to tell you what to do – though we intend to keep studying and practicing and always have more things to teach you!
 
So, we have two main ways to participate in our online courses:
  1. Coach-guided course
  2. Self-guided course

We would like each new online student to go through one of our coach-guided courses at least once so that you have a chance to acquire some understanding of how advanced training principles work, how our practice patterns work, so that you can move on to self-guided training with one of our courses and feel comfortable with it. TI training is quite different than conventional training and it takes some time to get acquainted with the way we go about it. But if you earnestly work through two or three months of one of these training plans you will experience how it works so well, not just read about it.

Self Coaching

Self Coaching

Eventually, if you desire to do so, you would then feel competent and experienced enough to design your own series of practices that you could then confidently follow toward your goal. For this purpose we have created the Self-Coaching 101 course which would guide you in doing exactly that. 

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