by Coach Mat | 20 Oct, 2018 | Aging and Improvement, How To Train?, Injury, Injury Management, Injury Prevention, Martial Arts, Mastery Process, Motivation, Swimming Physics, Training Theory
This continues from Part 1 of One Stroke Technique For Everyone? Improve What Is Improvable Let’s consider some of the features that could be improved if an athlete were motivated to do so: soft-tissue and joint immobility low flexibility low strength poor...
by Coach Mat | 13 Oct, 2018 | Aging and Improvement, Discomfort, Injury, Injury Prevention, Internal Feedback, Pain, Physiology, Training Psychology
Continued from Part 2… Emotional Resilience There is a level of grit – technically known as ’emotional resilience’ – that is good for each of us to develop, when the pain can’t be reduced further. It is really tough to train for...
by Coach Mat | 6 Oct, 2018 | Competitive/Performance Training, Fitness Training, Kaizen (Continual Improvement), Martial Arts, Mastery Process, Physiology, Swimming Physics, Technique Theory, Training Theory
Let me give you a short answer to the question in the title of this post: Yes, there is a technical ideal we are aiming for, for every standard-equipped human swimmer. And, yet we recognize that there is so much variety in bodies that some compromise is often...
by Coach Mat | 29 Sep, 2018 | About Mediterra, Attention/Focus, Distance Training, Fitness Training, Food & Hydration, How To Train?, Open Water Training, Swim Camps
As I write this I am sitting on our ‘command boat’ in the sea next to the peninsula in Kaş, Turkey. 30 minutes ago our swimmers begin the first strokes of their challenge swim on this final training day of our open water distance camp. The weather is...
by Coach Mat | 22 Sep, 2018 | Discomfort, Injury Prevention, Internal Feedback, Pain, Physiology, Recommended Reading, Stress
This discussion is continued from Part 1… The Aging Dilemma For those chasing medals and records and recognition – a reward now – it is acceptable, even required it seems, to take some risks with injury. The risks are much higher when there is a...
by Coach Mat | 15 Sep, 2018 | Discomfort, Injury Prevention, Internal Feedback, Pain, Physiology, Recommended Reading, Stress
What is pain? We all know what it is, but yet it’s a hard word to define both precisely and broadly enough to cover all the ways we experience it. There is good pain and bad pain. There is physical pain and mental pain and emotional pain. There is tiny annoying...
by Coach Mat | 8 Sep, 2018 | Balance Skills, Core Control, Drills For Skills, Sinking, Student Stories
We have a student working through our Pool Comfort lesson series. In this series we guide people through a gentle process of removing the anxiety and stress they’ve felt in the water, which has previously hindered them from making progress in swim lessons, or...
by Coach Mat | 2 Sep, 2018 | Butterfly, Competitive/Performance Training, How To Train?, Lessons From Elites, Mastery Process, Plateau (No Progress), Speed, Speed and Pace, Strength Training, Student Stories, Too Slow, Training Theory
Even if you do not practice the butterfly stroke, you may appreciate this approach to solving the not-getting-any-faster problem… Coach Jamee and I have been working with a mother and three kids (10, 12 and 16) on a swim team who came to us to work on freestyle...
by Coach Mat | 25 Aug, 2018 | About Coach Mat, Nutrition, Nutrition, Poor Nutrition, Weight Management
Continued from Part 1… Why Bother Emphasizing Vegetables So Much? In this post I am not urging you to become a vegan or a vegetarian. I am simply advocating that you eat A LOT MORE vegetables than you are. If you are anywhere close to average, you are not coming...
by Coach Mat | 19 Aug, 2018 | About Coach Mat, Nutrition, Nutrition, Poor Nutrition, Recommended Reading, Weight Management
Need a reason to eat more vegetables? How about improving recovery after hard athletic efforts? You may look up these Foods to Improve Athletic Performance & Recovery. on NutritionFacts.org. I’ve been running a lot longer distances this season. With two...
