No Progress | Mediterra Swim & Run

When To Train With Others?

by Coach Mat | 2 Sep, 2017

My long time friend (since 5 years old!) and I were debating the merits of training with others. Our conversation was about running, but when I composed my summary of our thoughts I realized this would apply to swimming as well, in the case of training for a...

When Do You Need A Coach?

by Coach Mat | 30 Jul, 2017

Is it time to get some coach attention or can you squeeze out more performance on your own with the resources you have available already? Good question! I was a self-taught Total Immersion swimmer. For that matter, I was a self-taught swimmer well before I found TI....

Flow Requires Opportunities To Act

by Coach Mat | 22 Jul, 2017

This continues from Part 3 of our discussion of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s eight “characteristic dimensions of the flow experience” outlined in his book The Evolving Self. #2 – Opportunities For Action “The opportunities for acting...

Breathing Solutions Outside The Pool

by Coach Mat | 11 Jun, 2017

After a swimmer has invested the time to thoroughly work through fundamental swimming skills, often the swimmer encounters some obstacles to improvement that are better addressed by training he needs to do outside the pool. Some major areas for improvement that emerge...

The Magic Wand

by Coach Mat | 4 Jun, 2017

When they were younger, just starting to do bigger chores around the house, I used to tease my daughters that I was giving them a ‘magic wand’ that could make much of what they wished in life come true. What is the magic wand? Hard work. Needless to say,...

Achievement As A Tool

by Coach Mat | 28 May, 2017

There is this wide spectrum between “I want to perform better” and “I want to feel better” – a few swimmers seem to be on one extreme or the other, while the rest of us fall somewhere in the middle with a mixture of both. However, one of...