Psychological | Mediterra Swim & Run

Thinking About Pain – Part 3

by Coach Mat | 13 Oct, 2018

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...

Thinking About Pain – Part 2

by Coach Mat | 22 Sep, 2018

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...

Thinking About Pain – Part 1

by Coach Mat | 15 Sep, 2018

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...

Spend One Kind Of Energy For Another

by Coach Mat | 15 Jul, 2018

Do you know what its like to spend energy of one kind in order to gain energy of another kind? That’s what it usually feels like for me when I go swim. It doesn’t have to be ‘easy’ swimming either. Most often I train quite strenuously,...

Do Only That Which Matters

by Coach Mat | 16 Jun, 2018

This is part of a series called The Happier Swimmer: how to set up your practice lifestyle so that you are making steady improvement toward your goal, making the body safer and stronger, and enjoying the process more than ever so you have the motivation to keep...

Engaging Practices Need Uncertainty

by Coach Mat | 19 May, 2018

In the Positive Psychology realm, ‘engagement’ (Seligman) is another term for ‘flow state’ (Csikszentmihaly) which I’ve written quite a lot about in a previous series of posts. An aspect of this engagement or flow is being absorbed in a...