Psychological | Mediterra Swim & Run

Surviving or Comfortable or Competitive? Part 4

by Coach Mat | 2 Mar, 2019

Continued from Part 3. Training In Cycles And, over the course of a few weeks, your fatigue accumulates. This is something you should expect and actually plan for. Through a process known as periodization, with cycles lasting several weeks, and changing emphasis at...

The Limitations Of Your Watch

by Coach Mat | 19 Jan, 2019

In order to plan the next cycle of practices for a swimmer working towards a particular performance goal, I need to see various kinds of data from both their objective measurements and their subjective measurements. We are, after all, training the whole person to...

Surviving or Comfortable or Competitive? Part 1

by Coach Mat | 5 Jan, 2019

I am often approached by swimmers thinking about preparing to swim a much longer distance than they have done before – like 3.8K (Ironman tri), 5K, 10K or 20K, or even 40K (for the English Channel). I receive this question in various forms, and it essentially...

Removing Fear And Tension From Your Experience In Water

by Coach Mat | 10 Nov, 2018

The Polyvagal Theory developed by Stephen Porges, describes the way the internal body states influences the brain and perception of the environment, and the environment (especially the social environment) influences internal body states. In my own words, there are...

Stroke Training As Meditation

by Coach Mat | 3 Nov, 2018

Finding Acceleration Again The other day I was helping one of my students, whose challenging life circumstances in the last few months had regretfully kept him away from the pool too much. He was in need of tune up on some skills that were progressing previously, but...

One Stroke Technique For Everyone? Part 2

by Coach Mat | 20 Oct, 2018

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...