by Coach Mat | 19 Apr, 2020
For those who have extra time, if I could choose a third skill for you to build and strengthen I would choose awareness and attention. Awareness and attention increase in strength and skillfulness when they are applied to challenges and used frequently. Yet, people...
by Coach Mat | 29 Dec, 2019
Stopping Is Not Natural Can you imagine running 10 km (up to an hour for some folks) or even 5 km (up to a half hour) in a race or for fitness and doing it in a basketball court? And, rather than run loops around the perimeter of the court, imagine covering that...
by Coach Mat | 3 Aug, 2019
I both run and swim year round. In the last year or so I’ve put a lot more emphasis on running, and felt the corresponding motivation for that activity. Back in April, after a week off from illness, I irritated my achilles tendon on the first (allegedly...
by Coach Mat | 30 Mar, 2019
When do we need endurance? When we are going really hard? When we are going really fast? When we are going really far? There is great discomfort in any of these and that discomfort needs to be overcome to finish, Maybe we need endurance in all three, but a different...
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...
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...
