Motor Learning | Mediterra Swim & Run

How Do You Know You’ve Made An Improvement?

by Coach Mat | 4 Jun, 2023

How do you know you’ve made an improvement from one practice session to another? By measuring failure, or rather, by measuring its reduction from one session to the next. If you repeat a challenging practice set and have measured what, when, where, and how and...

Have Extra Time? Improve Your Awareness and Attention

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...

How Much Does It Cost To Reach Your Goal?

by Coach Mat | 29 Feb, 2020

How much does it cost to reach your goal? I have a question for you… when you took up learning to swim, or learning to swim in a better way, did you have a clear goal of what you wanted to achieve? And, how much time did you think you’d need to invest to...

Take Your Training Plan To A Higher Level

by Coach Mat | 1 Feb, 2020

Just the other day one of my swimmers was describing his weekly training plan in order to get my input on it. His goal is to build up his capabilities over the next few months in order to prepare for his first Alcatraz Triathlon with a 1.5 mile swim (2.4 km), and a...

Should You Be An Augmented Swimmer? Part 2

by Coach Mat | 30 Nov, 2019

This continues from Should You Be An Augmented Swimmer? Part 1… New technology will certainly bring augmented capabilities to humans, but we risk losing the innate capabilities of our nervous system that could atrophy from disuse. I wonder if in certain skilled...

Should You Be An Augmented Swimmer? Part 1

by Coach Mat | 23 Nov, 2019

Some years ago I was approached by a engineer/swimmer who was developing a clever device that you could strap to a swimmer’s waist and would act like an airplane’s gyroscope and black box, recording the movements of the vessel: changes in velocity, changes...