First Lesson Instructions

What you need to know to arrive and get started in your first lesson experience.

Arrival

Please aim to arrive at your first lesson 20 minutes early. This will give you time to check in at reception and then get dressed down for the lesson.

Arrival at Courthouse Club Fit in Salem

When you arrive just go to the front desk and let the person at the reception know you are there for your first time, and will be having a swim lesson with Coach Mat or Coach Jamee. If this is your first time with us at CCF they will set you up in the computer system, and will show you a standard waiver form to fill out on a screen, and that will be it. You’ve paid Mediterra already so there is no need to pay anything else to access the facility for our sessions.

After this first visit, each time you visit the club again for our lessons, please let the person at the reception desk know you are there to work with Coach Mat or Coach Jamee in the pool, and they will check you in on the computer.

Access To Facilities

For those who are members of the Courthouse Club Fitness, you already have access to the whole facility at any time outside our scheduled lessons.

For those who are not members of the facility, know that you are warmly welcomed by the management and staff as one of our students. Your payment to us for the lessons permits you to come into the facility around our scheduled lesson times. You may come a bit early and stay a bit later in the aquatic area of the facility if you like.

As part of your lesson, you are welcome to use the reception area, locker rooms and the aquatic section of the facility. They trust us and they trust the kind of students we attract.

If you find the facility convenient and appealing, we certainly encourage you to consider becoming a member.

What To Bring

Bring your swimsuit, goggles, a towel, and shower sandals. The air is cool from the changing room to the pool area so you may bring a robe or shirt if you prefer.

You may also bring a swim cap to contain your hair if you like, but you are not obligated to wear one. They are helpful to keep you slightly warmer and to keep long hair out of your face.

At Courthouse Club Fitness in Salem

These clubs have very nice, fully-equipped changing rooms. S River Road has lockers with built-in locks, while the others require a lock you must bring. They might have a lock you can borrow from the front desk, by handing over your ID.

At MJCC in Portland

This facility has lockers with built-in combo locks in the very nice, fully-equipped changing rooms. In these locker rooms, the lockers have built-in combination locks where you can set your own temporary 4-digit code. Instructions are posted on the walls.

Late Arrival and Cancellation

We have been fortunate that so far our students have been very respectful of our scheduled appointments, and communicate quickly and early if they will be late or they need to cancel. Because of this we do not feel the need to impose a penalty for cancelled lessons.

If you arrive late to a scheduled lesson we make no guarantee that we can make up the lost time, nor offer a discount for the shorter lesson.

We do ask that you try to anticipate any possible conflicts or obstacles to showing up for a scheduled lesson and notify us 12 hours in advance so we can adjust our schedule and make good use of the time in other ways.

We really appreciate your efforts to making this training relationship friend-like, and mutually considerate.

Work Load

The lessons may not be as physically demanding as one would expect, especially at the beginning. But the neural load will be more – your brain will be working hard to become more aware and learn new patterns – how to improve shape and move your body in new ways. The typical 60 minutes for each pool session will go fast and will leave your head quite full. We anticipate this.

For the lesson series, the whole point of having these lessons spread out over some weeks is to allow you to digest just part of the sequence of skills each week in your personal practice time between lessons.

For the compressed weekend workshop, we regard it as an introduction to the skills. You will then need to gradually, systematically digest and integrate in personal practice time over the weeks to come.

Planning ahead to include personal practice time between and after your lessons is essential to getting these skills to stick and be available to you later on when you want them available.

Online Training Support

For these live training situations we have set up the online Mediterra Swim Dojo to support you in your personal practice between and after your lessons. We are doing all we can to give you the understanding, guidance and encouragement to keep going in your training so you can get to the level of skill and confidence that you seek.

As part of your training experience you are set up with a membership in our Dojo for 3 months, with access to our large library of training resources, and access to a training course suitable to your immediate needs.

There will be a lot of new insight and information in each live lesson. To help with the potential overload, you may keep a waterproof notebook handy to take personal notes. However, you don’t need to worry about memorizing everything we do in the water. After your first lesson you will receive an email that will give your user name and password to access the Dojo where you will find an outline of the freestyle skills we cover, including list of skills, drills, and cues, with links to video examples of the drills.

Locations in Salem

Our lessons are hosted by Courthouse Fitness in Salem, Oregon, with 5 locations at West Salem, Battle Creek, Lancaster, South River Road and Keizer.

Check the event page and with your coach to confirm which Courthouse club your lessons will be held at.

In the locker rooms at Courthouse, you will find:

lockers – you may bring your own lock or borrow a lock (leave your license in exchange) at the front desk.
showers
sauna and steam room
blow dryer

Courthouse does NOT supply towels, except for members who pay an extra fee, so please bring your own. (But if you forget, and ask nicely at reception, they may let you borrow one!).