Tag Archive: Figure skating

Dec 28

A year in review 2012

I’ve not ever felt a need to do this before, to have a year in review. It is a new experience for me. I want to look back at 2012 with clarity and be able to move forward in new ways. So taking my own advice, I am going back over the successes and of course challenges of the past year. You can cut to the chase by going to the last paragraph if you like.

Starting with the Athletes and their sports

A year in review with DeAndre Yedlin and Mike Margolies

Sounders FC U23 Player DeAndre Yedlin with Mike Margolies

I worked with an amazing group of athletes this year including those in the following sports: Golf, football, gymnastics, hockey, equestrians, soccer, tennis, swimming, softball, baseball, track, diving, roller derby, basketball, triathlon, cycling, fencing, water skiing, fitness, power lifting and lacrosse.

Competitor’s ages ranged from 12 to 70+. Competitive levels were club, high school, college and professional. Seven high school athletes earned scholarships or were accepted to their first choice college as an athlete (Ivy League = no athletic scholarships). One college walk-on earned her full scholarship. Most the athletes, but not all, were starters on their respective teams. In the end all were starting most of their games. I worked with a few teams as well at the club and minor league levels. All in all it was a very good year for the clients I worked with. If I were to put it in baseball terms, I would say that we batted around .900 Read the rest of the post by choosing more…. Read the rest of this entry »

Jul 28

Breathe to Relieve Stress and Perform Better as Well

by Mike Margolies

I just ran across a blog reviewing Breathe Strong, Perform Better by Alison McConnell. I’ve copied it here. As you can see it adds even more importance to why you should learn to breath properly. I’ve been teaching breathing exercises for three decades to help people learn to relax. Here is evidence that for athletes the techniques also helps performance.

When you’re training you expect to work your muscles, your heart and lungs, even your mind. But breathing? That doesn’t seem to be one area that requires a whole lot of extra thought.

Not so fast, says Alison McConnell, a professor of applied physiology at Brunel University, in London. “Everyone thinks they know how to breathe during exercise, but unfortunately most people don’t do it very well,” says McConnell, who has extensively studied breathing muscle training and is the author of a new book, Breathe Strong, Perform Better.

Most of the focus in our breath is on exhaling, pushing the air out of the lungs. But actually it’s the inhalation part—filling the lungs with oxygen—that plays the biggest role in both health and performance. “The majority of the work you do comes with breathing in,” explains McConnell, who has worked with Olympic and world champions in a variety of sports. “When you strengthen those muscles, exercise starts to feel easier.” Research shows that training the inspiratory muscles (the ones involved in inhalation, which includes the diaphragm, the deep abdominals, the muscles around the rib cage, and the pelvic muscles), can have a dramatic effect on performance, boosting speed endurance among sprinters by as much as 16% and helping world-class cyclists improve time-trial results by as much as 5%. It’s also been found to reduce stress and anxiety and help those with heart and lung diseases breathe easier, as well as lower high blood pressure.

Jun 16

Memory is a Funny Thing

by Mike Margolies

Memory is a funny thing. I am sure we were all great athletes, once upon a time. For some of us it is remembrances from high school or college. I’ve met quite a few people that when I listen to their stories, I am convinced they are referencing some major accomplishment when they were in elementary school.

We remember things as we want to remember them. I had a very odd experience today. It is a shared memory experience in fact with my wife. Perhaps her memory of the incident is influenced by having heard me tell the story so often that it is now part of our collective memory. This may be similar to the way many people remember their early childhood back to a time that they could not possibly remember an incident, some time before they were even born. Some family occasions that have been passed down are now part of their remembrances.

The story I am telling about myself concerns an athlete I once worked with. She was an elite athlete and I was helping her prepare for the national and world championships in her sport. I worked with her for over a year. I was with her at the National Championships, where she placed 3^rd. Here’s where it gets sketchy. I was invited first by the competitor, then by her mother and finally her sponsor to be with her at the World Championships. They wanted me there to support her. I had two reasons for declining the invitation. I should mention that it would have been financially beneficial for me to support her there. It would have also been great for my reputation working with elite athletes. What happened next? Read the rest of this entry »

Jan 24

Working with Athletes

by Mike Margolies

A quick tale to try to tie together what you have already seen. Back in the beginning, when I started working with Marv Clein as his assistant and graduate student I was introduced to a few athletes that were working with him at the time. One was a local high school track athlete and the other to my surprise was a professional tennis player. It started the conversation between us about what it is I wanted to do with my life. I told him I wanted to be a soccer or football coach. I had told him that there had to be a better way to train athletes. He asked me what I meant. I said that I had learned about relaxation and imagery techniques and I thought something like hypnosis held potential. I hadn’t really know much about these things. I had learned about relaxation in a motor learning class and had explored the possibilities. I’ll tell that story next time as I like it very much. He said he couldn’t help with the hypnosis (Marv did not elaborate, he never did when he didn’t want to), but he would let me watch him with an athlete with something he termed systematic desensitization process. Today of course I would argue that he was using a multiple form of guided imagery, hypnosis, SDP, CBT, NLP. I’m good with that, as Marv taught me to be very eclectic in my understanding of Sport Psychology. Find what will help an athlete and do that NOW. While we were never in a hurry, there was always a sense of urgency for the life of an athlete with regard to their athletic career is a short time line.

The next day after classes, Marv said let’s go for a ride and tossed me the keys to his Fiat Spider convertible. South he said. I was like a week in Denver, but I knew south. We headed to Colorado Springs to work with a figure skater. Marv had worked with several Olympic skaters in the past and this young woman had been one of them. We met with her and her choreographer and discussed training, coaching and figure skating politics. Marv was at home with everyone I saw him with and I knew I should be emulating him. The technique he used with her was Progressive Muscle Relaxation and as he said, SDP. It was really more of a coping rehearsal. He would have her visualize her performance to music and recover from faults. He spent perhaps 30 minutes with her and then the three of us discussed what she saw, felt and thought. It was really fascinating, but what I found equal to that was the way Marv worked me into the conversation. The skater, I don’t believe thought, I was some rookie out of California, but a trusted associate of Clein.

This experience taught me two things that have stayed with me all this time. Give help to those that seek you out and include them in the process. Mentoring might be one of the most rewarding ways of giving to even more athletes than just the ones you have time to work with during your time. It has to be what great coaches feel when their assistants go off to coach their own teams. I know this because while we were talking together, I caught a rare smile from Marv and at that point I think I knew the man who thought he wanted to be a great professional coach just changed professions.