TiP coaching: a quote from Melanie Schembri Waite
After last week’s quote from the super-fast Chinese paddler Yu Zhou, about our stroke analytics, we want to share with you a different story today. The story about coaching a different kind of athlete.
Melanie holds dual Maltese/Australian nationality, and after being a professional violinist and amateur athlete in various sports for most of her life, she chose to have a rest from music and spend some time to learn to paddle fast in a sprint boat. Last year she has visited us for a 1-week coaching clinic, then she has used our online coaching program for one year…until deciding to sell her house in Malta and move to Slovenia to train in our paddling Paradise.
She is now a member of a local canoe club and plans to live and train with us on lake Bled. It might be too late for her to make it to the very top of the sport, but she is definitely old and experienced enough to know that happiness is almost entirely about the journey and not the destination. If this is not a story about following your passion and finding ways to do so..then what is?
“Starting off with a week of one-on-one coaching in Slovenia (aka paradise), followed by training remotely with them over the past year has been a fantastic learning experience that has seen an increase in my maximum speed of almost 30%, as well as improvements in my aerobic speed, DPS, and max stroke rate.The physical distance between my home in Malta, and Slovenia was easily bridged through the use of an online training management platform, daily analysis of session data, modifications to the training plan to accommodate any unexpected issues, and a long weekly Skype call to review the week’s training in detail and talk through upcoming plans.
TIP’s coaching team commitment to improving paddling technique, love of the sport, and sense of humor and the ability to keep things in perspective, were extremely helpful in keeping me motivated and training hard throughout the year!
