Comox Valley Training and then Toronto bound

It has been a beauty last few months here in the Valley but I am starting to get cabin fever as beach volleyball season draws near. It was excellent to spend time back home, training with friends and being a part of the local community once again. Thanks to those who inspired me and pushed me forward during this wonderful time at home.

Thanks to Marc St.Jules and his Stabilizer training methods as well as his Athletes United movement. For those of you who know him, Marc is an incredibly dialled in trainer with thousands of hours of "under the bar" experience as well as cutting edge perspectives and methods that tweak everything during the workout. His neuromuscular pathway driven exercises are based on stability training and are definitely something to be experienced! Thanks for letting me use your custom gym and I look forward to coming back and propelling the next generation whenever I can. Also, it was great to be the cover model for the Stability Xboard poster as Marc is making a push to expose this innovative product to Whistler/Blackcomb during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Secondly a great thanks goes out to Jonny Mac at the Comox Valley Boxing Club. He let me roll into his character club to train any time and he taught me a great deal in the ring. It was such a blast that I will be looking to train with retired beach volleyball super stud Mark "The Funk" Roberts in Toronto at TKMT.  Jonny progressed me through about 12 lessons in about 4 days and it was a great workout.

I truly believe martial arts to be a great training method for any sport (provided you aren't getting brutally beat down!) for a few reasons:

1) Martial arts teaches you to be balanced, focused and relaxed during battle. This is especially tough to do when you are taking a beating but when you are able to control your breathing during activity, you control your recovery rate as well as the tension in your body. Recovery time and minimizing tension increases performance any day of the week and will allow you to play harder for longer!

2) It also teaches you to be spontaneous as you adjust to different situations. Situations are rarely the same (like any sport) and it creates a constant awareness to assess, adapt and counter on the fly. Once I got used to gloves coming at my face, I got the hang of seeing things happen and adjusting to the situation spontaneously. Much like my sport of beach volleyball where my offence is generally a last second adaptation to a weakness in my opponents defence, boxing forces the athlete to be constantly monitoring the opponent while staying neutral to utilize any weakness or opening. I am really excited to build on this concept and improve my "on the fly" thinking, reaction and action! Thanks Jonny for the beats and hopefully I can drop a few shots to your melon when I am around next time!!

Lastly I want to express my deep love for the Comox Valley and all it has to offer. I had some great runs, workouts, road trips, beach walks and some beauty snowboard runs on Mt.Washington our sizeable backyard hill. The locals are wonderful and it was a pleasure to entrench myself deeper into the community that has offered me so much throughout my life!!!

I will be writing more frequently as training starts in Toronto on Tuesday; can't wait to get my feet dirty!! The challenge is on for who will be the best in Canada and I am ready to do whatever it takes.

You can look forward to new game videos as well as workout and skill development videos which I will be producing. I aspire to feature other national team athletes and our new National team head coach so you can look forward to meeting your 2012 Olympic team!

Later ya'll,

Martin

Recent life

It has been over three months since my last post. Many things have changed in my life and I honestly don't know where to start. I can't say I even finished my National championships post cause I was so devastated by our semi-final loss. We wound up coming back from a momentary rut and prevailed in the bronze medal match but it was still an anticlimactic way to end the season; I was sure gold was on the horizon.

I flew home and chilled for a few weeks on the island and then I flew to Mexico to compete in 3 NORCECA (central and north american league) events. I played with Ahren Cadieux in one and then I returned to playing with Ray Sewell which was an absolute blast. Ahren and I came 5th and Ray and I placed 4th (due to a rock/paper/scissors forfeit to a fellow Canadian team due to heat) and a well deserved Bronze medal in Puerto Vallarta. The tour itself was a little bush league and the weather was smoking hot so we had our struggles but I personally came out of that circuit playing the strongest volleyball I have ever played. I hurt my shoulder in one of the final events but other than that I ended my season with perfect health.

Since those final events Canada has rearranged our National team program and only carded 6 athletes. I am now the second oldest carded athlete on Team Canada which is a drastic change from before as there were quite a few older and more experienced athletes. The new vision of the program consists of training younger athletes for a longer term developmental program. We have yet to see how this will work because the program hasn't quite started.

I will be moving to Toronto early January 2010 to start my training program with the National team guys and our new national team coach Lennard Krapp. I am looking forward to this time but must say I will miss my regular routine of pre-season training in Rio de Janeiro with my coach and friends there.

Prior to my flight out to Toronto I will be staying with my family in the Comox Valley helping them out around the house, hopefully snowboarding on Mt.Washington in our back yard and visiting friends I haven't seen in ages.