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Coaches Blog

Guest: Manuel Delgado Gaona, MD

PERFORMANCE COACHING AND MY COACHING PHILOSOPHY

Updated: Apr 21, 2022

This month I’m excited to meet and get to know new athletes who win our raffle for a free month of Performance Coaching. I enjoy building these new athlete-coach relationships and I hope they’ll continue long after their free month ends.


My goal here is to outline what each athlete can expect from me as a coach. I pride myself on offering a lot of patience, communication. and detailed knowledge of the human body from an athletic and medical perspective. I enjoy using this knowledge and passion to help athletes grow, have new experiences, and set and achieve a wide range of athletic and personal goals.


Over my years of coaching, I’ve developed a strong philosophy built on the value of efficiency. My goal is to help each athlete I coach establish mechanical, physiologic, and mental efficiency.


Endurance sports are demanding, requiring athletes to perform at their mental, mechanic, and physiological limits. If just one of these fails, it can increase the risk of injury or organic diseases and reduce overall performance. A lack of mental efficiency and health can even lead to frustration, anxiety, and other symptoms of mental and emotional fatigue.


Efficiency helps both professional and age-group athletes to reach better performances and have more enjoyment and satisfaction in their sport.


Here are the top reasons to pursue mechanical, physiological, and mental efficiency in endurance sports and why I feel it’s so critical:


Mechanic efficiency helps athletes:

  • Avoid overuse injuries.

  • Improve the use of mechanical energy to increase speed and endurance.

  • Diminish environmental effects on your movement (like air for runners and cyclists and water for swimmers).

Physiological efficiency includes but is not limited to:

  • Increase the use of fats as an energy source.

  • Slow the increase, storage, and effects of waste metabolites, like lactic acid.

  • Increase the heart´s capacity to pump blood.

Mental efficiency:

  • Increase the overall mood and attitude toward training.

  • Keeps reachable goals and objectives.

  • Improves mindfulness and awareness of your body’s capacity and current condition (which helps prevent things like overtraining and lack of rest).

  • Enhances concentration and focus during training and competitions, which can improve overall performance.

When I begin working with a new athlete, I typically help them take a mental, physiological, and mechanical inventory to create a baseline. From there, we can set goals and measure progress and growth along the way.


I am always very excited to meet and get to know new athletes--not just as an athlete but as a person with unique dreams and goals. I’m always honored to get to be a part of their journey toward accomplishing those athletic goals.

 

Manuel Delgado Gaona is a USAT Level II and Youth & Junior Coach, FMTri Level II Certified Coach, an ACSM Exercise Physiologist, and a Physician specializing in Anatomic Pathology. His coaching philosophy is based on exercise efficiency. Coach Manuel can be reached at manuel@teammpi.com.

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