Team Sharkbait

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Yesterday evening me, Sanne and Bertrand were forced into freediving between the recreational swimmers. And instead of just putting on our monofin and making a bloodbath between the swimmers with lost finger, toes, or worse, we decided to give ourselves a real old school freediving training once again.

My body was still hurt from the snowboarding of the day before, but men did the training feel good! I can’t help it to just like those intense freediving trainings where you really gasp for air, build up Co2 till headache, burn your legs until you can’t move them anymore. All in all it was great again.

The combination of Apnea crawls, back kicks, different strokes and breathing patterns and around 1200 meter covered underwater felt painful but good. Bertrand is new in our group, but he managed to do an excellent job! Finally someone who is not only able to complete such a training, but even enjoys it as much as Sanne and me. He even managed to do 4 laps of relaxed underwater swimming with his bi-fins in the end! Good stuff and motivational to watch him continue.

We have to do this a lot more!

Today I was looking back at the week and I noticed that somehow I didn’t do any freediving at all. The Tuesday swimming sessions with Sanne haven’t take place at all during the last week, this due to a planning conflict between this session and my son’s skateboarding lessons. And the Thursday training got canceled due to the fact that Sanne was very late at home after some hours in a traffic jam and me being totally depleted from energy because of a family trip to the swimming pool.

So, while the sun was shining hard this afternoon, I decided to fill up the blanks with some dry walks, while my son was riding in the skate park. After sitting on a bench for 2 minutes and breathing lightly I started with my first walk. Normal pace and just strolling along. After 45 seconds I got my first contraction and stopped. It felt terrible, as usual. I walked back to the bench and prepared again for 4 minutes. Started walking and at 43 seconds I got my first contraction and at 48 seconds I just couldn’t hold it anymore. This time it felt even worse and I almost pissed in my pants. Why am I doing this?

Back to the bench and forget about the dry walks! Just relax, enjoy the sun and watch my son skateboard. What a great day, I was thinking. After 20 minutes or so, and nearly falling asleep, I was thinking about why my dry walks always suck so much. I just don’t know why this is. I decided to do one more dry walk, but this time I would stop at the contraction and I wouldn’t promise myself that I would go on a little longer. Just walk until contraction and that’s it!

Instead of using the bicycle lane, I know decided to walk around the skatepark, and instead of looking down the whole time I decided to look at my son and what was happening in the busy skatepark. With the same speed I started the walk, just enjoying the sun, the people, everything. After a lap of walking I felt the contraction coming and stopped the timer. I just couldn’t believe it when I looked at my stopwatch. 1:35 minutes. What just happened?

In complete disbelief I walked back the exact route and the time was correct. My best dry walk time ever was 1:25 minutes from 6 years ago or so. And I remember that one as one of the most painful breath holds ever! And now… no pain, no contractions, nothing! And this time? I guess this was one of those famous ‘flow’ performances, the one that happens only every thousand times, the one where I ‘lost’ time. I just hope that it will happen to me again in the next session…

As we came back from the pool last week, I told Sanne that it was time for depth again. I’m missing it! But overhearing the story of some scuba divers who went out last weekend and hearing them talking about 6 degrees water, I convinced myself I could wait a little longer before putting on my wetsuit.

I was looking back on this site for some older posts and what we’ve been doing. It was fun to read back what we have done already and especially what we have accomplished. Great stuff and so glad that we started this blog already so many years back. While our Sharkbait blog is 99% filled with freediving stuff, it is not only freediving that keeps Sharkbait occupied. It has been more about the way we do sports in general and how we enjoy doing it. Besides freediving, we also enjoy swimming, running, cycling, track & field, freerunning (Parcours), trampoline jumping, skateboarding, inline skating and especially snowboarding as well.

So, our philosophy about how we experience sport is not just freediving specific, but can be layered upon many other sports. Maybe it is time to update and republish our Sharkbait philosophy post again and see where we are standing today. Good times!

Great session yesterday evening! It was the first freedive training after our snowboard vacation, so we were curious high the high altitude training would have helped us with our performances. At the moment Sanne and I are trying to accomplish two things in the pool.

The first is to increase monofin technique. We already came from far with this one. The first quarter of this year was really dedicated to using the monofin and I’m glad to say that both Sanne and I are finally using the monofin in such an easy way that turning back to bifins for dynamic performance dives would only be done of nostalgia.

The basic technique is there and there is even room to play around and experiment with this technique in the form of amplitude changes, body position adjustment, power and kick cycles. We both agree that for the moment our best strategy to go by is a kick-kick-kick-glide cycle in the pool we are using now. As this is a 25 meter pool we need 3 complete kkkg cycles for one length, which feels good compared to effort put in.

Now we need to start working on our weighting stuff. With the technique in the body, it is time to start fine tuning it and because a neck weight is even more uncomfortable for me then it is for Sanne, it is time to fix this this month.

The second part is increasing comfortable performance (CP) so that it reaches closer to our maximum distance (MX). Increasing performance is always a trick by itself, and we tried already a lot of methods in the past for this. Reading back all our training logs from the past years one thing comes to mind; speed! The one variable we didn’t use to much is the speed were we would go to the next step. We used weeks, number of repeated performances and other variables to determine if we could make the next step, and the one thing that comes to top that still could be tweaked is going slower with the steps we take.

We still maintain the idea that we should be able to perform near our limits all the time without any big warm-ups and strange techniques. So that together with a program of increasing our CP nearer to our MP, brings us the current schedule we are  doing.

My own comfort distance is a 40-45 meter dive. No contractions, still good technique and the ability to relax underwater at the end. As soon as I turn at 50, I tense my body but especially my mind. So my task is to make sure I can do 45 meter dives without any tension and yesterday was the first time I could accomplish this, which I’m very happy with. I’ve never been able to keep so relaxed at this distance, so a big break through for myself. As I’m not as experienced myself with the no warm-up routine as Sanne is, I do a total of 4 dives like this with around 2 minute rests between and that’s it for me. So at the moment my CP=45 while my MP=75, which brings my CP/MP ratio to 60%

Sanne is already much further with his no warm-up routine and his CP. Yesterday he did 95 meters and make it look so easy. He stopped underwater at 95, made a stop gesture with his arms and slowly surfaced. His MP=125 meters, so his CP/MP ratio is 0,76 which is already great. And we are just getting started. This one dive is everything Sanne does for performance training. He is already so tuned in this no warm-up routine that this is sufficient for him.

The rest of our training is dedicated to technique and helping other freedivers improve. So still a minimum time invested in performance training for maximum results and still a lot of time left to enjoy the water. I just love this method!

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Just back from todays freediving training in the pool. Felt great again. The first dynamic run still feels the hardest, but after that I can start enjoying again.

All the training is starting to really work. Today for the first time I did a kick-kick-kick-glide cycle and still felt relaxed. Normally I would tense up during the glide section of the cycle, but this time everything stayed easy and fine.

It takes me 3 cycles and 20 seconds for a 25 meter lap. So that is 9 kicks in total. If I do a continuous kick cycle I need 15-16 kicks to complete the lap. So this is a big win. Keep in mind that Sanne and I are making very small kicks as opposed to some other people who prefer it another way.

All in all pretty good training once again. Sanne is really getting in shape with his monofin and I’m wondering how soon he will be doing the same distance as he always did with his bi-fins, but this time without any stress.

Some other news that the Dutch visitors will probably like: from now on I’ll put a Dutch translation of my posts on the Shark Sports Sharkbait website. Different URL, different language, same content.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Yesterday was a good freediving session in the pool! Besides some good technique training it also reminded me of taking charge of your own destiny.

We share our pool with a scubadiving team and in the last weeks we claimed our own spot, putting a line in the water so that we would have a private lane. This evening another scubadiving team joined ours for a ‘deep’ training lesson in the 5 meter pool and they had hired half of the pool.

So when Sanne and I arrived, first thought was that we couldn’t do dynamic today. Way to many freedivers in the pool and no way they would let us take a lane for ourselves with so many divers. We decided to go for static and afterwards take the public pool.

I already was pissed about this and was thinking that I could be standing on the slope as we spoke. But then of a sudden, I told myself to shut up and just do it! I took the monofin went to the head of the diving team and told him we would only need a very small lane at the end of the pool. After some discussion we got approval and setup our training line!

Mission accomplished! Only thing left to do was a good training! Sanne suggested that I would start with my 4 times the distance we agreed on. And after a hard first successful distance, but with rotten technique and with some good coaching from Sanne, I managed to improve the other 3 performances in technique with each set. So pretty happy in the end! Another session like this and it is time to up the minimum set distance.

Sanne was next and we decided that he would do 3,5 laps, which is 87,50 meters. After 30 seconds of preparation he was underwater. Nice kick and glide! And very very nice to see the improvement of technique between now and two months ago. Really amazing accomplishment. He’s now looking relaxed underwater WITH a monofin on his foot.

Afterwards it was time for the not-so-newbies-anymore Kai and Levi (correct me if I’m spelling your names wrong!). After some very visual and mental training how the monofin technique must look like with some subtle hinting at some metaphores the two guys had no problem with their attempts with the monofin. It actually looked already better then their bi-fins attempt!

Mental note to self: Arrange that damn neck-weight!

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

There is a big difference at the moment between trying to execute a correct technique with a monofin and enjoying being underwater with a monofin. If I really focus on technique, relaxation is very far away and vice versa.

I was already struggling with this for the last past weeks. While doing a lot of technique training I noticed it was a while since I last felt in a flow state underwater. So yesterday it was time to make a small change.

From now on I divide my monofin training in technique and flow training. The first part will be dedicated in correct execution of style and technique including alignment (I really need a weight system, now!) and the second part will  be dedicated to relaxation and getting in a flow state of mind.

The tests yesterday showed that the two are still miles away and of course the goals is to bring technique and flow more together in the coming time. This will for sure not be done in a couple of weeks, but I’m sure that if we continue like this it will become months instead of years.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Another good training done and while the physical training is going pretty well, I noticed while driving to home I didn’t have a real mental challenge. When I do static training it is always mental, but with dynamic the focus has been to technique only.

So it’s time to change this the next time. I need more mental training and combat to overcome some ‘fears’ I have in my head.

Mental note to self: transform some of the leg training pain you can endure into freediving pain…

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

As it was Carnival this week, we skipped our usual Tuesday CO2 training and focused ourselves for the Thursday pool training. This also gave my body a chance to recover from the big crash on Monday with my Snowboard.

When we arrived at the pool we saw three times as many people as normal. Extra club in the pool, so no real room for our monofin training today! Damn… I hate it when we can’t execute a plan. Almost we packed our bags and went home, but I’m glad Sanne convinced me of a good static workout.

I did several experiments while holding my breath and it seems that the 2nd and 5th static felt the best during this training. On all, except one, breath hold I did no preparation what so ever. Just talking until 5 seconds before the start and down. On the one I did prepare with some good breathing I just noticed no difference at all during the hold.

It’s clear that my statics are suffering from a mental barrier in the end and I need to find a good work around to break this barrier that I already have for 8 years or so. Strange thing is that I don’t have this barrier when doing dry statics. Time to think about some static exercises that break the barrier in the coming weeks.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

We’re getting there. After some weeks of training with the monofin, it’s clear that Sanne and I are getting somewhere with the monofin. For the first time it’s starting to feel like it’s helping our performances instead of costing more energy then with bifins. I even had a crazy thought of wearing the monofin in the open water, wow!

Of course there is still a long way to go, but the great thing is that we documented the whole learning curve here. We know exactly how we started, what we did wrong, how we fixed and improved it. An essential learning curve we had to go through and which could help other people as well.

The main kick is now pretty clear to us and it takes around 2-3 kicks to get in the right movement and flow of it. Now we have to practice this a lot so that we can go in the flow immediately, so that we can also start experimenting with kick-glide cycles.

Next is also starting and turns. And if these are also in the pocket it’s time again to also look at performance. For now we alternate with the fin and the video camera every 150 meters of training, and it works pretty well. Maybe we post a video in the coming weeks about our progress. In the mean time, we just keep practicing, practicing and practicing.