Team Sharkbait

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

We’ve had this exercise for quite a while now and I’ll take this opportunity to further explain the crawl without breath exercise, as it’s an exercise which really helps in building endurance levels and also builds confidence for doing dynamic performances.

It’s an idea that we came up with about a year ago when we were in the project 13 schedule, where I had to be able to train on by myself due to circumstances where Jorg would not be able to make it to the pool. The idea is simple, just do a normal crawl like the swimmer do at the surface, but then without breath and we mix it up into a build-up-, exhale- and an endurance schedule.

Build-up schedule (interval)
At first we were unfamiliar with how much and how far we should be alternating the not breathing part in the crawling at the surface. This is how the build-up schedule first originates, we would set out a schedule of 500 meters. Were I would try to do 100 meters of breathing every 6 strokes, where we count a stroke as after both arms had made a full motion. The second 100 meters I’d up it to breathing only every 10 strokes and so on. I gradually got to a point where  I would almost do full lanes of crawl without breath. Although rest times in between the almost full lanes (50m) had to be somewhat longer than at the start of the schedule.

Example schedule:

1. 2 x 50 meter: breath every 3 strokes
2. 2 x 50 meter: breath every 5 strokes
3. 2 x 50 meter: breath every 7 strokes
4. 2 x 50 meter: breath every 9 strokes
5. 2 x 50 meter: breath every 11 strokes

Exhale schedule (slowly exhaling)
To mix things up with the static O2 tables, the next step we tested as part of a good training would be a O2 training. Getting rid of the CO2 building up during the lane by slowly exhaling the air within a set amount of arm-strokes.

Example schedule:

1. 2 x 50 meter: 5 exhales
2. 2 x 50 meter: 4 exhales
3. 2 x 50 meter: 3 exhales
4. 2 x 50 meter: 2 exhales
5. 2 x 50 meter: 1 exhale
6. 1 x 50 meter: 0 exhaling

Endurance schedule
This came into play when Jorg got curious into how it would work out if I’d just do a full lane without breath, as we had been upping it since the Build-up schedule, this was a thought we’d both been playing with and this actually would be the next schedule we’d go by, focussed on endurance.

Example schedule:

1. 2 x 50 meter: 2 minute rest time
2. 2 x 50 meter: 1 minute 30 seconds rest time
3. 2 x 50 meter: 1 minute 15 seconds rest time
4. 2 x 50 meter: 1 minute rest time
5. 2 x 50 meter: 45 seconds rest time

Maximum attempts
As we were progressing pretty good with this exercise and it was really fun to do as well, Jorg added the mental factor again by letting me push my limits into trying a maximum performance with crawl’s without breath. To be honest at the time it was not really a success for my mental state, but doing a maximum performance of almost 75 meters in crawl was enough to prove it’s a serious exercise.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

On Thursday it was pool time with Sanne again. Time for some testing and experimenting! Now we’re training regularly again, it is also time to fine tune other parts besides the monofin kick itself. Streamlining, weighting, glide moment, everything.

At the moment we’re looking for an alternative for the normal neck weight and weight belt around the waist. While both systems have their positives, there are also some negatives. Around the neck is a pretty good place with regards to aligning, but not so for comfort and relaxation. I’m also not so convinced with regards to the streamlining of some of the neck weights I see. Especially the 5+ kg belt around the neck give some stress in the neck and drag in the water

Around the waist is a pretty comfortable place and what most people are used to. But it’s not in the center of your body and doesn’t hold you down in the right place, especially when you’ve got big lungs. Streamlining is still an issue here. But if you use half kilo blocks, it is pretty minimum, but still a disturbance in the flow.

So, we did some testing with placing weights on very strange parts of the body in also very interesting shapes. And we were very surprised about what we found out and how it worked! It coming weeks we will fine tune our new weight setup and make some video’s about it. I think a lot of people will find it ‘interesting’ and in the beginning probably even stranger then the first neck weight they saw.

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

This has been a question for me since I found out that a lot of freedivers just close their eyes when freediving. My normal way of conduct is different per discipline:

• Static – I start out with my eyes closed, but when the contractions or the boredom starts I usually open my eyes for distraction or no real reason and I’ll be looking around the pool floor.
• Dynamic with or without fins – I always have my eyes open, if I close them I’ll end up in lane 8 instead of lane 1 where I started. I did try a few times to close them, but it’s a must to re-open them every few meters to stay on track, which in my perception is not bringing extra relaxation to my game.
• Depth disciplines – I generally do not close my eyes when I freedive into the deep, but as I explained in an earlier post, this had to do with not being able to fully control or anticipate the environment variables.

Why close your eyes?
I’m aware of the fact that whenever you open your eyes, the brain gets extra stimulus on all the images it receives, so closing the eyes sounds like a good idea to have your mind relax and get along with images you control for yourself. Having said that, for me it’s feels like a mandatory thing to really know the variables from the environment I’m freediving in.

Change is good!
So, I’m willing to change my way of the game just to see how much this can help me relax and being able to get my mind at ease with this way of freediving. Over the last two weeks I started closing my eyes in the depth disciplines. As I know now how the bottom setup looks like at the 23 meter deep buoy in Panheel, it’s much easier to freedive descending with my eyes closed. I still need to get used to it and I still haven’t made a depth without ever opening my eyes.

So the next time I’ll visit the outdoors for some depth freedive training I’ll have to make a depth without opening my eyes until I resurface and see how that feels.

Your thoughts, tips or useful info?
What is your way of freediving and dealing with eyes open vs. eyes closed? Please leave your thoughts, tips or useful information in the comments below.

Last night I was out for training in the Tongelreep and Kostas was also training with me. Along the way of explaining the prerequisites for a DNF freedive to Kostas, I hit the topic of checking out balance and alignment under water. I had been analyzing the balance of YugYug in earlier training sessions and Jorg had been spotting mine a long time ago. It reminded me that if you want to have a good alignment for your DNF freedive you’ll have to test certain things before you can find your perfect alignment.

Buoyancy

Balance and alignment all originate from the buoyancy you have whilst freediving at a certain depth, with a certain are intake. To find your balance and alignment underwater the altitude and air intake are the parameters you can play with.

The buoyancy is a very important part, if you don’t want to become a jig-saw DNF swimmer that is. A jig-saw DNF originates by the fact your buoyancy is positive or negative, which will make you ascend or descend. A normal respond to this is to help yourself is by swimming down or up when you make the arm-stroke. But again you’ll ascend or descend and this will lead to the jig-saw movement when you look at it from the side.

Exercise
To counter-act this behavior you must play around with the altitude and air intake, to find a point where you’re neutral or slightly buoyant. A great exercise for this is to push-off from the wall and see how far you can float, whilst doing so you can check if you ascend, descend or remain neutral.  Before even making any neck-weights, you want to see if you can vary any of the parameters to help you find the buoyancy you need.

Altitude
If you’re in the position where you normally would swim at 1,5m depth, but the pool itself is 3m deep. Try and drop down to 3 meters deep and prepare for a push off from the wall at that depth. Once you made the push-off, just let yourself glide until you are completely stopped. If varying the depth isn’t helping you to stay at 3 meters deep, you’ll have to change the air intake.

Air intake
This relates to how much air you take in before starting your DNF freedive. As a lower air intake will result in less buoyany, try and do a DNF freedive at 3m’s deep with a neutral air intake. If you still float up, try with a smaller ammount of air intake, but most definately you’ll find that a neutral air intake should already be pretty close to finding your neutral buoyancy.

Variation
Varying with both of these parameters will result in a perfect way to find out, how a good balanced DNF should feel like. When you know how it should feel, the freedive itself will feel totally different. You no longer have to swim down or up, so now you can fine-tune your DNF freedive by paying attention to other aspects i.e.  streamlining.  In the end variation with the altitude and air intake will help you in making the neck-weight, waist-weight, etc. to suit your needs. Every freediver has a different body composure, thus a different setup is required as well.

Spotter
Most importantly to all of the information described is a good spotter, with preferably an underwater camera to aid in your goal of finding a good balance and alignment.

Good luck on finding your balance and alignment and if you have some other tips or remarks, be sure to comment about them.

Wednessday evening Kostas and I went out for a dynamic technique training. Kostas had to focus on his finning technique and I was trying out the speedo breeaststoke fins to test a DNF question from Eric van Riet Paap.

What I noticed with Kostas was that he was floating upwards while trying to improve his technique, so I stopped him and said he’d be better of trying to swim a little deeper with a whole lot less air intake, because we didn’t have any extra weight to drop him straight down to the bottom . Before I could get him to swim deeper, we still had to solve his ability to equalize.

Equalize it
What seemed to be the trick into getting Kostas to equalize is that he was not using the pressere in his nose to equalize the ears. Although he was trying to put pressure on his nose, there was no air to compress and built pressure, so the effect was zero. After I checked for myself what I was doing whilst I equalize, I gave Kostas this tip of building pressure with air in his nose. After he tried it once…he heard a popping sound for the first time in his freediving experience. He was now convinced about the technique and knew what pressure to build to hear a popping sound. Welcome to the world of equalization Kostas !

Next week
Now he was able to equalize he could focus on his technique in dynamic with fins. His appearance in training at depth was very relaxed and unlike before ideal to focus on his technique. I guess he’s going to be very eager to go to the pool again next week.

Last night I went out to the tongelreep with a tweaked Pyramid schedule for DNF training. It’s a shortend version of the one William Trubridge tought in his CNF course. Not the whole schedule, but half-way into his schedule. The complete schedule featured a build up phase to a certain plane and after that it would gradually go back to the start of the schedule.

Freediving 25 meters of DNF I take about 24-25 secondes, on which the following schedule is based.

• 6 x 25 meter starting every 1 minute 10 seconds
• 6 x 25 meter starting every 1 minute
• 6 x 25 meter starting every 50 seconds
• 4 x 25 meter starting every 45 seconds

Totalling 550 meter in 21 minutes and 550 seconds immersed.

This is a very good schedule to start with. During the following weeks I’ll be adjusting it to a level William Trubridge made me do in his course.

The 25 meter pool in the Tongelreep is perfectly in distance, but the pool depth is 5 meters. This makes it all a little harder as you really have to worry about your altitude in the water. On the other hand, what better training circumstance could I have for improving my awareness of altitude.

Last Thursday I already took my new Speedo Breast Stroke fins for a test run. I was actually surprised by the amount of propulsion it produced. I did a few 25 meters DNF to see how propelling with my legs was exaggerated to a level I became aware of the way it should feel.

As I’m still finding my way through the proper technique and the helpful tools to get rid of my scissor-like leg movement, Kostas joined me last night with another helpful tool; the video-camera. Looking back at the footage right after I did the 25 meter test runs, made it more obvious I needed to lower my right leg even more.

As a comparison we made a few clips where I did a run with:

1. initial technique without the speedo fins
2. corrected technique without the speedo fins
3. initial technique with the speedo fins
4. corrected technique with the speedo fins
5. corrected technique after use of speedo fins

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

When reviewing the footage some interesting facts grabbed my attention. In relation to how it felt whilst doing the different test runs, I can say that even though you wear the fins, I still need to be paying attention to the lifting of the right leg. When applying the force with the legs, the moment of ultimate propulsion at first seems to be short. But after re-capping the things William said in his course you can keep the propulsion going by scooping more water, by pointing the toes inwards at the end.

My scissor isn’t gone by long, but getting aware of the fact by reviewing the footage is very helpful. Another thing which makes me aware is by looking down at my legs whilst swimming… it’s not the most elegant way, but then I seem to see the errors and correct them instantly.

The next few weeks I’ll be swopping between my DNF-technique and the DYN monofin technique.

As announced this weekend William Trubridge visited the Netherlands for a Constant No Fins (CNF) clinic at Apnea Academy Amsterdam’s pool in Beverwijk. Check out pictures, videos and Glenn’s forum topic with pictures.

First day
It started with a introduction of technique used during the CNF, which he’d broke down into the arm- and legstroke. It’s good to see him explaining all this theory out of his own experience, like where he applies certain corrections and i.e. accidentally finding out why certain stuff is working by looking back through videos.

A lot of other theory explained about lung capacity, certain different thesis’ and practical experience led William to finding a kind of formula to calculate how many air to use for a dive. Although it’s unproven by science it did make sense when he explained it.

After the theory he taught some of his stretching exercises, through which he could stretch his overall body in preparation of CNF or CW dives. In combination with breathing exercises with purpose to stretch the lungs and the rib-cage a preparation for depth training seems to make sense. In some of the stretching exercises or maybe most, I found out that my body wasn’t really all that capable of bending. I do believe that with a little dedication to these stretching exercises, it will be increasing flexibility and thus a better preparation for going into the blue.

With the body stretched up and ready to go we were dropped in the pool to show our technique to the careful eye of the world champ. With pin-pointed accuracy he spotted technique imperfections and showed a way to get rid of these imperfections. For myself my scissor-like movement with my right leg still is one the major imperfections, but by hanging on the side of the pool and slowly making the movement I could get rid of the imperfection. As for the other participants they could also benefit of the observations and comments by William.

Second day
This day started of with theory again, more specific to total lung capacity versus residual volume. He explained an other theory which he worked out for himself and he combined with exhale statics. This approach seems to make sens when you are training for depth, as you’re in this kind of static whilst your falling down by negative buoyancy.

Glenn setup his heart rate monitor through which William was able to show a heart rate drop from 60 to 38 within a minute, which proves his way of using certain pranayama locks. Later that day all participants would be  hooked up and check if they were able to pull of these locks…as for my own heart rate… sigh… I don’t know why but my heart rate starts of at about 100 rest state after 4 minutes of slow breathing and after performing a lock…it would only drop to let’s say 83, but all in a time of 2 minutes for which this is a normal drop in heart rate for me. so for me it’s unproven, but the others were able to get the sensations William was talking about.

After the heart rate monitoring everybody made a maximum attempt in the pool without any preparation, for most of the freedivers this was a first and they all performed really well by down no warm up.

To round up the day we were to execute one of the tables explained earlier in the theory. A certain amount  of 25m laps and decreasing rest times made a perfect training for 30 minutes. Quite tiring and an interesting way of training, although I do see resemblance with my own training schedule’s which Jorg puts me through.

Concluding
Overall a succesful weekend and lot’s of new things learned also about an amazing athlete doing 3 days of trianing and one day of rest in a really awesome blue hole in the Bahamas. Thanks William Trubridge and Glenn Venghaus and Peter Wurschy from Apnea Academy Amsterdam for setting up this oppertunity.

Tonights monofin training proved to be a very good one, as I got my technique pretty much the way it’s supposed to be. In a preparation we did some small statics, with only the normal swim-goggles. It’s an awkward feeling at first but after a few tries it was actually not annoying anymore to have the water up my nose. Jorg did a couple of statics as well and tried out the underwater MP3 player.

In the training pool we started of with some small fins to get the movement training started. At the end of the training we picked up the leaderfins monofin and did various exercises to trigger the right effect. As it’s my lowerback that’s getting strained when i try to swim faster, or make shorter amplitudes. We went back to a earlier exercise which did trigger the right movement. Arms alongside whilst swimming with the monofin, but this time focussing on making a smaller amplitude. As soon as Jorg spotted the technique was how it’s supposed to be, he signaled me and I brought my arms to the stretched out position. So doing it with the phases separated, it did trigger the motion we were looking for.

Next time it’s time to get it on film and analyze it to see what improvements I’ve made so far. I’m very excited to see that my body is capable of making the monofin movement. Now it’s time to tweak and train and perfectionize it…

Two weeks ago I started training for monofin again. I bought a great monofin from Leader fins last year, but did not get the time to actually practice with it. Now Jorg and I put it up in the schedule and I’m gonna train and practice for the monofin for a while.

I have to say that I can already see a difference since last year test-runs with the monofin and the runs I do now. I’m not ready to actually monofin my way through the water, but I’m getting used to the foot-pockets and the different way my legs are bound. I do about 4-6 times 50m with it and then get back to the proper exercises to get the monofin motion going.

Special monofin exercises and filming them are very great tools to achieving a proper technique. My technique was very bad and still isn’t a Peter Pederson-style by a long shot. But I’m making progress with my lower-back not being that stiff anymore. The exercise that got that fixed, is a standard item on the exercise list now. As my lower-back flexibility has to improve much more…but looking back at some of the earlier video’s and present time video’s it shows a little improvement. So as long as there is improvement I still have hope that I can go from very bad technique to reasonable technique.

We’ll see what the coming weeks will hold in store, but one things for sure I’m going for it. I’d like to see what a few weeks of technique training can do.