Team Sharkbait

Now that we enter week 4 of the 13 week long schedule for Sanne to break all his pool records, it’s time to take a look back at week 3. The first two weeks was about setting up and a try out. Week 3 was the first week that everything was already done once, so that the intensity could go up a notch or two. If you read Sanne’s account on last week, you see that he was pretty pleased with how things ran. That being said, there is still major room for improvement, especially in dynamic technique.

For the regular readers of the site, you may remember that pool training was off for a few months during the winter period. Just focusing on regular physical training instead of specific skill training. Well, it seems those few months of no-pool-work degraded the freediving techniques a little. Nothing to be worried about, but for sure very interesting for us and I think the readers in what you will see now, and what you will see after week 13.

So to be specific, during last Fridays training session I took my underwater camera with me and made some shots underwater to analyze the technique afterwards. Normally I’ll do this almost every training session, and if you have an eye for the athlete you can spot small details that are worth mentioning afterwards. This time I’ll do this online, so you get to see and read what we’re looking for.

First of all, here is the video clip of an easy 70 meter dynamic no fins freedive. First take a look and afterwards I go though some of the points.

http://www.shark-eye.com/flv/tsb/20070420-dnf-sanne.flv

So what did YOU see? Think a bit about and if you’re done then read further to read my analysis.
Read more…

At the end of last week, I was almost unable to properly finish my specific freediving session. But as my body seems to adapt to the circumstances quite fast, I could do this weeks freediving sessions without any signs of decline.

So starting the week with a static session, after that going to the gym and stepping up the cycle for 20 minutes of cardio, I was ready to do a freediving specific session on Tuesday. The training consists of 2 dynamic without fins runs, followed by a combination specific freediving training spread over 1300 meters in the pool. I have to say that it’s an intense training, but afterwards I’m satisfied with a good training session.

Middle part of the week I decided to focus more on the dry-walks, which are important in my specific training on Tuesday and Friday. Getting my mind back on track and doing a solid 2 minute drywalk is intense, but pays off in the end. There is always the part where my mind thinks I should bail out, but breaching that thought is what it’s all about. After the drywalk I headed for the gym to train my legs, I postponed the cardio to Saturday as there’s no use for cardio after a legs work-out.

It’s Thursday and the thought of doing a dry-walk while my legs are still burning and aching from the day before is rushing through my mind during my work. “So let’s get it over with!” I thought when returning home… Starting off normal, but my legs started to wear down very fast in the end, so a 1:45 drywalk was satisfying. Normally I would do my fitness work-out on Thursday as well, but it seems more wise to postpone that to Saturday as well, making the Saturdays work-out more balanced and I could focus optimal for Friday.

Yet another freediving specific training was due on Friday and starting with the 2 DNF runs was the first part I had to accomplish. Both runs were confident and it didn’t feel all to difficult during the runs. But then the 1300 meter specific training was still to come… In the first part of the 1300m my legs felt like porridge, luckily I regained strength and worked my way through the training.

Today I visited the gym again for my postponed exercises, both my cardio- and shoulder-training. I could still feel the specific 1300m from Friday, but the best is to finish my shoulder-training in a solid and controlled way where technique counts.

Somewhere in the middle or at the end of week 4 I’ll update again !

So, today is already the start of week 3 of 13. The first week was really setting up the schedule, looking at what was possible, setting priorities. Things have changed a lot for Sanne’s lifestyle since the last time we did a serious training schedule. Since beginning of the year I have to take into consideration the ‘family’ factor that was of course always there but now that he’s living together that factor becomes even more bigger. Which is no problem what so ever, as long as you can make a decent planning and set the priorities straight.

After week one I had a pretty good idea what was possible so I setup a schedule for Sanne, optimized to his goals and existing work/family schedule. We had week 2 to test it and see if it would fit. I’m happy to see that it fits perfectly and still leaves enough time to refuel mind and body. Just take a look at the schedule that Sanne posted in his last post.

Monday: Fitness, Cardio & Static
Tuesday: Dynamic Freedive Training
Wednesday: Fitness, Cardio & Static
Thursday: Fitness & Static
Friday: Dynamic Freedive Training
Saturday: Dry-walk, Cardio
Sunday: Relax & Backup

First reaction of some people I heard was about the amount of training and that it was so much. Well, if we go in further detail of the schedule and the philosophy how we train you may come to notice that with Sharkbait it’s not about duration and making long hours, it’s about intensity. For example, you see 3 fitness sessions in the week. Those are not the normal fitness sessions you see people do in the gym. Those are the short intesity burst that will do the job that needs to be done. So I’m talking about 35-40 minutes max! That’s it!

Two times dynamic freedive training can take a long time! But with Sharkbait that means a made to measure schedule optimized to get the best result for an athlete, in this case Sanne. Maximum duration of the dynamic freedive training in the pool: 45 minutes!

Cardio training is more of the same thing. No long half marathon training schedule. Just high intensity interval training of around 20-30 minutes.

Dry static and dry walk sessions are still based on our philosophy that a freediver should be able to perform near maximum results with a minimum amount of warming up. So both sessions maximum 20 minutes.

Now if we do a calculation here you can see that total amount of training time in a week is 5 hours and 40 minutes. Don’t get me wrong: That’s 5 hours and 40 minutes of high intesity activity! So no time for wimps with this schedule. All sessions are in and out missions that get the job done.

I’ll try to write a short article every week about a different aspect of the training schedule that Sanne is now using. And if you have any questions… let’s hear ‘em!

…this is the number that is currently rushing through my mind, my training schedule and my daily freedive training-sessions. 13 not to be mistaken with the superstitious meaning of the number, but 13 as a set number of weeks this training schedule progresses to.

Goals
At the end of 13, Jorg set out a couple of goals that are to be achieved within this set time. These goals are in compliance with the goals I should be capable of achieving this year. The goals that should be achieved are:

Dynamic without fins (DNF): 125 m
Dynamic with fins (DYN): 150 m
Static breath holding (STA): 7:00 min.

How 13 starts…
It all started last week and this week with getting familiar with the exercises and what the exercises should do for me to be working. Without knowing what an exercise should do for me, I will be unable to achieve the end-phase of 13.

Weekly timetable
So how will I plan all these exercises in a timetable to be sure I can meet the set out goals ? Well overall Jorg and I agreed on a set of exercises and technique to prepare my body for the performances. Based on these exercises we set out a timetable, to plan all the different exercises.

Monday: Fitness, Cardio & Static
Tuesday: Dynamic Freedive Training
Wednesday: Fitness, Cardio & Static
Thursday: Fitness & Static
Friday: Dynamic Freedive Training
Saturday: Dry-walk, Cardio
Sunday: Relax & Backup

Prior 13 conditions
As I’ve been training in freediving quite a while now, my current personal bests are my prior conditions to the 13 schedule.

Personal Bests in training
Dynamic without fins (DNF): 109 m
Dynamic with fins (DYN): 125 m
Static breath holding (STA): 6:51 min

After the preparation phase, the first challenge in 13 will be to reach these PB-markers again and start working from there…

I’ll be updating on this schedule 1 or 2 times a week, so stay tuned for more !

Although I have been chosen amongst the chosen few to represent the Netherlands in the Individual World Championships, I have decided to focus on some other projects and challenges, so I’m not going to head for Maribor, Slovenia beginning of July 2007.

Competitions are a benchmark for my training, so when I reach a certain goal in training, the competitions are a good opportunity to put the method to the test. Although I’m not taking part, I will start the training schedule Jorg set-up for me to achieve the overall goal and prepare for future events.

Ofcourse it’s an honor to be asked to take part in this world championship, for more information about it check out the link: http://en.wch2007.h2oteam.com/.

Today Team Sharkbait paid a visit to the lake at Panheel again, which is one of our outdoor training locations. We made a few relaxing  dives into the depths, although the conditions could be slightly better. The visibility was expected a bit further with the 7 degrees celcius water, however we did expect there would be no thermo-cline.

Never the less, already in the first descent we stumbled upon 2 large perches, who were enjoying a nice quiet “hang” above the 10m platform. I shot a small video with Jorg’s underwater camera of the 2 perches which you can find below.

Download link 
This always makes freediving worthwhile…  

Before making these relaxing dives, I had to do a few drywalks for training exercise and Jorg was there along the way to coach me. Since the end of last season’s drywalks, I’ve been training them again since 2 weeks. I’m very glad to see that I’m almost back at the same level with my drywalks.

Today I had my seasonal competition opener in Heemstede, they featured a dynamic competition with a competitor field of 12 people.

The last time I did a dynamic performance, was last year October in Wiesbaden. In the mean time I haven’t even done a dynamic once, but just started with the overall body fitness to regain strength. Furthermore in preparation I’d been training in the pool for cardiovascular training. So to start the season, I set my goal at a minimum of the unplanned performance in Wiesbaden last year; 75m.

As I still had sore leg muscles from the snowboard trip on Saturday the day before the competition, I started with a 50m slow dynamic as warming up. The dynamic performance went very good and actually better then expected, so on my way to the 100m mark I decided to turn at 100m to show for myself that my dynamic is still okay. Surfacing at 103m and doing a clean surface protocol, I ended first place with that performance.

For the start of this season I picked up my training by improving my overall body strength. I did this by a 3-weekly fitness session of 45 minutes, which improves fitness of all the aspects of the body. As I regained the strength of last years fitness, I could go on to the next step in the schedule, which was the cardiovasculair part. I picked up this years cardio in the pool, as a first test I did about 2km cardio within 45 minutes. This was a good training, but to optimize it with the rest of the exercises it was trimmed back to 1,5km existing of 750m crawl and 750m breast stroke.

As the basics for good body health and strength have been regained, the freediving specific parts are introduced into the schedule. So my weekly schedule looking like: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays fitness & Tuesdays and Thursday cardio; I will fill that up with the drywalks and dry-statics. Meaning before every cardio session doing a drywalk and before every fitness session a dry-static. All this combined it makes a nice exercise schedule which is highly tweaked to be executed in a reasonable amount of time.

And now having optimized the schedule, it’s time for planning the upcoming events. As I’ve inscribed to the World Championships in Maribor, that is the main goal to train for. So any event preceding these championships are a good exercise for me to check my status against the planned progress.

As the current planning is drawing it’s path through the available competitions, these are the ones I’m gonna take part in:

18/03 – DTH Dynamic competition
28/04 – AAAC Pool freedive competition (Dynamic and Static)
06/05 – DTH Static competition

The list can grow of course, but there aren’t many competitions taking place in the Netherlands. So we’ll have to see which events can be added to the list.

Since the start of Shark-bait.com the design was optimized for the information we had to offer back then. But now as a forum is added, news brought in a different way and so making the total package more comprehensive. The site-template required an update of which the over-all goal is still; to easily find your way through our site.

As of today the new design has been released. Enjoy the site and if you find any errors of problems, please submit them through the contact page or report them in the forum.

When visiting Indonesia to meet up with my girlfriend, who’s there for school purposes, I got the chance to dive in Lake Toba. The lake is situated on Sumatra and is one of the biggest lakes in the world. When looking for information at certain sites, they mention that the lake should be around 500m deep, making that a very deep lake.

During my visit to Lake Toba I visited the Samosir Cottages, which are located on the island Samosir. Our room had a lake view and we could almost jump in from our doorstep. I had to improvise a little to make a freediving-buoy, as there were no buoys of any kind. Only a few local fishermen setting out nets and marking them with a floating bottle. So based on that idea I managed to gather all the equipment to make my own buoy, from a rope (15m), an empty bottle and rock from the lake.

As I still needed to explore the lake, I had to be very cautious in my descent. There could be all kinds of nets and poles underneath the surface. My suspicions were some kind of right, as I was dragging out the buoy I almost got my rock stuck in a fishing net. As I was not trying to upset the local fishermen, I relocated my buoy and found a comfortable 15m deep spot.

The water being 23 degrees celcius, without an elios suit to protect me, made me shiver within the hour making my equalization not optimal. I’ve had this problem with equalization in lake Panheel as well, when Jorg and I made some CWNF dives in swim shorts only. So that be one of the things I want to get sorted in the coming time.

My girlfriend didn’t seem to have any difficulties with equalization and did her first dives in freediving very respectfully, making her dives controlled and without any problems. Her deepest dive in this 1st ever freediving session was 11m and when resurfacing I recall her saying: “I think I’m starting to like this very much!”. At the end of my holiday, I left her my copy of Umberto Pelizzari’s “Manual of freediving“.

We managed to take a few pictures with a underwater-camera I won at the Heemstede dynamic competitions. But the quality can’t be compared to the pictures we usually take with our Canon IXUS & underwater house.

Although the lake didn’t feature any colored fish or nice corals, we managed to enjoy freediving once again. Which states my pleasure in freediving, no matter where I am.