Team Sharkbait

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

Last week I came back from a 9 day-holiday in Santa Lucia, Cuba. The location on Cuba was located at the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere about a 3 hour drive west from Holguin. Although the weather throughout the holiday could have been less rainy, on the day and times we planned some activities the weather was on our side.

One of the most breath taking moments we had in the holiday was the opportunity to go scuba diving with bull-sharks. As we were down 25 meters below the surface at a location called La Boca, it was a marvel to look at the bull sharks being hand fed by the diving master. Of course it’s even better to have seen them in their natural environment, without the help of a human touch… But I think wikipedia also describes the bull sharks as dangerous to humans, so for me this was more than a good chance to see them really close. When I write really close I’m talking about within arm’s reach, but I think ‘don’t touch’ had the upper hand in my mind .

The day after we had the shark feeding we tagged along to go to La Boca again but now for some freediving, as there also was a wreck on the bottom. The fore was situated approximately 8 meters below, going all the way down to 25 meters for the aft of the ship. As known with wrecks they are invested with fish, having made their habitat of this ship once roaming the seas. The location also featured a tricky timing when you want to freedive without the currents of the changing tides, we had a window of about an hour. It was a very nice spot to go freediving, a lot to see and a perfect training ground to do some different depth’s.

It was a very good training & learning holiday for my girlfriend Marieke, who’s enjoying freediving more and more since our trip to Dahab and Dominican Republic. During this holiday she asked me if she could do some statics to improve her breath hold time and confidence. So this was her first ever static and within 2 or 3 tries she managed to go up to a time of 2m39s. Most impressive and makes me proud! As for depth training, during our trips to Dahab she had been down to the entrance of the fish bowl at the Canyon at 17 meters deep, but at the time she wasn’t confident enough to do more. Now she knows that she could at least hold her breath longer than a minute, her confidence gained. As we were diving the wreck at La Boca she kind of had her mind set on reaching somewhat greater depths, I agreed to swim down to 20 meters with her following me. When I see with how much ease she does these depth’s, I thought to myself there is more than ‘just’ 20 meters.

So later that day when we tagged along another scuba diving boat, we got to go freediving at the same place the scuba divers went down to ‘the stairs’ location. A beautiful coral featuring a stretched coral in the shape of stairs starting from a big plateau at 8 meters, the first drop took you down to 20 meters for the 2nd plateau. The 2nd drop went down into the abyss, which made it an amazing location to freedive.

Marieke now had her new 20 meter personal best and she was easily doing dives to the 2nd plateau, she watched me do a 27 meter dive and was inspired to try a deeper dive as well. So now I took the safety skills acquired in my freediving courses and applied them to her freedive into the deep. I waited at the surface to the point she was 16-18 seconds down and followed her down. At around 15-18 meters I watched her turn and swam up with her to the surface again, where she did a perfect surface protocol and showing a very much easy freedive down to 25 meters in 1 m19s . All I can say is that I can really learn from Marieke, she showed me a really relaxed and at ease freedive, where-as for myself I tend to sprint down too much.

This was a perfect holiday filled with a lot of under water time, which we both very much love. Above the surface we had a great time at the resort as well, although for our opinion hotels can leave their animation crews at home, because enjoying the rest, sun, reading, sketching and peace of mind isn’t working when these guys are around .

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 Jorg Jansen.

This week I thought it would be fun to join some other freedivers during their training. Eric van Riet Paap, Daan Verhoeven en Judith van de Griendt were training in the Tongelreep during daytime and I was invited.

The good thing of working for yourself is that you’re flexible during office hours, so I managed to squeeze a small hour of water between customers and I could enjoy their company. As Sanne was still on Holiday it would be fun to see some other freedivers into action.

First of all, it’s always quite a shock to see that where Sanne and I keep our trainings to an hour, they are doing 4-5 hour long sessions in the water. Now I understand where those big numbers in the pool come from! If only I had the time…

Anyway, the sessions was short but fun. I tried out several monofins and decided that Judith here monofin would stand as a prototype for my own fin. What a difference with the usual fin! Amazing! Next time I don’t do a big run before going into the pool. I really wanted to give it a good try, but every time after a few kicks my legs filled up and there was nothing left. Strange feeling.

As I write this, Sanne is in the pool with Daan and Judith also testing out some monofins. Hopefully he manages to choose his fin as well, so that we can invest in a good monofin that gives good results and much less pain in the feet.

During the session on Wednesday Eric did a 187 meter dynamic and Judith a 150 meter dynamic. Big personal bests and amazing distances! Daan was feeling wacky and was screwing himself or something like that. Take a look below for some footage.

Eric van Riet Paap 187 Meter Dynamic With Fins

Daan Verhoeven Screwing Around

Judith van de Griendt 150 Meter Dynamic With Fins

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

No, I didn’t forget! I was just so busy with collecting all the document and working through them that it took months instead of weeks. Last week I finally made my final mindmap about all the different topics about freediving that needed to be transformed into interesting lessons.

As a teaser, here is the list of lessons that will come in the coming weeks. Not necessarily in this particular order, nor am I saying that this list is complete, but it’s were I’m working from.

If you have any topics that you would like to see included, let me know!

1. General (What is, history, organizations)
2. physics
3. Safety (Buddysystem, Risks)
4. physiology
5. Breathing
6. Equipment
7. Mental
8. Environment
9. Training Techniques (Periodization, Schedules, Data analyzing, Logging)
10. Wet specific training (per discipline)
11. Dry Specific Training
12. Non-specific training
13. Advanced training (RFC, Empty, flooding, packing)
14. Equalization
15. Organization & Scuba
16. Stretching
17. Nutrition
18. Leadership/Assistance
19. Freediving as a business

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Sanne and I had another good training in the pool. Our normal training schedule is starting to get shape again. First half is static, second is monofin. Easy does it.

We started with static again. The hot tub was filled with people from the previous diving (jump in the water type of diving) class and we  put ourselves in as well. Normally I don’t want to do static if somebody is watching my back. Crazy defect in my head just doesn’t like it when people are watching me doing freediving.

Today was different. Besides the fact that I don’t use goggles and a clock anymore for static already meant a big difference. But the fact that I started my statics with so many people in the hot tub is completly new for me. In the end I didn’t really mind doing it.

Static times are still at around 2 minutes, but it feels easier and easier and I’m doing them without goggles, which is already a big win for me. Never thought I could do it like this and stay (pretty much) comfortable.

Sanne did his required no-warmup static and managed to get to the minimum time he had to do, but there wasn’t much inspiration during his attempt and he stopped way before what he could do.

Next was monofin time. After doing a few 25 meter laps, it’s time for 25+. Legs are full with lactic acid after a few laps, so I switch to high speed, low speed, kick kick glide, etc. I do a very easy 50 meter. Sanne does a 75+ meter in a busy and unorganized pool.

Between the different laps I also do some 25 meter dynamic without fins, which feel great as well. Time for a dedicated lane during club-evening. Got the feeling that personal bests aren’t that far away anymore! Would be interesting to see a new freediving personal because the last one I did was almost 7 years ago.

There I was at my weekly training with Jorg, who had just been doing some serious improvements on his monofin training. Only a few days ago we went to the competition in Liege and there I made my first steps into the monofin world”with a 75 meter personal best (PB). The feeling I kept from the competition, was eagerness for more training and perhaps even distance .

After Jorg had just done a nice 50+ meters with the monofin, I took over the tight-foot-pocketet-momofin and sat down on the side of the pool. No preparation and just went for a 50 meter dynamic with new kick-kick-glide technique from last Sunday. At 50 meters everything was very OK and I decided to see what 75 meters would feel like with this more relaxing technique. At 75 meters, everything still seemed to be very OK and the turn was made before I could even think of resurfacing. It was at 95 meters that I first felt a little urge to resurface, which I did, just to be safe. Recuperation was easy like I did a 60-75m dynamic and I remember Jorg noting, that this was the most relaxed he’d ever seen me swim with a monofin.

As opposed to Saturday this was a huge difference, altough I was not totally doing the kick-kick-glide all the time, it payed off and leaving me with a brand new PB of 100 meters with a monofin in dynamic (DYN).

Last time I did a 100 meter dynamic actually also was more than over a year ago, 26th of january 2008 to be exact… Overall this leaves me with a good feeling and motivation for the time ahead. Clearly the facts are pointing out to myself that doing a step back to take a break can really refresh you.

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

Last night I edited the video material we shot at the Liege competition last weekend.

The first video is Dynamic with Fins (DYN), a first timer for me at a competition to use a monofin.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdQLV4OEyHw

The second video is Dynamic No fins (DNF), especially focussed on technique and minimal amount of strokes to reach 25 meters.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxfhfGWE-7Q

Although my mission was to reach the 25 meters in 2 strokes, the positive buoyancy made it harder to accomplish. I took 2,5 strokes for 25 meters, but the speed is still at the level I like it to be.

Enjoy the videos.

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

Since I made a good comeback last month in the Wiesbaden competition, I have been training with a few different things. Yesterday – Sunday 25th of october – I competed in the competition in Liège, Belgium, amongst a whole bunch of fellow Dutch freedivers. It was nice to meet up with all dutch freedivers again, met a few freshly trained freedivers as well. Good to know the dutch competition interest is still around!

It was the perfect time and place to give my change of training methods a better test, as in Wiesbaden I was more focussed on proving myself I was able to do solid performances.

Dynamic with Monofin

The major change in dynamic with fins for me was to go for monofin. I have been training with it, but never did a competition with it. In training, my technique has been far from good and that might have been a reason as well to never show it to anyone else in a competition . But as we’re trying to change some things over time, It was a “What the heck” moment which made me decide to just do it!

Preparing myself for a push off in a 1m 25cm deep pool at one side (2m 15cm at the other end), I was surprised to see that the push off was fairly good. I had trouble finding the rythm and balance, but after lane one I was up for a turn. I remembered Pim pointing out in the briefing that there was a ledge of 10cm’s, so reminded myself last minute “Ow yeah, touch above the ledge!”. So I swam up a bit and made proper turn, trying to find balance and rythm yet again. On to the ‘harder’ turn at the shallow part of the pool, all the way there I visualized how I would try and make a flat turn, which I managed to do fairly well. But after the push-off the wall, I drifted sideways and my balance was kinda not there anymore. On my way to the 75m, I decided to call it a day as my technique is still failing me to make it a relaxed and easy run. Although I wasn’t out of breath, I think it was a good thing to make 75 meter my first monofin personal best

Dynamic without fins: 2 strokes or …
My mission for DNF was to try and make it across the pool in 2 strokes, which I had been training in the Tongelreep last Thursday. After the start I felt that the somewhat shallow pool made it harder to be properly balanced and I felt my legs drifting upwards. At the 2 strokes mark, I did not make it far enough to just glide the last bit so had to make an arm stroke to get there. The way back to 50m’s was no different and after the turn at 50 it became more vital to pay attention to technique. Because I had been focussing on that quite a lot lately, I found that holding my hands flat on my legs after the arm stroke did help in gliding further. So on my way to 75m’s I usually feel myself getting a bit sloppy on technique, so I put in the extra effort to keep the technique on a good level. All the way to 75m’s my technique was proper and it all felt good. I decided to make a turn and push off the wall and resurface. Immediately after I surfaced, the safety guy gave me the resting board and I made a clean surface protocol. A training in a training to be honest, as the line wasn’t strong enough to support a freediver hanging on it, I decided to try the board for a change at the deeper part of the pool.

Concluding
All in all this was a super training session, I learned a lot from my efforts that day. Dynamic with monofin was far from perfect, but did taste like I could do more. Also on DNF I made progress, but need to have more neckweights to be able to work with different pools.

Another lesson I learned and put to practice really well was the fact I was happy with a 4 minute 20 seconds static. With most people whom I explain this to it’s an eye-brow raiser, but this is where I am at for the moment. I need to have fun in freediving and anything more the 3 minute 30 seconds was good for today, so I’m happy with it!

At the end of the day I borrowed Daan’s monofin for a quick test. Did 50 meters with it on my normal style, which already felt so much better than my own monofin. After that Daan and Jorg asked me to try the kick-kick-glide technique and that went surprisingly well. Made to the 25m’s in 3 kick-kick-glide’s which Daan explained was a good tempo. So to get back on a comment I got from Eric van Riet Paap on facebook, yes I will be switching to monofin for now and really would like to get a glide monofin.

This all sure taste’s like more and gives me some new opbjectives and new energy to train hard! Most importantly I had a lot of fun at a freediving competition.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

We had another pool training yesterday. First time for me doing static without goggles. I even decided to stop using a breath-up technique to increase the CO2 in my body before going down. It takes some getting used too in the coming weeks. Especially to get relaxed in the mind again. Also  the water is very high up in my nose during static, and as I’m not used to that, it makes relaxing difficult.

At the end I did 3 statics without preparation. 2 minutes was the max time, but I was so high on Co2 and really not relaxed. Lets see how it goes the next time. Sanne also did a no warm up no breath-up static. The pool was even hotter than last time. So when he made the sign that he was very hot after holding his breath for over 4 minutes I made a practical joke and he had to laugh and came up at 4:10. He made it look easy!

Dynamic training was next. After a few 25 meter laps with my Gara 2000 fins(who are almost celebrating their 12th birthday!) doing monofin style kicking, it was time for the mono-fin. First two laps were the same as usual. Felt pretty good, not much upper-body movement and going fast.

But then Sanne made the comment that I should take it much easier. After doing a few easy and slow 25 meter laps, Sanne told me it looked great. I needed 24 seconds for a 25 meter lap in 8 amplitudes and it felt sooo easy. Did a total of 6 different techniques for testing it. Kick and glide, arms besides the body, etc, etc. In the end Sanne and I decided that I should stick to the 8 amplitude kick for the coming weeks and see how it goes from there.

Next week I’m going to continue with this technique training and also do some longer laps then 25 meters. Normally I got an uncomfortable feeling with dynamic at around 35-40 meters, bifins and monofin. So I’m curious how it will go with this technique. Can’t wait to test it!

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Thursday was pool freediving again. Now that we have joined the Scubacity Diving team to make use of their training facilities, we can now start with some good trainings again. Just real freediving training.

Like mentioned previously we now also have the hot tub to our disposal. So we started the first 30 minutes with some statics in the pool. I was up first and did 3 easy statics. All around 2 minutes to test which setup I should be using the coming time. First one was with my swimming goggles and while it felt pretty okay and relaxed, the pressure on the eyes was not very relaxing.

Second static was with my favorite diving mask, my cressi-sub  superocchio. But I noticed a real difference with having much less of a diving reflex, because my face is much more covered in the mask. So for sure this option is gone now.

So back to the swimming goggles. I decided to set the timer of my watch to 30 seconds and repeat itself every cycle, so that I wouldn’t have to look. Tried it, and it felt pretty good. So good that I have  decided to leave the swimming goggles away altogether for the coming  months during statics. The only reason I want goggles is so I can see how far I am at time, and that’s exactly what I shouldn’t be doing at the moment. Will be interesting though, because it’s clear I’m still not very comfortable with spectators and my failure to deliver great statics.

Of course Sanne made it look easy again by doing a 5:12 minute static without any problems and without a warm-up. Although I guess he was pretty warm when he was done with the static in the 37 degrees hot tub.

Second half was for dynamics. Really focusing on monofin technique and relaxation. After trying my own monofin it’s now a fact that it’s a shitty one and that I will never use it anymore. And while Sanne his monofin is much better it’s just a masochistic thing to have on your feet. The footpockets are not from this world, so we should be looking into buying a new one some time soon.

I did some 25 meter laps in a fairly easy style of around 20 seconds without getting tired. Very small amplitude at the moment to keep the upper-body as still as possible and to avoid making a snake movement. It’s still hard but in the coming weeks it should be possible to make some good progress.