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Upping the CWB schedule

03/02/2010 By Leave a Comment

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

CWB

The CWB training progresses in a good way, yesterday I upped the schedule to starting 1min. 45sec., where as last week I started every 2 minutes to do 50 meter lanes. I did 4 lanes and noticed that the last time my legs were not giving me any propulsion, so I had to rely on the last few meters crawling only with my arms. So the focus for next week should be keeping the time at 1m45s, but then trying to do more lanes, testing and pushing my legs for more. Hopefully the recuperation time will be sufficient to let me continue doing 5 or 6 lines of 50m CWB.

Jorg also upped his schedule and made it worth his time as well. After the schedule of 25 meters, I spotted for him while he did a few maximum attempts of CWB. Starting out with about 30 seconds of CWB, he upped it by grueling himself to 39 seconds and about 44 meters CWB. Good intense training where the mental factor was the winner for Jorg.

After the nice schedules it was time for some small monofin technique training. Without any weights and holding the arms alongside the body, we tried training for the proper execution of the motion. The points I have to work on are trying to start the motion in the pelvis area, where I now start the motion somewhere half-way my back, it should start at the pelvis and then work the rest.

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CO2 Headache

30/01/2010 By Leave a Comment

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

It’s clear that my crawl without breath work is helping! I’m glad to notice a few things now that I’m busy with these schedules:

  1. Sticky; the more you are in the water, the better you can ‘feel’ the water. While doing a crawl in pulling myself forward, it gets easier and easier to make the water more sticky.
  2. No more shoulder pain; normally when I did crawls while not on a schedule, I felt a little ‘knack’ in my right shoulder while doing the crawl motion. I’m not sure if the added weightlifting helped in fastening my shoulder again, but for sure it feels great to swim injury free
  3. Zen State; because you swim the same lane over and over again, it gets easier and easier to get in a sort of Zen state, where I forget what I’m doing and am more in a dream state than in active fighting mode.
  4. CO2 Tolerance; it’s clear that if you do repeated schedules of CO2 work, your body learns to work with higher levels of CO2 and work gets easier and easier every week. Not only that; I also find after doing 20-25 minutes of doing CO2 work, that things are really getting easier.  The spleen at work!
  5. CO2 Headache; after a few minutes after finishing the workout, a headache turns up. Not really bad, but it’s a clear sign that the training is working and the CO2 is giving me this ‘pain’. Good to know that it works.
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CWB: 75m – where did that come from!?

27/01/2010 By Leave a Comment

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

Yesterday I went out for a training in the Tongelreep with Jorg and CWB was the exercise on the schedule. We both started out doing our own type of CWB-exercise; Jorg did the version where he’d do 25 meters and start every 1m25s, I did 5 x 50 meters and starting every 2 minutes.

Then it was time for me to coach Jorg and see what he was capable of in maximum attempts of CWB. Very impressive to see he’s improving a lot in training. He started out with a 35 meters CWB and after that he did a 40m. To trigger that extra bit for him, we varied the approach a bit and swopped to trying to swim a full lane (50m) with only one breath or two breath’s, which made it in all a very good training for him.

CWB

Finally Jorg wanted me to do a 60 meters CWB, which has been a while since I’d done that, I started out as planned for the 60 meters, having some trouble approaching the 50 meter mark, but after the turn it all felt good again. I just kept in the same pace and thin I just had a safety stop at 75 meters, just to be sure. Where the hell did that come from :-o ;). Overall it felt very good and certainly room for more, so maybe next week I’ll be upping the game and try for a longer Crawl Without Breath.

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Extra Freediving Training

10/01/2010 By Leave a Comment

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

crawlWith a new year it’s time for a new training regime. After some lengthy talks with Sanne, we decided to up the volume of freediving training we are doing.

Thursday stays reserved for our freediving discipline training, doing statics and some dynamics. Focusing on technique and performance and not so much on doing schedules.

Due to the fact that I have a horrible small co2 buffer in my body it is mandatory to start doing some schedules again to fix this problem. Sanne already explained the crawl without breath technique we developed for his own personal training and it’s now time to convert these exercises to myself.

We decided to add another 30 minutes of water time on Tuesday afternoon. People sometimes wonder why we don’t plan longer training routines (our Thursday schedule is 60 minutes), but that is just not for us and our busy lives and so many other activities.

These 30 minutes will be filled in the coming months with 2 different exercises. The First will be a series of 25 meter long crawls without breath. Tuesday I set the repeated countdown timer on my watch to 1:25 minutes and I will swim 8 times a 25 meter without breathing, rest and go again when the timer reaches zero.

The second exercise is crawling with an extended breathing rate. Where I normally crawl every 4 stokes, I will up this to 6 and 8 strokes. I will do 4×50 meters with a breath on each 6th stroke and rest after each 50 meter for 1 minute. After the First four laps are over I will continue and do another four laps but this time with one breath every 8th stroke.

I’m curious if I will manage to complete it. It will for sure give me a good burn, just like I need it. If everything goes all right I plan to change the schedule with very very small steps each time I manage to complete it successfully. Wish me luck! I need it!

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Dynamic Exercise: Crawl without Breath

09/01/2010 By 2 Comments

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.

CWB

CWB

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
200706_Project13_TrainingAs 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.

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