This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Yesterday the sun was shining and the weather was good, so we went to our training lake in Panheel. Guy, Sanne and me were planning to have another nice freediving session over there, and because weather was good we brought our girlfriends and kids as well.

When we arrived it was already pretty busy, but we found a good spot to park and change near our entry into the water. First I walked to see the water and noticed it was quite wavy for Panheel terms that is. So I was afraid the visibility wouldn’t be so good today. After putting on the wetsuits, we jumped in and it looked like I was right. Not so good sight in the beginning.

On our way to the 10 meter buoy

First our warm-up at the 10 meter buoy. I went down first, guy watching me. After the great session in the pool from last Thursday I was eager to get the good feeling back again at a little deeper depth. At the bottom I tried to relax a little bit and it actually felt already pretty good for a first dive. Sanne was hovering around me, because he attached the GoPro camera to his forehead and was filming our session.

Next in line was Sanne to dive and afterwards Guy. After the first dive cycle was done, I was up again for another one. I thought I would try to make it a little longer dive and managed to do so. 1:35 minutes and still no contraction. So it felt good.

Time to hit the 23 meter buoy. Because of all the waves we didn’t want to swim all the way to the 35 meter buoy, so we took the somewhat shorter swim to our other spot. I was up again, so after some preparation I started with some free immersion pulls. I noticed that I was pretty negative at 8 meters depth, so I stopped pulling and let myself go in a freefall to the bottom. It was an excellent feeling and it felt so easy. When I arrived at the bottom, it was still so light, so I looked arround and there was 10 meters visibilty at 23 meters depth! Wow! It was amazing, I’ve never seen anything so clear in the Netherlands at depth before.

After I came up again, I told about it and Sanne and Guy were as eager to go again as me. Sanne and I decided to do a duo dive. Me up front and Sanne following me so he could film me. For sure this most have delivered some good video images that Sanne will deliver in another videoclip.

Training at the 23 meter line

We did some more deepdiving and after 1 hour it was enough to go back to the other 10 meter buoy. There we tested our technique and Sanne had the excellent idea to do some FRC (Functional Residual Capacity) dives and see how it goes. First one for me since years, so I was curious. After the last breath, I relaxed my lungs and got them back to neutral. After the duckdive I didn’t really have to do anything. I just fell down slowly. Suddenly I almost hit the 10 meter platform, so that wasn’t a problem at all. Great thing was I could stay down for a pretty long time, especially because it was a FRC dive.

Next try was to do an empty lung dive. Again same preparation, but this time blowing out all my air. After the duckdive, I felt that I was sinking fast! So I really had to use my diaphragm to equalize. But going down again to 10 meters was again not a problem. I was pretty amazed by that. I didn’t really have to rush back up and managed to stay there for around 10 seconds, before returning. Great! Sanne filmed me on this one and he told me that he could see me working with my diaphragm big time. Curious to see it on video.

The last thing we always do is swim back from the 10 meter buoy to the exit place. I had some troubles the last 3 times finding the right direction, but was in good spirits to get it right finally. Guy and Sanne went first and come up at the correct spot. So now it was time for me to finally get it right. Going down to 10 meters I was making sure I was leaving the platform in the right angle and right side and was very pleased when I finally came up at the right spot, at last!

All in all a perfect training! Hope to have a lot more of these sessions this season.