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100 a new PB with monofin

30/10/2009 By Leave a Comment

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 ;).

Sanne swimming with the Leaderfins Hyper mono-fin

Sanne swimming with the Leaderfins Flyer Pro mono-fin

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.

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Time for a change: Testing at Liège competition

26/10/2009 By 11 Comments

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

Getting ready for the turn

Getting ready for the turn

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 …
20091025-Liege-DNF-01My 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.

20091025-Liege-FB-01

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.

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The number 23 | Section 2: Alignment & Final preps

24/09/2009 By 7 Comments

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

I just came back from a good training in the Fitness Center here in Veldhoven, I tested the new alignment setup and could actually swim the same speed with less arm & legstrokes. And for my feeling the intensity is the same, I just need less strokes… And this is interestingly the same as I discussed with Jorg yesterday.

I combined my video material from last week Thursday and this weeks Wednesday alignment training. The material shows me 2 times without any weight, 2 times with 800 grams around my neck, 1 times with 3 kilograms around my neck and the last one is with 3 kilograms around the neck and 1 kilogram around my waist. Although I still float up, it feels a lot more relaxing. I’d like to float up as I still need to resurface for safety reasons, although I’d like this alignment a little further after Wiesbaden. Now Enough factors have changed and I don’t want to mix it up to much. Thanks Remko for letting me borrow your 3 kilograms neckweight ;). I’ll have to make my own again soon.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly5rPeLmfes

This week I also settled the medical checkup that you need to show at the competition. Everything was fine and there were no irregularities, it’s always reassuring that nothing’s wrong. On the night we check the alignment, I got into the static pool for a small sessions. To jorg’s surprise I was still able to amaze him with a clean 5 minute 9 seconds static. So far my schedule is a great journey in preparation for Wiesbaden on October 3rd.

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The Number 23 | Section 1: Successful

16/09/2009 By 4 Comments

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

Tuesday evening I had planned my goal realization for Section 1 to take place at the pool in Zeist, where I was able to train with Eric van Riet Paap, Danny Martherus and Jouke van Riel.

2009-RMC-the-number-23It is a good pool featuring a small area, shallow depth and 27 degrees water, which made it perfect for static. Danny and Jouke started with their static CO2 tables, almost not getting distracted by my GoPro bottom camera ;). Eric and I teamed up for a static session, starting out with a small empty lungs of a minute. After that I did my first real static since a long while and it actually felt quite good. I didn’t really give Eric a chance when I aborted my mission and directly surfaced, only to find out I was 35 seconds away of my goal. So, lesson learned and made a deal with Eric that whenever I wanted to know the time I would ask and after that I would hold for at least two additional safety taps. Going into my second attempt, I felt really relaxed and didn’t start having trouble until 4 minutes 15 seconds. After that I heard Eric telling me that 5 minutes was also a good point for me to focus on and I continued to relax. At 5 minutes and 3 seconds I decided that I reached my training goal and that gave me a fantastic overall feeling. As a side note for myself, this is actually the time I should start the real fight phase.

Eric and I swopped places and he started his static session. As he’s adapting a new technique, which includes shallow breathing through the snorkel, Eric does some very impressive empty lung statics. Ranging from 2 minutes to 2 minutes 30 seconds, but he told me 3 minutes 30 seconds is his best in empty lungs. Now it was time for him to test his packing through a snorkel technique and went for a full lungs static. Looking fairly easy and relaxed all the way, somewhere around 5 minutes contractions seem to have kicked in. I reassured him with the time and he totally relaxed, arms of the ledge and on a mission to 6 minutes 4 seconds. Good static!

Next up was my goal in Dynamic No Fins with a goal of 80 meters. I got ready prepared my goggles and neck weight and entered the water, I added an addition weight around my waist of 0,5 kilograms. After a good start, I was nearing the 50 meters and my mind was ready to give up on me. But I felt strong after my good static time, which convinced me to continue. After turning at 50 meters, the urge completely vanished and the goal of 80 meters was easily within reach. Only one good turn at 75 meters a few arm strokes and I’d done it. It has been a long time, but this actually felt liberating and puts me in the position where I had been waiting for almost a year. Ready for more!

Eric-Riet-Paap-DYNEric did his dynamic with fins schedule with a nice full pocket mono-fin, with the pockets placed under an angle. He started of with a new technique by using an arm-stroke in between the mono-fin kicks. Which actually doesn’t look all that tiring when you look at it, he made it to 136 meters which impressed me yet again ;). Eric continued with a distance schedule for dynamic and I shot a few underwater videos from it. Jouke was training his technique on the mono-fin and getting a proper balance for his Orca suit. But I can hear him say that he didn’t find the proper weight balance yet.

I would like to thank the people form Freediving Utrecht for having me over in their pool. I had a really good time, freediving, chatting, catching up and of course I reached my goals!

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The Number 23 | Section 1: Basic training

10/09/2009 By Leave a Comment

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

200706_Project13_TrainingThe first part of ‘The Number 23′-schedule is progressing the way I planned it. My focus is definitely on bringing back the endurance and fitness of my body. This first section consists of 9 days, which already proved to be a good thing. My metabolism has switched up a gear, due to the higer intensity training. I even felt a little hungry this morning, although I had quite the evening meal.

My body is noticing the raise in activity levels and that’s a positive thing. Also my mind is accepting the fact of competing again, I seem to be able to deal with more contractions and longer distances under water.

Dry tables
On land training is what I started out with in the first section. I set out a goal of 4 minutes breath hold in a dry static. But as it turned out, after the first go, with only neutral lungs, I was already near 3 minute 30 seconds. I decided to do a full lungs try and already got to 4 minutes. So I adjusted the goal for the first section to 4 min. 30 sec. After that I did a dry walk with a somewhat milder pace than usual, but never the less I made it to 1 min. 30 seconds. I also adjusted this goal in my schedule to 1 min. 40sec. From this point I can build further into my dry tables.

DNF Pyramid
Last year after William Trubridge‘s clinic at Apnea Team Amsterdam‘s head quarters, I converted his pyramid schedule in a way that suites my way of training:

  • 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

This is what I did on Tuesday in the pool, together with Jorg spotting me over my last 10 runs of 25 meters. Which was kind of grueling, but in the end very satisfying!

Fitness
On the side of all the freediving training I also want my body fitness to be up and running as well, so I planned a few full body workouts throughout the 23 days of training. Maybe I’ll post that schedule in a later post… Here’s the link to my current number 23 – schedule.

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The Number 23: Freedive training for RMC Wiesbaden

09/09/2009 By Leave a Comment

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

2009-RMC-the-number-23Not only is ‘the number 23‘ the title to a movie starring Jim Carrey in 2007, it’s also the number of days I have available to prepare myself for the Rhein Mein Cup 2009 in Wiesbaden. This year’s RMC 2009 competition takes place on October 3rd and I’ve inscribed myself for static (STA) and Dynamic No Fins (DNF).

I’ve spent serious time on a good schedule, holding all the right exercises for the preparation to competing in October. I divided the schedule into sections; Basic, Specific & Specialized. Annelie Pompe’s article “The secret of Freediving training” on Sebastian Naslund’s website, perfectly describes of what attention areas the sections exist.

The thought behind her article supports the way Jorg and I plan our training throughout a year. With the difference that we plan more around pool specific schedules, as opposed to the depth preparation described in the article. Also my schedule is not focusing on a year round plan, but I’m now on a 23 day schedule built from the same important blocks. That’s why it lacks certain endurance exercises, which have been replaced by DNF combined endurance exercises.

I’ve posted the schedule onto Google’s Document service and made it public, so you can follow the progress over the 23 days of freediving preparation training. Click here to open it.

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Break's over, back in action…

08/09/2009 By Leave a Comment

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

sannebuurmaOver the last year I was enjoying my step back from competitions, as you might have read on this blog. We’ve done a lot of training, without actual performance goals. The main goal of my step back was to have fun in freediving again. During this year I’ve grown back to enjoying and experiencing freediving the way I used to, giving me an overall fantastic feeling. The last few months thoughts of serious training were crossing my mind again and I kept off these thoughts until I couldn’t resist anymore.

At first I wanted to compete in the 5th Dutch Apnea Open, making it the perfect comeback after a year of absence. Unfortunately I will not be in the Netherlands at that time, as I already planned the time off for my holiday way in advance. It made me consider the Rhein Main Cup competition and I pointed out to myself that it was time to “Just do it!“. Just like the dutch apnea open, this competition and I go way back to the beginning of my competitive freediving, so it mainly serves as a friendly and familiair ground.

I’ll describe the preparation schedule in my next post, in which I’ll also share my live updated schedule.

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Freediving training @ the tongelreep's 50 meter pool

31/07/2009 By Leave a Comment

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

Last night I went out to the Tongelreep for some freediving training as it’s thursday again. Jorg only just got back from holiday and pointed out that he would be joining again next week, but both Kostas and Yugyug were there to join me in training.

img_3893I didn’t really set up a schedule for me to work on, but I did want to do a few crawl without breath’s, DNF’s and some static at depth. Unfortunenately the Tongelreep was on summerschedule, so the 5 meter deep pool was not available to us at this time. We had to switch to the 50 meter official competition pool section to do our training. This is the section also used with the dynamic’s during the 4th dutch Apnea Open. The pool is 3 meters deep and has a lot of lanes available, but it’s rather hard to get a lane to yourself » so you’ll always have to be alert to swimmers going about their own business.

So Yugyug and I agreed to start with some warm-up laps, which for me meant doing about 4 lanes of 50 meter crawl without breath. Yugyug was doing 25 meters of DNF’s to get his system prepped. After our warm-up Kostas joined up with us and it was time for the static’s at 3 meter depth. Yugyug and Kostas did really good static’s and I got inspired to do a static as well. I agreed with Kostas on their tapping strategy and told him I would see how things progressed but I set the max to 3 minutes. This all went really good, I wasn’t all that relaxed as the last time with Jorg I had a good 3 minutes at 5 meters, but in general I did not have a hard time taking the contractions for the last 60 seconds.

After the static session I had a go at DNF’s over 50 meters, which had been a while in a 50 meter pool. First lap was progressing good, but confidence was lacking a bit so for safety reasons I went up at 40 meters, as I was training alone at this moment.  But after resurfacing I instantly could feel and notice that this safety measure altho good to do, no where near any out of breath signs ;). So as confidence was up again I started at the other side and did another DNF run back and this time the 50 meters went away easily again. Although touching the wall at 50 meters did feel as a relief, I think that’s only due to the fact I haven’t been doing this at all lately.

20081217_Technique_DYN_Kostas_01Kostas decided to go for a DYN over 50 meters after he first tried 2 x 25 meters to warm up. He came up easily, but one of the things to note here was that he’d decreased his swimming speed and now did a dynamic over 50 meters in about 1 minute 10 seconds, which he said did make him more comfortable. We’ll see how this progresses over the weeks to come.

Overall we had a quality training, learning a lot and having fun. I’ll try and write an exercise post about the crawl without breath to give more insight in this good training exercise. So stay tuned.

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Shivers down the spine » not good for the freediving feeling

11/06/2009 By Leave a Comment

This is a post by Sanne Buurma.

Today’s training at the pool was a special one… It’s the first time, since I met Jorg, that he had the shivers from cold water. Normally I am the one who starts to get cold during static’s or dynamic’s, but this time it was Jorg’s turn.

Bonjour!We set out for our normal schedule, where Jorg does his 4-5 static’s at depth, followed by 2-3 dynamic runs. The first static starts with 1 minute, increasing it by 15 seconds every next try with 2 minutes rest in between. So as Jorg filled his lungs with air to descend to 5 meters, all was well and he resurfaced in a normal manner, but immediately told me he felt cold. Two minutes later, after breathing up for his second try, he descended again. This time he was a bit restless, as he sat himself down on the pool floor with his back against the wall. Never the less, he finished his 2nd try ad resurfaced. Now I could even tell that he was shivering, so the next tries he did were not relaxed as he’s capable of doing the static’s at depth.  Finishing up the schedule with a nice 1 minute 50 seconds, but shivers all over and a badly influenced freediving feeling.

20090509-tongelreep-02-mediumMoving on to the dynamics, the cold was no different. Jorg started of with some dynamic no fins and immediately after he did the dynamic with fins, where as last week he’d turned and head back, now he turned and resurfaced. Not willing to do another one, he flipped a few switches and decided to an extra run with fins, but a different technique. This proved to bring back his freediving feeling, because he did it monofin style. I don’t know how he pulls it off, but every time he does monofin style it immediately looks easy and natural. A thing to keep in mind for our next training sessions.

Yugyug had joined up with us, halfway through Jorg’s schedule. He was up for some different kind of training and he managed to pull off the distance he’d predicted a few weeks back. This new technique is looking promising and most probably he’ll demonstrate it in a future competition event. We’re looking forward to seeing him do that in live action.

Both me and Yugyug finished with a static at depth schedule, where we set out to do the same schedule Jorg had done earlier. Most interestingly, my shivers went away in the second try and never returned this session. That was a great static at depth session, where me and Yugyug ended with a 2 minute 20 seconds static at 5 meters. My last try I got rid of my goggles and went down no mask – no noseclip style, this is by far the best way for me to do static’s these days.

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Panheel Outdoor Freediving

31/05/2009 By 3 Comments

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

img_4324Yesterday 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.

img_4327When 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.

img_4328

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.

034Time 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.

Freediving @ 23 meter buoy

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.

025Next 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.

img_4344The 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.

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