Ice skating

These are the type of skates I bought. They're affordable , comfortable and very well suited for beginners like me.

On sunday I did one hour ice skating at the Vechtsebanen in my hometown Utrecht. Heartrate average 140, peak 164, Suunto T4 trainings effect (T.E.) 3.9

The nice thing about ice skating for me is that I can control my heartrate better than with cycling or rowing. When my heartrate is up to about 155 bpm it still feels quite relaxed and it seems like I can continue for a long time. I was very much overdressed and sweating a lot! It occurred to me that sweating at cardio is what contractions are for freediving. It's not very nice, irritating at times maybe but also not to bad in the end.

(photo: http://flickr.com/photos/9394262@N02/1314865213/)

Training this week

Sunday (getting back in the saddle)

• 20 minutes small fins monofin training
  
• 30 minutes CO2 training (drywalk with pyramidical recovery) using my iPhone program 'Single Breath'. 33x 48 second holds with, 6x12 seconds, 7x8 seconds, 7x4 seconds, 7x8 seconds, 6x12 seconds recovery.

Monday (diverse)

• 30 minutes O2 training
  
• 40 minutes cardio fitness
  
• 20 minutes weight (in apnea)
  

Tuesday (good lesson, hard training)

• 1 hour ice skating
• 2 hours pool static (too little sleep and too much muscle pain)
• 1 hour monofin training (could hardly do 50 meters :-) )

Wednesday (rest)

• Watching Californication
• and another one
• and another one
• ...

Thursday (this feels so good)

• O2 training
• dry empty lung statics
• 60 meter bottom (pool) crawling in 4:13. Yeah, crossed the 4 minutes with ease. Interesting - I didn't know it could be this easy. Took more CO2 with me than usual. Great confidence-builder for when I start taking this much CO2 with me on my monofin dynamics.
• monofin technique training (no fins, long fins, ultra soft oldskool monofin)
• 18 minutes one-breath CO2 table (pool) this was supposed to be 30 minutes but time did not permit. I have not done this CO2 table since Dutch Apnea Open so I started a little easier than I used to. (2x1:52, 3x2:03, 3x2:15, 1x2:03). Next time I would like to do 2x2:00, 3x2:10, 3x2:20, 3x2:10, 2x2:00.

Friday (cardio)

• 1 hour

Fitness torture

(source: http://flickr.com/photos/kowax09/121290185/)

The last couple of days I was not feeling 100% but I did manage to squeeze in an hour of yoga, a monofin clinic by Enker, some dry empty lung statics and two fitness sessions.

The later were interesting because I started working on my legs, back and abdominal muscles. I had never done that in my life but I think it will help my monofin technique. It's hard work which I did not do too much of these times, but I (kind of) liked it and am curious if it will actually help.

On the bicycle and glide machines I was doing about 65% whilst holding my breath (30 sec. apnea, 15 sec. breathing). I took the intensity down a notch or two because this feels so much harder than regular cardio fitness. My heartrate normally goes up to 160-165 but while doing this it stayed around 110-115. This should train the muscles in my legs to perform much better in anearobic situations like depth diving or the part of a dynamic swim after the dive reflex fully kicked in. I must admit I have no clue if it will improve my cardiovascular system as much or maybe even more compared to regular exercises.

Freediving positive

Choppers
Originally uploaded by dainec

If there was any doubt left, today that has all gone! I now know for sure that I am infected with the freediving bug because I declined anesthetic at the dental hygienist because it would be a good relaxation exercise. Now I just have to create an intense yet doable pyramidical training table for it. It is a pity however - all that precious haemoglobin that literally goes down the drain...

Busy week with ups and downs

It has been a busy freediving week.

On tuesday I did a two hour training session in the pool followed by an hour of monofin technique training (small fins surface swimming) and empty lung Frenzel equalisation training in the deep-end of the pool.

The static training was unusual in the sense that I had set myself a minimal time for the evening. One of my fellow freedivers has started an experiment where he measures a freediver's glucose-level before and after a good attempt. I decided that for me a good attempt would be seven minutes or more. My relaxation period before the hold was too long, I let myself get distracted and I was getting a bit to cold. In short - I did not deliver! :-) Oh and was I crumpy afterwards! :-[ In the end I managed to push out a decent 6:30 but when the oximeter was put on my finger it showed a staggering low SpO2% of 60%. A value I associate more with an 8+ static.

Of course this does not matter at all, what does matter is how to approach the next training!

Next training was to be on thursday where Jouke and I had some almost empty lanes to play with and compare our monofins. After an hour we went to the slightly warming pool for our one hour static training. We talked about relaxation methods and the fact that they are much more important now that we are (slowly) converting to no-warmup max attempts. With only 15 minutes on the clock we tried 3 minutes Ujjayi breathing followed by 2 minutes of regular tidal volume breathing. The Ujjayi breathing we would like to be longer (Ulf suggests 10 minutes). We both did very very relaxed holds of unimportant duration. Jouke told me this was the most relaxed he ever was for a hold of this length! This training made me really happy even though the time of the hold was much less than a few days ago.

And than on friday I went to Eindhoven to visit some fellow freedivers. I had a change to play in the 5 meter deep pool. Here I ran into Sanne and Jorg and later also Daan. Daan let me play with his new monofin and I must say I really enjoyed that! We also had the change to swim in the 50 meter pool where I did some crawling on the bottom of the pool. My swim time on max attempts lately are just below 3 minutes and so was my crawling so I decided I want to increase me relaxation under water by increasing the crawl time. Friday I did around 40 meters in 3:35 so 4 minutes bottom time (50 meters) seems quite doable now.

Hypnosis, NLP, EFT

I find this page in swedish of fellow freediver Ulf Dextegen very interesting. Unfortunately I can't read swedish so I would advice you to read this Google translation into english.

I 'know' (self-)hypnosis, NLP and EFT and have used the first one for freediving, read (part of ) a book on the second one and saw the third one being used quite often. My interest is in this order, but I find it very nice to see people bring all kind of past experiences into our small world!

Seven is the new six

The last couple of weeks I had little change to train dynamic. So last thursday I went for the final two hour static training session of the year. Of the usual crowd only Jouke was there but Mark and Nanja came over from Haarlem to Zeist to train with us. Since it's chrismas holidays the hot-pool (31-33C) was available for us which is in great contrast with the -8C outside.



After the last competition of four weeks ago I stopped going for max attempts. What I did instead is trying to avoid any form of hyperventilating to make the training extra hard and to avoid constantly having my current best times in mind. I do slow tidal volume breathing for a few minutes and then 80% inhale, exhale close to residual volume and full inhale with packing. At first this gave me contractions at about 2'30'' and now just after 3'00''. My goal here is to improve my first and second attempt this way. The last few weeks my bests were just over 5'00'' on the 1st attempt and just over 6'00'' on the 2nd. These holds are not hard, just long - exactly what I want to be training for. Doing dry empty lung static with my oximeter made it very clear that SpO2% on the first atempt with this breathing was much much better then the holds with hyperventilating! So I just need to get used to some discomfort now!

I continued with a few empty lung statics. Some time ago I managed 3'35'' but lately 2'20'' seemed to be the best I could do. (not bad at all but a whole lot less then before) On monday I managed 2'35'' (dry training) after one month of hard cardio training so I was quite happy with that! Today went even better and with the 2'51'' I hope to reach the 3 minutes mark soon again. I'm still unsure about the result of cardio training for my freediving performances, but now is the best time for it. At least it will prepare me for fitness in apnea that I have planned in a few weeks.

BTW pool temperatures over 30C are not my cup a tea. it took me a good 30 minutes to have the suit configuration that kept me warm enough but not too warm.

Ten minutes before closing time I noticed I was not happy with the 'max' holds so I did a kind of end-of-year present static with hyperventilation (deep breathing from 2 minutes to 1 minute before official top). The hold itself I wanted to abort a few times so clearly not a top time (for me). Still did 7'12'' with an easy surface protocol. One year ago a training with a 6+ hold felt like a good training but this has changed...

Seven is the new six!