Faith - the opposite of fear

faith

    [feyth]

–noun

1.	confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2.	belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.

3.	belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.

4.	belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.

5.	a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

6.	the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.

7.	the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.

8.	Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

—Idiom

9.	in faith, in truth; indeed: In faith, he is a fine lad.

Origin: 
1200–50; ME feith < class="ital-inline" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%; color: rgb(77, 78, 81); line-height: 1.25em; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; font-style: italic; ">fed, OF feid, feit < class="ital-inline" style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%; color: rgb(77, 78, 81); line-height: 1.25em; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; font-style: italic; ">fidem, acc. of fidēstrust, akin to fīdere to trust. 

fear

    [feer]

–noun

1.	a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

2.	a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights.

3.	concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone's safety.

4.	reverential awe, esp. toward God.

5.	that which causes a feeling of being afraid; that of which a person is afraid: Cancer is a common fear.

–verb (used with object)

6.	to regard with fear; be afraid of.

7.	to have reverential awe of.

8.	Archaic. to experience fear in (oneself).

–verb (used without object)

9.	to have fear; be afraid.

Origin: 

bef. 900; ME fere, OE fær sudden attack or danger; c. OS fārambush, D gevaar, G Gefahr danger, ON fār disaster

(source: dictionary.com)

"Son of a mermaid" Free diving under water song

(More clips by Jeroen Elout can be seen here and here)

Tsa lung by Tulku Lama Lobsang

By change I came across a guy that told me about Tsa Lung which is " a technique that combines movements with holding the breath". It's not every day that I get a change to do a workshop which features holding my breath so I decided to just do it and see what it will bring me.

Reading the Wikipedia article does not make it very clear to me, it sounds a bit fuzzy and thus scary. In the past the combination of the words fuzzy and religion made me do a step back. Over the years I have learned that these type of things are often fuzzy because words are not the right tool to explain these things. And anyway - I'm a big boy now :-) so let's go...

The man giving the workshop next wednesday is called Tulku Lama Lobsang. I will let you know how it went...

You gotta go your own way

Finding out what my own thing - that what works for me - is, is the hard part. Training is easy... well...

The last couple of months were interesting but not per se the most enjoyable freedive experience for me. The first two years of my freediving I felt very much like a beginner, wherever I went something new and magic was to be learned. I was aware that I wanted this beginner attitude to last forever. But as in any relationship things are always changing, evolving. Some part of my relation with freediving had changed without me noticing.

Looking back at the period after the Dutch Apnea Open competition of last november I see that my attitude of 'have fun, see where it gets me' made way for more ambition. Of course I wanted to go to the world cup and do well, but I didn't notice that the 'let's see where it gets me' vanished. For the first time I also became a copycat. Being a bit jealous :-) of a certain someone's even faster improvements in static than my own (you know who you are!) I tried to mimic his way of doing things. That process is usually called learning but after some time it became clear that my own methods work better for me at this point. Instead of taking out the good bits I kept trying and became frustrated. Now, frustration is an excellent way to kill enthusiasm. So... I became.. even more frustrated. Alternating 4+ with 7+ statics regularly. Motivation was not good enough (I must say I also didn't sleep very well so that was a factor too) for steady progress.

It must not always be nice for fellow freedivers to see me progress fast, sorry 'bout that. (just kidding :-/ )

Yesterday I finally had enough, took out the torpedy shaped fun machine (no not that one! ;-) ). This one that I won during a lottery. And I drove of to Haarlem for some serious fun training. As it turned out it was the first time the underwater scooter took me over 200 meters.

- "Stay hungry, stay foolish."

Static with weights pictures

This is me during last weeks static training in a shallow (~80cm) local pool. I am wearing my Orca suit for a change because that allows me to fasten my neckweight.

During the first three pictures I wear 4kg around my waist plus 4.6kg around my neck, doing a full inhale plus 0, 5 and 15 packs...







And during the next three pictures I wear no weights while again doing a full inhale plus 0, 5 and 15 packs...







I'm not very used to wearing the weights yet. Especially the neckweight needs some getting used to. But all in all I can do 6-8 packs more for the same comfort level. This is nice and I am curious if I can do I good max performance this way during the next couple of weeks.

Freediving under ice revisited

Mark 'the creative genius' Keijzers has been compiling the rest of the ice freediving video material we have from last week. 

The result is this 23 minutes long movie.

(photo: suh73)

Using weights at static

Packing for dynamic is easy, pack 'till I burst and swim. Being 1.5 meter below the surface makes that the air in my lungs compress to a comfortable size. With static this advantage is a lot less. I am a real floater with my big lungs and few muscles. Additionally I can relax quite well and I think this is what cools me down really quick. I have now learned to ignore the 'cold' and I know it slows down my metabolism, which is a good thing. On the other hand my body is trying to stay warm and this costs energy. Therefor having the right suit makes a big difference, at least mentally. In >30C water I now wear a 4mm long john model Elios Suit when the water is cooler I add a 4mm jacket. The suit is not so new anymore so the insulation is less than you might expect. Maybe I will try my very tight Orca suit because that might have less buoyancy.

With full packing I am floating quite a bit as you can see in this movie. Looking at yet another movie of Herbert Nitsch (he packs 25-30x) where he does his 9:04 WR in 2006 you can see clearly that he is wearing a belt around his waist. According to the new AIDA regulations (v12) using weights is allowed (5.1.3) but the attempt should take place at the surface (5.1.2). I interpret this as meaning that some part of the athlete should be floating.

One year ago I tried a weightbelt but quickly abandoned the whole idea because I could not relax my neck the way I wanted to. I revisited the idea because I'm again doing pack stretches and want to get in as many packs as I can relax with. Currently that is about 10 packs and I think by laying deeper I could probably manage close to 20 so that would buy me some extra time. (sidenote: my 8:02 personal best I did with just 6 packs, no suit, warm water, dynamic training as warmup, i.e. not ideal)

So how much weight do I need? I've tried the weights I currently use for dynamic which is 4kg plus 4.6kg neckweight. My legs were still floating so next time I will add at least 2kg around the waist. Using the neckweight helps me relax my neck because my upper body is deeper in the water making the head drop down less. Or I'll try wearing the Orca suit for (no warmup) static. 

... a few days further.... Wearing the Orca suit was a good idea. It's warm enough for no-warmup statics and it is just a little bit less floaty. But best of all I could simply close the neckweight instead of letting it balance on my neck. I did a nice and easy 7:09 that way yesterday. Not on the first, but on the second hold. The first one was just under 4 minutes because I overpacked and was not having fun.

We made some pictures with and without packing and with and without weights that I might post soon to show you how much of a difference this all makes to my buoyancy.

Crazy table

Yesterday I did 7:05 on a Crazy table, which is a challenge I set myself  over half a year ago.

For an explanation about this type of table you can have a look at this thread on the deeperblue forum. As you can read, Herbert Nitsch takes a sip of air every 15 seconds, I take a sip of air whenever I feel I need one. I'm not sure if this makes any real difference. (note: Herbert seems to do 8 minutes, hmmm - work to be done (by me ;-))

I have not done this training very often, some of my previous results can be seen below... So far I did not enjoy doing this in the pool because of all the head-lifting that is required when breathing in.

What I like about this is that it starts with some 'hardcore' low O2 tolerance training when you repeat the initial holds more often, followed by a very long period of contractions which makes this an excellent mental training. CO2 training is mostly a mental excercise anyway! 

Preperation:

3x

5 minutes: ujjayi breathing (2-3 breaths per minute)

2 minutes: tidal breathing

sub maximum inhale

full exhale

max hold

The final hold is not done to the max. At some point I can take a little air in. This process is repeated many times until I have full lungs and fully packed. At this point I keep holding my breath as long as I can.

5/5/2008 (dry) 4:00

9/5/2008 (dry) 5:52 (no looking at the clock), contractions starting at 1:00 

challenge myself to do over 7 minutes!

15/5/2008 (warm pool water) 5:05

3/2/2009 (dry)

exhale hold #1 - 1:44,

exhale hold #2 - 2:22

hold #3              - 7:05 new personal best! (contractions starting at 1:30)

be safe - have fun!

Eric.

(photo by Ljubica_R)

Freediving under ice

Last friday four local freedivers went diving in the Maarsseveense plassen. There was only just about enough ice (~2cm). Because the ice was thin no-one had been on the ice so it was brilliantly clear is you can see in this short movie...

Because the ice was this translucent it was almost impossible to tell if you had ice or water above you, we had to feel to be sure! This also made that is was all to easy to get disorientated. When you one day try this (even 1 meter under the ice!) make 100% sure you have a good (float) line attached between you and your buddy, and hold that line in one hand to make sure you never loose it even if the knot gets untied!

Here you can see buddy Danny looking at some air bubbles under ice...

And me pushing my feet through the ice...

As you can see we did not hold the line in our hand in these videos. We were stupid! At least we did hold the line when we tried to cover  a distance of 15-20 meters under ice to another place without ice. It was a sunny day with almost no wind. All in all we stayed in the 3C  water little under an hour. There have been days in spring when I was colder when getting out of the water!  

Some more photo's can be found on Mark's site.