Eric van Riet Paap - Just an intermediate step

Freediving courses/cursussen

2011-11-18T09:18:00.001+01:00

The BeWater site is up and running. We have decided to call it BeWater as an homage to a famous Bruce Lee quote that ends with "Be water my friend". See the site for the full version. If you are looking for AIDA freediving courses (cursussen in het nederlands) then please visit us to see that we can offer what you need.

BeWater my friend

I'm now an AIDA Instructor

2011-10-15T11:27:00.008+02:00

Some time ago I successfully finished an AIDA instructor course in Greece with Stavros from Freediving Club Greece.

Fellow student Daan Verhoeven and I will now be unleashed upon the world (and The Netherlands in particular) to preach about this beautiful underwater experience.

Daan made the following movie when we had a little bit of time to play after an open water training/teaching session.

Stay tuned, a website is in the making.

Dutch Freedivers in Dahab (Teaser)

2011-01-13T11:23:00.003+01:00

Three more nights until my first freediving trip to Dahab in Egypt.

The trip is organized by Nanja of dutch freediving school Enker. There will be a group of about 15 dutch freedivers among which four of my teammates of Freediving Utrecht - Danny, Edwin, Erik and me.

On the 18th and 20th I will go sled diving with OnlyOne in Sharm. On the 21st I will attend a mini competition where I get the chance to do one depth discipline for an official Aida ranking. To make the time go a little faster I made this short trailer in iMovie'11. I hope you like it.

One hour successive apnea

2011-01-07T17:42:00.002+01:00

During my freedive training between christmas and new years eve 2010 I decided to see how long I could stay under water during one hour. This non-official discipline is called successive apnea and records have been set of around 59:30 and even 59:45.

This movie is speed up 8 times during the breathhold to make it easier to digest. :-)

The rules are: two timekeepers (average time counts). Stopwatch starts with lifting my airways above the surface and stops with me submerging again.

I managed 59:09 (only ;-) ) even thought I did longer breathholds (therefor less times breathing) than the earlier fools. Next time I will need to work on surfacing and inhaling quicker.

Happy new year!

Max dives

2010-11-25T12:24:00.001+01:00

Negotiate the things that go on inside my head.
Be gentle, nice, understanding, but be the father.
Tell it as it is, be firm.
Thoughts of quitting, curses that can be felt throughout the body.
Flashes of intentions go as they came.
Pavlov reaction at times and distances known
the relative unknown races my heartrate
or so I think
my remembrance more distant
expectations, hopes, a memory
inside... inside...
the world still there and well
which is enough to know
waves of attention glide though my body
be water
some more
and more
waiting for a sign, trust, gentle
respect for what is, be happy but realistic
concentrate, some more and more
wait... wait..
yes!
surface with this mind and body
attention and feelings take some more time to return
let go

RMC Wiesbaden competition virtual ranking

2010-09-29T21:46:00.005+02:00

Virtual ranking for saturdays (oct 2nd 2010) RMC Wiesbaden competition based on personal bests in competition of athletes on the inlist. Data by Apnea.cz, script for producing this output by me...

note: when you see '0:00' or '0 meter' than that just means you haven't got an official ranking in that discipline yet or the script/program contains another bug. You could still win the competition!

Female athletes...
 1) 134.5 points (4:45 + 155 meter DYN) Olga Martinez Alvarez (GER)
 2) 131.7 points (5:01 + 143 meter DYN) Barbara Jeschke (GER)
 3) 111.1 points (4:03 + 125 meter DNF) Dajana Zoretic (CRO)
 4) 100.6 points (4:03 + 104 meter DNF) Aleksandra Sulkiewicz (POL)
 5) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Zdenka Demlovà (CZE)
 6) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Susanna Dietz (GER)
 7) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Silvia Vater (GER)
 8) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Silvia Schmidt (GER)
 9) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Monika Hopf (GER)
10) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Julia Döllmann (GER)
11) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DNF) Agnieszka Sawicz-Orska (POL)

Male athletes...
 1) 204.4 points (8:42 + 200 meter DYN) Robert Cetler (POL)
 2) 190.5 points (8:35 + 175 meter DNF) Goran Colak (CRO)
 3) 173.7 points (8:01 + 155 meter DNF) Eric van Riet Paap (NED)
 4) 170.6 points (7:23 + 164 meter DYN) Andrea Richichi (ITA)
 5) 166.5 points (6:35 + 175 meter DYN) Sergio Martinez Alvarez (GER)
 6) 157.2 points (6:31 + 158 meter DNF) Michal Mrozowski (POL)
 7) 146.0 points (5:55 + 150 meter DYN) Jens Berger (GER)
 8) 140.1 points (5:28 + 149 meter DYN) Adrian Kwiatkowski (POL)
 9) 138.2 points (6:01 + 132 meter DNF) Igor Migunov (RUS)
10) 130.6 points (6:23 + 108 meter DNF) David Cizek (CZE)
11) 124.3 points (5:09 + 125 meter DYN) Cedric Bourgaux (BEL)
12) 118.3 points (5:29 + 105 meter DNF) Danny Martherus (NED)
13) 116.7 points (5:06 + 111 meter DYN) Lukasz Piszczek (POL)
14) 115.6 points (4:03 + 134 meter DNF) David Kent (GBR)
15) 114.2 points (5:16 + 102 meter DYN) Martin Link (GER)
16) 111.4 points (4:47 + 108 meter DYN) Aristidis Efstathiou (GER)
17) 111.1 points (4:23 + 117 meter DNF) Pavel Soukup (CZE)
18) 98.2 points (3:26 + 114 meter DYN) Eric Gerritsma (NED)
19) 94.3 points (4:09 + 89 meter DYN) Erik Skoda (NED)
20) 80.2 points (6:41 + 0 meter DNF) Roman Ondruj (CZE)
21) 72.0 points (3:30 + 60 meter DYN) Thomas Ehresmann (GER)
22) 42.0 points (0:00 + 84 meter DYN) Piotr Debski (POL)
23) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Udo Pörschke (GER)
24) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Stauber Sebastian (GER)
25) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Piotr Grenda (POL)
26) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Miha Karner (SLO)
27) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DYN) Jochen Lummel (GER)
28) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DNF) Frank Wiedemann (GER)
29) 0.0 points (0:00 + 0 meter DNF) Dominik Grimm (GER)

There is nothing like spending a day on something to save five minutes of work! :-)

Gozo 2010 - miniature arch

2010-05-17T12:31:00.009+02:00

During our latest freediving trip to Gozo we also visited Cominetto, a tiny island between Malta and Gozo.

First you see Danny Martherus and later me.

We were experimenting with the fluid/apnea goggles from Kerian Hibbs. The water was chilly but we just had to swim without our neoprene suits to get as close as possible to William Trubridge' video of the real Dahab Arch nofins dive.

Freediving competition on march 28th in Namur (Belgium)

2010-04-08T09:44:00.005+02:00

Already more than a week ago but worth mentioning here I think...

I have good memories of this place because last year I did my first and so far only 8 minute static in competition here. Like all Belgium competitions this one included all three disciplines. Last year I messed up my dynamic and nofins for various reasons. My body was still tired from the static (all three disciplines are done within about three hours) and I was very satisfied with the static result. This made that I had little motivation to endure the mental and physical challenges of long dives. In last years competition there were people with far more constant results who eventually won the competition. Usually I try to focus on the overall result and if the opportunity presents itself I try to grab it regardless of anything I wanted to do afterwards. There are only very few competitions I go to and who wins a competition is quickly forgotten. What counts more (for myself as well) is the place in the international Aida ranking and the best performances in each discipline. However, for me freediving is most of all about getting to know my body and mental side and work from/on/with that.

So my goal was to take first place in the overall competition. There were a couple more candidates for that spot (Sergio, Daan, Igor and some Belgium guys I knew little about) so this would be a challenge.

We started with static and I did a nice 7:08 which was 4 seconds less than Thomas Moureau. To tell the truth I did not like that ;-) . It's great for Thomas and I was hoping he would give the king of belgium (pool) freediving (Jean-Pol Francois) a good scare. JP always had by far the best performances so it is good for him to get some competition. Apparently belgium national records can be set at any training as long as there are judges present. This made the 7:12 from Thomas the best belgium static performance in competition! (not 100% sure I have the facts straight here, but this is what I've been told) Number three in static (Sergio) was about 30 seconds behind us. This translates to 13.2 meters Sergio had to win back in the next two dynamic disciplines.

Dynamic with monofin: my recent longer dives have all been done in perfect circumstances (one of the best 50 meters in the world) while my personal best in a 25 meter pool was about 50 meters less. This pool in Namur was only 1.1 meter deep on the shallow side but I was training that a lot lately and did no longer feel the stress of having to make many turns with my monofin. I was eager to improve my p.b. here. Nothing much to say about the dive itself, it was not very interesting. I could keep motivating myself to continue swimming although I had better days. I surfaced a bit to my own surprice. Still a good distance with 169 meters but soon after I knew I could and should have made the turn to have the 200 in sight for future dives. But I didn't and had to make the best from what I've got. Sergio did a personal best in competition with 175, Igor also did a personal best (I hope he picks up a monofin and starts training with that), Thomas got no points because he forgot to take of his noseclip during the surface protocol and Daan did a nice 157 dive with cursing from beginning to end. Very quick swim - I can tell you that! :-) So one happy Sergio, one slightly irritated me, one steady as ever Igor and one bouncing Daan. Obviously I'm forgetting many performances here. The results can be found at the link at the bottom of this post. One thing I'd like to say is that training partner and friend Danny Martherus made a huge dive of 132 meters (I'm in that video to somewhere) after only training with a monofin a couple of times. Way to go Danny!

Dynamic without fins: people getting tired. Dreaming more about big plates of pasta then about long dives with lactic acid filling up their arms and (most of all) legs. The funny thing is that people that don't train DNF ofter or have personal bests way below their capabilities did very well. I liked what the dutch women did with Judith's easy looking 100m, Natascha's over 50m and Pauline's almost 50 meter dive. To bad Nanja had a mouthdip and therefor a red card but that's just good motivation for her to pick up training more seriously again.

I thought Sergio would swim before me and that I would therefor know what I had to do. I was mistaken and I had to go first knowing that his best in competition was 125 meter. I swam and swam and swam some more until I was getting close to 125 where I knew that every meter would drastically increase my changes. After the 125m turn I did one more stroke and realized I had not been this close to my personal best and national record (153 meters) in about 18 month. I still felt good, made the turn and surfaced at 155 meter. I had a samba/LMC (loss of motor control) for a second which I did not feel coming but managed to hold it together and got a white card. The tiredness of the long day and the fact that the lines between the lanes could not be trusted because they were extremely loose both must have played a role here. I guess about half the red cards in this competition were caused by those lines and because neither of the four floaters we were handed by the safetydivers had enough buoyancy to keep us afloat. They should tape a few together instead of keeping two seperate floats per safety. Anyway - Sergio did his nofins, which was 100 meters, his limit for the day after his 175 dynamic. So I could have swam 62 meters less to still win the competition. But of course I'm stoked that I did more than that.

This is the movie Daan shot of the 155 meter dive. At the end he gets exited because he didn't see the record coming and neither did I to be honest. :-)

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The competition results can be downloaded from here.

New personal best with monofin 40 meters (january 2007)

2010-02-13T10:48:00.002+01:00

It's been three years since I started to swim with a monofin. So I thought it would be funny to compare my previous dives with the first one I recorded..... Enjoy yourself!

200 meter dynamic movie

2010-01-27T08:48:00.003+01:00

This is my dive of the shark-freediving.com competition. Total divetime was 3:28.

My first 200 meter dynamic

2010-01-24T12:03:00.005+01:00

Satisfied Mind

as sung by Mahalia Jackson

How many times have you heard someone say,
"If I had his money I would do things my way."

How little they know, well, it's so hard to find,
One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.

Oh, once I was waiting for fortune and fame,
Had everything that I needed to get a start in life's game.

Then suddenly it happened, I lost every dime,
But I'm richer by far with a satisfied mind.

No money can buy back your youth when you're old,
Or a friend when you're lonely or a love that's grown cold.

And the world's richest person is a pauper at times,
Compared to the one with a satisfied mind.

When my life is over and my time has run out,
All my friends and my loved ones I'm gonna leave them no doubt.

But there's one thing for certain, when it comes my time,
I'm gonna leave this old world with a satisfied mind.

-----

A low quality video can be seen here (skip to 5m23s to watch my performance). Better quality hopefully coming soon.

edit: my turns at 50 and 150 can be seen at 0:36:40 and 0:38:30 into this underwater recording.

Thanks to Jorg and Sanne of Shark Freediving for organizing the competition as well as for safetying. And all my warms to everyone that supported me in and outside the pool. You know who you are!

Now have some more fun and let's work on taking another step, someday soon preferably...

Dynamic p.b. in training

2009-11-19T14:00:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I added a full 29 meters to my personal best in training. So this is not a national record unless I repeat it in a competition. But still.. I'm very proud and happy I showed (myself) that I could do this.

Distance: 187 meter
Divetime: 3 minutes
Speed: 1.04 m/s

Lost a first record

2009-11-19T13:20:00.003+01:00

During the 12th long night of apnea in Berlin 'my' dutch national record in dynamic freediving (158 meter) was broken by Daan Verhoeven with a 169 meter dive. It felt a bit strange but a bit to my surprise I did not feel the immediate desire to get it back within the hour. I mean - I did a good attempt in doing so but I just seemed to not have the drive that Daan showed the last couple of weeks. So congratulations to him and I am very happy that stepping away from competitions for a year followed by hard training rekindled his love for competition.

Daan put a video of his record dive online here.

My dive was a bit more messy than I anticipated and there were a few occasions that I wanted to abort but somehow made the turn at 125 with the 'plan' to come up short after. However, in a split second I realised I promised Kerian Hibbs to do four more kicks when I wanted to surface. So I did and that made a grand total at 141 meter.

You lose some, you win some...

Focus on relaxation

2009-11-07T20:13:00.003+01:00

Last wednesday I tried to find a relaxed state of mind by doing the kind of visualization that I talk about in my previous post. I have so far not done a real max dive with my monofin. The reason is that I can seldom find a way to pass the hard middle part of the dive. So I stopped the no-warmup, no-breathup preperation with the goal to do a max dive not too long from today. When that is behind me I will first abandon my (short) breathup again and then the empty lung statics I now do as warmup.

Note that I'm not wearing my new BlueSeventy Nero Comp suit because the water is only 26C which is too cold for me to relax in without some neoprene (Orca Apex2 in this case).

The relaxation worked great and I came up when the dive started to become harder. This gave me confidence on which I want to build in the coming weeks. It must have been one of my most relaxed dives over 100 meter. Here's the video, see for yourself..

200 meter static

2009-10-30T10:58:00.009+01:00

I've been working on my monofin technique by swimming >1km underwater almost every training. Also the local finswimmers club is kind enough to show me every friday-evening what stamina real finswimmers are made of.

What I did not train much were longer dives. I should be able at this point to improve my personal best. So last month I promised someone (+myself) that I would go over 158 meters before the end of the month (one day to go, not going to happen) and do 175 before the end of the year. That first part did not work because what I train during all those 50-100 meter training dives is not the same technique I enjoy most with max attempts. During training I try to make many strokes with good technique, during max. attempts I try to make as little strokes as possible without loosing too much speed or relaxation. This means that during longer dives I am fighting a battle between what I think is right and what feels right for me at this time. The end result is lesser technique because I don't keep my legs straight and not feeling relaxed either. The video below is a good example of what might happen... (the microphone of my camera is broken causing a lot a white noise)

After this there were a couple more attempts that were even less successful. pfff... what now? I don't know, perhaps I should have called it a day. I did have the good feeling of seeing Daan swim a personal best of 166 meter so the 1 hour drive both ways was well worth it anyway. But instead I swam a lot of lanes with difference styles... Continues kicks, kick+glide, kick-kick-glide, armstroke-kick-kick-glide and the one I liked most armstroke-3xkick-glide. I know some people will frown upon this but to my surprise more and more people say they think it will suit me very well.

One day later I was doing some drywalks (apnea walks) and realized I could try to visualize my dynamic dives. Because when I visualize something it's easy to play a video of some idyllic peaceful beach with blue water where seagulls fly. It is also possible to visualize my dynamic dive but when I get to the hard part of the dive I have to tell myself that it's going to be hard and that I do a turn, glide, stroke, etc.. It all gets a bit mental and then I don't feel it anymore. But when I vizualize while doing an apnea walk or an empty lung static things get much more realistic and hence a better training. And the great thing is my turns can be perfect, my glides as short or as long as I want, whatever is needed to fit a 200 meter dynamic in the duration of a breathhold.

Later that day I swam 128 meter with one armstroke and three kicks per 25 meter lane, a nice swim!

FreeWC09

2009-09-15T09:08:00.030+02:00

FreeWC09 aka The 5th Individual (indoor) AIDA World Championship 200. Aarhus (Denmark) (mon) August 17th - (sat) August 22nd.

I arrived in Aarhus a week before the official competition and met and trained with New Zealand kiwis Kerian Hibbs and Darrell Cottle. One of these days Darrell told me about Kerian's monofin technique where he includes an armstroke between each kick&glide.
Now - that is interesting, I thought! During training back home I tried that a couple of times and kind of liked it, apart from the fact that people were laughing at me. ;-) But here in Aarhus I played a little more with it, liked it even more (knowing that a 200m+ guy uses it) and decided to use it during my dynamic dive later on. This experimenting worked great for me, it took the tension a bit of and things started to be fun.

The whole experience of such a well organized event is great anway! So many legendary freedivers that I felt really humble. After a while everyone appears to be really nice and I felt myself a bit more nice too. The best thing surely is that my whole perception of what long times or distances are completely gets reset when you are so much part of things. Hearing how and how intense others train gives a great respect for that. It's a bit like new years day where most walk away with good intentions and some might even make changes for the better. Being part of this also gives a greater understanding of the dynamics of a multiday competition. The nerves, expectations, results of teammates, importance of sleep - everything is so much more intense, glowing, even exploding during the finals.

My goals, my perfect competition, would be to get in the b-final with nofins, a-final with static and a dutch national record (>150m) with dynamic. I did not think about the performances I wanted to do in those finals, just getting there was the goal. I achieved two out of three of those goals.

I will write little about my teammates here because they have or will write their own reports. They all did great performances but there was also some foolishness and bad luck going on.

Saturday
Arrival of teammates Nanja, Arjen and Erik.
Team NL: Erik Skoda, Nanja van den Broek, me, Arjen Costerus.
They had a 'long' drive from The Netherlands to Denmark and we were happy to have them over to our rented house to have so good old pasta with salmon.

Sunday
Greena aquarium freediving
Teammate Erik was having the first day of his course to become an international freedive judge. Nanja, Arjen and I had a two our swim with big fish, small sharks and huge eels. The salt-water aquarium was about 5 meters deep and we had not enough weights with us by a long shot. It was fun, relaxed and good training. Most of the session we were doing empty lung swims. :-) The sharks were not at all as impressive as we hoped. There was also another aquarium there with the bigger sharks. This is what we really came for, but we were not allowed in there! I was glad that the man from the aquarium did not bend for Nanja's charmes!

We spend an hour in another pool in Aarhus to train. But not for me, I needed to rest.

Monday
training, fine tuning the weights, etc.

I did a few laps with my monofin, met up with Ulf Dextegen. I also helped Nanja a bit with DNF technique and proper weighting.

Tuesday
Parading through the streets of Aarhus

Wednesday
DNF qualification heats
This was the first time that my family came to watch me. I was a little nervous but most of all I wanted to not have a blackout. Because my family already saw a handful of those the first few minutes they arrived.

My first goal was achieved, 145 meters, on the one hand I was happy and very satisfied with that and on the other hand I knew I could have swum a few more meters. At the end of the video you can hear me say that I held back. It looks a bit arrogant now that I look back at this, a bit to calculated too, maybe. But my first swim at such a major competition was done and I did what I came for - good!

Thursday
STA qualification

I couldn't get a smile on my face this day. At the beginning of the video you can see me trying to smile but what came out was something that only The Joker from the latest Batman movie would have been happy with. I think I had put to much pressure on myself for static this time. After 5:35 I aborted the hold, a far cry from the 8:01 I did earlier this year. It just happened and I was pretty upset about it for a while. A bit angry at myself!

DNF finals
A few minutes before official top, my good friend Danny Martherus arrived with his two children to watch the dutch team and be part of this adventure. This made me very happy and with them in our extended family the next few days were a lot more fun! Thank you Danny!

I was in the b-final but after just 80 meters I stopped swimming because I wanted to surface. I told myself I would not be happy with that. After a few more meters swimming I made a decision (it did not just happen like with static) to surface because I was not having fun. This actually made me satisfied because I did this for myself.

Friday
STA finals
Static finals was exciting to watch. Very close silver and bronze medals (within 5 seconds, at around 8:30) for Alexey Molchanova and Ulf Dextegen. The coach of Alexey was making a bit of a mess of things by first going through the competition zones 30 seconde before official top. She swam over the heels of athletes in full concentration :-(. At the end of Alexeys performance she kept her hand to long on his shoulder when he was surfacing. This resulted in a red card. They protested and won that protest because it was not visible on the official camera. Now at this point Ulf or the current no. 4 could/should have protested with their own video material so Alexey got silver. It's a stupid rule, but as long as it is in existance it should be followed obviously. Guy Brew continued for another 15 seconds, surfaced and did a surface protocol that seemed to be in slow motion but was still in zero seconds flat. The funny thing is that these three guys just did a performance under big pressure that I did never even did when fully relaxed but only the surfacing of Guy impresses me. It's not just the excellent times and distances that got recalibrated in my head, it's the different ways to approach freediving that make for a fresh wind in my mind.

DYN qualifications
Now this was going to be fun! My heart is with static (and DNF) but my focus for the last couple of months has been with dynamic.

I apologize for the quality of the next movie. Photo camera's should have better lenses and a higher resolution when used for filming. (and they should be waterproof to at least 100 meters but that's another story)

This was the third and last dutch pool record that I did not improve (have/own a record sounds strange, doesn't it?). And I really really wanted it. I've tried in a few smaller competitions before but the fact that I new I could made the pressure to big or not fun anymore. Not this time. The evening before I cleaned the slate with training tables symbolically and I wrote 'swim!' instead. Nothing more, nothing less, the dive was great I was fully concentrated on what I was doing or on my next stroke at the most, I was not tensing up when I reached 150. I had no ambition to swim much further to try for a b-final (surfaced at 158 meters). I was not looking forward nor back at the previous day, I was just doing it. Freediving is nice!

Saturday
DYN finals, award ceremony, party time!
Sorry wasn't there. You have to find other reports to read about freedivers getting drunk after one beer like a 16 year old. I did hear Arjen over my carstereo on the way back home. He phoned in exciting realtime reports of the finals. I wished I could have recorded it. The life reports during the competition were great but if we ever need someone else to do that job I would gladly nominate Arjen!

Thank you family
Thank you teammates
Thank you safeties
Thank you organization
Thank you big old body full of lungs
Thank you mind for not going crazy just yet
And thank you all for inspiration!

[P.S. for people with a facebook account - more pictures can be seen here]

Nightdive at Kreidesee (Hemmoor, Germany)

2009-09-03T13:26:00.003+02:00

Before the worldchampionship indoor freediving started my family and I spend our holiday in Germany and Denmark. My daughter and I were snorkeling a lot. One of the hilights surely must have been this nightdive under a full moon.

Briefing while walking
Get Ready...
Set...
Go!

24 hour freediving record attempt with live footage

2009-06-26T17:16:00.002+02:00

Sanne and Jorg of Shark Freediving are in Maribor right now to follow a remarkable record attempt.

From time to time they will show live footage!

Plan or just do it?

2009-06-19T21:22:00.005+02:00

As I wrote before, my FRC depth-diving is going great lately. My improved equalization and relaxation makes that these dives are very pleasurable for me.

Last saturday I went freediving with some dutch freediver friends, we took the 6 meter small boat called 'de sloper', which rouphly translates to 'the demolisher', to a nearby lake that has the deepest dive spot of this flat country (as far as I know). I had plans, hopes and dreams of grabbing some of the mud 50 meters or so below us and bring it back up. It was a perfect day for some personal bests, the weather was great, the company was good and I felt save with a few fellow freedivers around me that had been way deeper than I ever was. But in this case my planning didn't work out. I had put the pressure on too much and was fighting with things during my dive that I thought I had left behind me some time ago. Looking back I could see my doubts in the fact that I started packing, as if that would be equalization easier. Because of this and the fact that I am already quite buoyant I had to work much harder to get down to the freefall phase. Here I was already stressed while I still had to battle my mask. I was afraid for a mask squeeze, I forgot to flex the muscle behind my ears to open the tubes a little. Argh, very frustrating it was! With mixed feelings I went home, overthinking my 'sins'. Mind you! It was a great day but I had things to learn.

Then came today, diving again to max 25 meters so that calls for frc dives. My head still contained some green slimy stuff that luckely went away somewhat after a few dives. After some regular frc dives I removed my mask and put on my noseclip and goggles. I filled the goggles with lake water and went down just for the experience. I had done this last year as well and then only came as far as 12 meter, just below the thermocline. I don't know what it is yet, perhaps I got used to the temperature better or maybe pulling the wetsuithood-top as far down as possible helped but the 7C at the bottom did not bother me much and the freefall from 5 to 25 meters felt long, dreamy and fantastic. At about 10 meters I took a mouthfill, building up positive pressure with my cheeks so as not to move my tongue around when it is not yet needed (thanks Simo! I loose a lot less mouthfills this way!), put the soft palette so that I can blow/push air against the noseclip, flex that muscle near my ears and then just feel the temperature drop, feel my hand glide over the guide rope and hear the pitch of my lanyard brushing the rope get higher and higher as I pick up speed.

This was my most enjoyable freefall so far - loved it!

To finish our day at the lake we went looking near some manmade objects and spotted two Northern Pikes (actually this Snoek), one was really really fat and big, while the other was hanging at a depth for 2 meters for 15 minutes while we could get very close to it (10cm), close enough that we could basically count it's teeth.

What a day to be a freediver!

Stéphane Mifsud Static - 11:35 (WR)

2009-06-08T15:40:00.008+02:00

holy F!#K

Original in French

Translation in English

Stephane mifsud record du monde apnee 11min 35
by vinsdelacrau

OVH Dynamics 2009 results

2009-06-05T16:19:00.006+02:00

Ranking Naam discipline AP RP Penalty Points Remarks

(women)

1 Nanja van den Broek dnf 101 111 55.5 (non-official NR)

2 Natasha dyn 26 70 35

3 Jolanda dyn 0 68 34

4 Anuschka dnf 26 53 26.5

(men)
1 Eric dyn 105 137 68.5

2 Jouke van Riel dnf 75 119 59.5

3 Fred Steegstra dyn 80 108 54

4 Danny Martherus dnf -0,5 (sic) 105 2x5 42.5 (2x surface)

5 Jarno dnf 26 79 39.5

6 Erik Skoda dyn 0 79 39.5

7 Frans dyn 35 88 0 (SP)

Mantra for tonight's dynamic

2009-06-04T14:05:00.004+02:00

"If not now, then when?"

Chaos

2009-05-26T11:54:00.005+02:00

It's been a while... I was not really in the mood for writing. Was having a rough time with personal stuff but things seem to have settled down enough to aim for some good freedive performances again.

The last couple of weeks I have been freediving outdoor about once or twice a week and mostly on FRC. During one week I also participated in a drywalk experiment of a fellow freediver - I will write some more about that later. But I (and about 10 other freedivers) had to do drywalk practices. As people that know me know, I am more a 'want to' than a 'had to' kind of guy. Never been any good at 'had to' actually. Come to think of it, practicing enjoying 'had to' moments would be a valuable live lesson for me. More on that later too - I fear.

Anyway, for the last month I've been taking garlic pills again to try to lower my heartbeat and iron pills to get as much heamaglobine out of the FRC and empty lungs training as I know how to. Last week I did an 'easy' 3 minutes RV (residual volume, i.e. empty lungs) static in the pool, which surprised me. I have neglected my CO2 tolerance training a bit and I am not as comfortable with CO2 as a few months ago so the no-warmups did not improve. Today, at the 3rd hold, I did a dry 5:07 FRC static. :-) (mental note to myself: 'don't use smileys when blogging!') SpO2% only down to 70%, crazy!

Heartrate at rest was very low, I think as low as 42 BPM so about 10 less than a few months ago. It was in the lower sixties a few years back when I started freediving.

Tonight in the pool I will have a go at a 7+ static with full lungs. Hopefully I remember how to pack.

In 10 days we will have a small non-aida-ranking dynamics competition in Haarlem. I have not been practicing with my monofin very often lately so that will be like training for me.

Sorry for the discursive post. I suppose it shows the mental state I am in at the moment...

William Trubridge - Freediving World Record no fins 88m (288ft)

2009-05-03T17:01:00.002+02:00

William Trubridge breaks the world record in Unnasisted Freediving with a dive to 88m (288ft) in 3 minutes 30 seconds. The dive was set at the Vertical Blue Invitational Freediving Competition in Dean's Blue Hole, Long Island, Bahamas.
For more information visit http://www.verticalblue.net

video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF4PN8-2YSk

First small no-warmup frc static success and no-goggles dynamic.

2009-04-29T15:09:00.005+02:00

Yesterday in the pool I did a frc static of 4:02 with no warmup. This was the first time the no-warmup felt like a success. I had a good fight-phase and my safety told me I had no visible hypoxic signs at all.

On one of the other holds I improved my pool personal best to 4:18 where I found the surfacing a bit so-so but again my buddy told me that after one breath I looked fully recovered. During these other frc holds I noticed that I got progressively more relaxed when the contraction came. During the initial hold they were quite violent.

Nice!

After the 2 hour static of which about 1 hour was spend socializing we went to the other area where we do our dynamic training. Here I did my monofin training with short fins and a couple of 50+ meters no-fins, no-noseclip, no-goggles dynamics. These were just to get a feeling for it. I've done dynamics without a noseclip (but with goggles) in the past and in general liked them. The problem was that I lost some relaxation because water enters my nose and I have the urge for blowing out some bubbles. Swimming without goggles I have done very little, but since I do my TLC statics also without goggles I fear the stinging pool water less now. I was afraid for bad turns but that was no problem. Keeping the correct depth was a bigger problem but maybe with some practice that will improve. There is also the problem that at the end of the swim there is one less sensor to indicate hypoxy but that need not be a problem when I keep listening to my body. The dive reflex kicked in early - contractions start early at about 10-20 meters but this will be later once I relax a bit more.

If all goes well I want see how this goes during a small competition beginning of june.

FRC statics and depth training

2009-04-23T15:59:00.003+02:00

Here in The Netherlands there are not many lakes over 30 meters deep. The deepest one I know of is 52 meter deep. My max. depth so far is just 43 meters but with the recent successes in the pool I'm sure I will go deeper not to long from now.

Inspired by Eric Fattah's very impressive FRC dives at the Vertical Blue competition in the Bahamas I decided to practice my equalisation skills a bit more by dives on half full lungs the next period. Last year I did 21 meters on FRC and this year, with more ease, I equalled that plus I did 28 meters where I'm not sure if I took the exact same amount of air with me. Anyway, making progress with equalisation and having much more relaxed abdominal muscles and diaphragm.

I have done some FRC statics to get a feeling of where I stand at the moment. These are some stats...

FRC static dry
1 exhale:
2:56 83% SpO2%
2:52 87%
3:07 83%
2 exhales:
3:13 82%
4:20 74%
1 exhale:
4:05 73%
3 exhales:
4:32 64%
2 exhales:
3:40 75%

FRC static in the pool (SpO2% unknown)
2 exhales:
2:30
3:45
4:11

So 4:32 dry, 4:11 wet.

Yet another day at the factory

2009-04-17T15:28:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I did a couple of alltime low FRC statics. I think the best one was about 2:30. At least better than if I would not have done any.

8:01 - the movie

2009-04-15T11:44:00.003+02:00

My daughter made me this 8:01 drawing

2009-04-09T10:14:00.004+02:00

Better than any trophy! :-)

8:01

2009-04-02T10:31:00.006+02:00

So there you have it, I did an 8 minute static in competition for the first time last sunday. For me it did not totally come as a surprise because I did my first one in training about 6 months ago. But recent training did not go according to plan during the last few weeks before the competition. For this reason I took a week of from pool sessions. I did a little dry CO2 and O2 training but not much.

I was standing on the shoulders of giants because of all the tips and help I got from people around me and on the internet. Even so, for me personally this is a milestone I am very happy with. So I would like to put some more info on this blog that might be useful for other freedivers.

Some people asked what my preperation was and how the static went, so I will write about that here.

good night sleep
9:00: breakfast - two bananas and one bowl of yoghurt with honey
10:00: 2.5h car ride to Belgium, was drinking lots, mostly tea and water.
13:00: settled in the pool, relaxed a bit, chatting with fellow freedivers
13:30: be safety for Erik
13:45: be safety for Daan
14:00: kept drinking spa/water
14:09: start pack stretches
14:19: put my suit with 4kg weights on
14:24: deep breathing about 4 breaths per minute by the side of the pool
14:34: enter water (27C) empty lung (RV) static ~1:30
14:38: another empty lung static ~1:45 (about 50% of max)
14:40: 2x30s statics to find good amount of packs (tried 15 and 19 packs)
14:42: go to competition zone, normal breathing
14:43: 6 deep breaths during one minute (yes I know: hyperventilating)
14:44: tidal breathing, put noseclip on (no mask for me)
14:45: Official top (exhales, inhale, exhale, inhale, pack 15x)

Room for improvement here would be threefold.

1. stop hyperventilating for OT-2 till OT-1
2. don't do the empty static warmups anymore
3. one less exhale before OT

The static went pretty much as usual except that because of the lack of food in my system contractions came a little late at 3:45. My focus, determination and intend were better than in training. The first 30-60 seconds I was forcing myself to not influence my muscles. Trying to relax and see what my body would do, not identifying myself with either my body nor my thoughts. Usually I try to wait for thoughts and emotions to come, when they come mark them as 'thinking' without judgement and wait for the next event. The 'problem' I found with that is that at some point the words thinking, thinking, thinking quickly after each other start becoming heavy, like a hammer on a nail. This adds another layer. I then have to notice my noticing thoughts and let that pass. Maybe this is where true mindfulness starts but lately I found it works better to use some self-hypnoses instead of just the word 'thinking'. So what I did is tell myself in a way similar to talking to a little kid (I don't know the english term for it so that's why I describe it). I say (in dutch) "think slowly... slowly... and quiet...' Of course I say this slowly, firmly, matter-of-factish and as much as possible without stress. After doing this many times I arrived near 7 minutes, at that point deciding to better my n.r. of 7:33 and after that one (15 seconds) tap at a time. 8:01 was just about doable. I've been told that only at 7:30 contractions were visible which I find good because it also means that I was not mentally trying to influence them. At 7:45 I was aware I let out a few little streams of airbubbles. Since I was aware and clear-minded enough I allowed myself to pass 8 minutes.

For the first time in competition I did hook-breathing during recovery and I had the feeling that this did not yet automatically go as good as should be. More max attempts in training are needed for that. So two hook-breaths, two recovery breath, noseclip of, ok-sign, 'I am okay!' and wait for the result. I did not see a white card being shown to me, my safety (Daan, thank you!) told me and he was even happier than I was. My mind was not ready to let the outside world in just yet, that took another 5 minutes. (good times)

A movie of the last part will be on youtube soon.

Results of AIDA Belgium competition in Namur

2009-03-31T23:43:00.003+02:00

Competition in Namur (Belgium)

2009-03-28T11:46:00.005+01:00

On March 29th 2009 a small and friendly competition will be attended by about 8 Dutchmen. I will try to give updates here during the competition.

Some of us feel our bodies fight upcoming cold and other nasty stuff. Let's just hope we win at least that battle!

Going great here. Most faces look happy. Mine for sure because I did a great 8:01 nr static. I was looking up to dynamic but even though it went okay at first I could not find the motivation to resist the first big urge to service. Because I announced high I got massive penalties and now have to fight for third place. Nanja ranks first right now and she should be able to keep that.

The competition is over now.

Igor Migunov came first with the men and Nanja van den Broek with the women!

Many personal bests were improved, many happy faces all around for all kind of different reasons. Laura and Pauline did especially well!

I messed up both my dynamic and my no-fins. I should have done better there, but I didn't, and that's okay too! My mental and physical limits were reached that day.

Thank you Daan Verhoeven for being my safety yesterday and it's an honour to be the first one you coached over eight minutes.

I will do another post later with details about the static.

Freediving on dutch television

2009-03-11T14:57:00.003+01:00

Freediving was features on dutch television twice recently.

A nice ~45 minutes show with a popular dutch artist can be seen on this site (or here if you only want to see the movie). This was actually the first time on dutch tv that I think they properly explained why people freedive and they gave a good explanation about the risks involved without any of the usual hype-talk.

And then there is the following clip of new kid on the block 101.tv

Mental training

2009-03-02T10:32:00.003+01:00

I've been too busy to post here with doing as little as possible, so now it's time for an update.

I already wrote I went to a Tsa Lung workshop to pick up some relaxation and breathing techniques. Well, I did... and I didn't... I really don't know if I picked up anything useful. It was good to sit there and focus on the teachers sometimes incomprehensible english. I guess I expected more exercises and some more explanation about them. Anyway, it was the beginning of more mental training which is now slowly taking over from my days in the fitness factory.

Some days later Jouke, a training buddy, and I visited a local meditation afternoon crash course that was teached by Annet Polman at YogaMoves. This was one afternoon well spent I would say. Not too heavy material, quite useful, very down to earth (mostly :-)) It felt like a refreshment course which I apparently needed. A funny incident was that there was this beautiful brown eyed girl sitting next to me. During the break she told us that she was in love with the water. This started with her seeing The Big Blue where she also fell in love (big theme with her perhaps?) with the main actor. So I asked her - "the macho or the softy?" - the softy she told us. Mr. macho (soon to be married) Jouke, former european grappling champion was very very quiet after that :-). Thank you, whatever your name is!

Ehhmmm, I think I got distracted there for a minute. Where was I? Right! Mental... I did some more yoga sessions where I could stay in the moment better each time. I've not done any (near) personal bests lately but the fun and excitement is definitely back!

(picture by don.mihai)

Monofin footpocket angle

2009-03-01T10:03:00.003+01:00

Over the last two years I've tried or owned a few monofins. They are all nice fins but steady improvements over time. The Hyper Pro was my favorite (where I did 150 meters with once) until I received my new Waterway Glide last week. The Triton fin was nice for it's footpocket fit and better angle (compared to the Hyper Pro) but way to hard for me.

I've made some pictures of a little experiment. I would be sitting on the floor with my legs and ankles as straight as possible. Then I'd put as many dvd covers underneath the end of the fin until the top of stack would touch the fin. Now, the Waterway scores best but I have to redo the test with a friend's (WW) monofin because I think I remember that his fin would almost touch the floor. Anyway, these are the results...

Leaderfins Hyper Pro (23 dvd covers)

Triton (17 dvd covers)

Waterway Glide (10 dvd covers)

BTW I've added 0.5kg between the footpockets to make the fin neutral at 1 meter.

Faith - the opposite of fear

2009-02-27T11:36:00.006+01:00

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

2009-02-24T09:58:00.002+01:00

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

Tsa lung by Tulku Lama Lobsang

2009-02-23T11:46:00.003+01:00

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

2009-02-20T11:05:00.008+01:00

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

2009-02-16T17:03:00.005+01:00

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

2009-02-06T13:35:00.003+01:00

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

2009-02-04T11:38:00.010+01:00

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

2009-02-03T10:16:00.014+01:00

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:

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

2009-02-02T13:00:00.003+01:00

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.

Ice skating

2009-01-25T15:31:00.000+01:00

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

2009-01-19T22:12:00.000+01:00

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

2009-01-16T18:26:00.000+01:00

(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

2009-01-14T10:34:00.000+01:00

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

2009-01-11T10:36:00.000+01:00

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

2009-01-06T14:57:00.000+01:00

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

2009-01-01T20:18:00.000+01:00

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!

Making the perfect tea

2008-12-31T20:06:00.001+01:00

green tea
Originally uploaded by chikache

What? Don't you have anything better to do then write about such trivialities, you might ask? Well - not really actually, so please hear me out...

Fact #1: many freedivers stop drinking coffee when or shortly after they become passionate about their sport.
Fact #2: most drinks contains too much sugar
Fact #3: no one (not many at least) ask: "how did your water taste today?"

This is where tea comes in with its four main types (black, oolong, green and white) it never tastes the same. Black tea I keep away from because it has about the same effect as coffee does. (elevated heartrate, etc). If you want to read more about the different types you can read this Wikipedia article.

Over a year I was searching for the tea that gave me the most positive effect for freediving. All pseudo-scientific claims of tea manufacturers aside I could not detect anything reproducible. Placebo tea worked best but turned out to be to expensive.

When you google making the perfect tea you will see many entries with more than 10 points to keep in mind when making the perfect tea. All pages I found during this queste focused on the tea part of that line. I felt there was more to it and this is where I think it boils down to...

"Making the perfect tea" is about making not about tea.

What this means is that your tea will be perfect when you made it with full attention. So do not think about anything else. Being meditative about it. Notice the items you want to write on your shopping list - let go - and move on. Notice the mess that you really want to put in the drawer - let go - keep making your tea. It's the perfect excercise to stop discursive behaviour.

What I like about it is that it resembles perfect freediving. The perfect dive is about just doing it and not about the dive!

My tutors

2008-12-29T14:15:00.001+01:00

So far I have been trained by Nanja van den Broek of Enker - 'Experts in freedive opleidingen' to get my AIDA *** certificate. She is very good at holding me back and pushing me forward - whatever is needed. Thank you for that!

During the summer of 2008 I did a weekend course with William Trubridge who told us some of the things we needed to know to get better at constant weight and dynamic without fins (CWT&DNF). This weekend was kindly organised by Glenn Venghaus and Peter Wurschy of Apnea Amsterdam.

I also received a lot of advice, safety and friendship from the kind freedivers of OVH Haarlem and Freediving Utrecht.

Last but not least I learned quite a bit from people that post on blogs, forums (or is it fora?) and youtube.

Thank you all!!!

Contemplating summer

2008-12-29T11:19:00.000+01:00

Bwah - winter time - great time for brushing up my equalisation skills with the Otovent. So far I'm only training my awareness of the soft palate for proper Frenzel-ing when spring comes. I will need some exercises to train the epiglottis before then, but I'm in no hurry!

We are also working on some new 'toys' for outdoor use like buoys, counterballast system en an actual freedive sledge. Don't worry, we will take a course before using the later one!

BTW this is the boat we can use to dive in a 52 meter deep lake near Amsterdam. As you can see we were not using a counterballast system when this picture was taken. We feel we have now reached depths where we need one!

Be safe - Have fun!

Setting up basecamp for dynamic with monofin

2008-12-28T09:22:00.000+01:00

When I started freediving about two years ago my main interest was in static. I made quick progress in that area and it was easy to train during daytime. After that I shortly tried dynamic with bifins with which I did 120 meters in competition. Looking back I'm actualy quite happy with that result given that I never got a good feeling for it. Static felt so much more relaxing that I always was a bit reluctant when puting on my fins.

Then came swimming without fins (DNF) which, when done the way I like it, resembles static. Good weighting, long glides and few strokes make this almost as much a mental game as static freediving. Last month I did 153 meter which is enough for now. I still need to let that distance sink in so that I can honestly say: '150 meter? Sure, I can do that!'. At the moment it still feels like something from a dream. :-)

So time for something new...

And the next goal will be to improve my technique with the monofin. Ofcourse I have given monofining a good try from time to time but never before did it receive my full focus. The best (distance/relaxation wise) was this 150 or so meters during training...

There is a lot to be said about my technique or lack thereof but that is for future posts. I call this basecamp because I will work on improving from here on!

My plan/wish/dream is to do 200 meters, preferably in competition but that is of secondary importance. Next august Denmark will be hosting the indoor freediving world championships in which I hope to participate. It'll be interesting to see what can be done in these eight months.

Exercises in streamlining

2008-12-27T22:38:00.000+01:00

Late 2007 I started paying maximum attention to perfect weighting and streamlining for dynamic without fins (DNF). This kind of streamlining costs a good amount of oxygen so it's not well suited for a max. attempt. Although I would certainly like to try that at some point! After a month or two the training resulted in this 25 meters on one stroke...

And this 2 x 25 meters on 2 x one stroke...

Not at all perfect but very rewarding to get a feeling for the possibilities!

After this I kind of lost interest and shifted my attention to finding a more efficient amount of streamlining and stroke input.

Static record during RMC 2008

2008-12-27T22:22:00.000+01:00

During the Freediving competition in Wiesbaden of oct 25th 2008 I improved the Dutch national record in the discipline of static apnea. The record is now 7:33, a good improvement over last years 7:07 that I did during RMC 2007.

Mobile Blogging from here.

DNF record during Dutch Apnea Open 2008

2008-12-27T12:15:00.000+01:00

My latest Dutch national record of 153 meters in dynamic no fins (DNF). Done in the Tongelreep pool (now called Pieter van den Hoogenband pool) in Eindhoven (Netherlands) on nov 22 2008.

Mobile Blogging from here.