Plan or just do it?

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!

Chaos

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...

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

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

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.