Sanne and I had another good training in the pool. Our normal training schedule is starting to get shape again. First half is static, second is monofin. Easy does it.

We started with static again. The hot tub was filled with people from the previous diving (jump in the water type of diving) class and we  put ourselves in as well. Normally I don’t want to do static if somebody is watching my back. Crazy defect in my head just doesn’t like it when people are watching me doing freediving.

Today was different. Besides the fact that I don’t use goggles and a clock anymore for static already meant a big difference. But the fact that I started my statics with so many people in the hot tub is completly new for me. In the end I didn’t really mind doing it.

Static times are still at around 2 minutes, but it feels easier and easier and I’m doing them without goggles, which is already a big win for me. Never thought I could do it like this and stay (pretty much) comfortable.

Sanne did his required no-warmup static and managed to get to the minimum time he had to do, but there wasn’t much inspiration during his attempt and he stopped way before what he could do.

Next was monofin time. After doing a few 25 meter laps, it’s time for 25+. Legs are full with lactic acid after a few laps, so I switch to high speed, low speed, kick kick glide, etc. I do a very easy 50 meter. Sanne does a 75+ meter in a busy and unorganized pool.

Between the different laps I also do some 25 meter dynamic without fins, which feel great as well. Time for a dedicated lane during club-evening. Got the feeling that personal bests aren’t that far away anymore! Would be interesting to see a new freediving personal because the last one I did was almost 7 years ago.

There I was at my weekly training with Jorg, who had just been doing some serious improvements on his monofin training. Only a few days ago we went to the competition in Liege and there I made my first steps into the monofin world”with a 75 meter personal best (PB). The feeling I kept from the competition, was eagerness for more training and perhaps even distance .

Sanne swimming with the Leaderfins Flyer Pro mono-fin

After Jorg had just done a nice 50+ meters with the monofin, I took over the tight-foot-pocketet-momofin and sat down on the side of the pool. No preparation and just went for a 50 meter dynamic with new kick-kick-glide technique from last Sunday. At 50 meters everything was very OK and I decided to see what 75 meters would feel like with this more relaxing technique. At 75 meters, everything still seemed to be very OK and the turn was made before I could even think of resurfacing. It was at 95 meters that I first felt a little urge to resurface, which I did, just to be safe. Recuperation was easy like I did a 60-75m dynamic and I remember Jorg noting, that this was the most relaxed he’d ever seen me swim with a monofin.

As opposed to Saturday this was a huge difference, altough I was not totally doing the kick-kick-glide all the time, it payed off and leaving me with a brand new PB of 100 meters with a monofin in dynamic (DYN).

Last time I did a 100 meter dynamic actually also was more than over a year ago, 26th of january 2008 to be exact… Overall this leaves me with a good feeling and motivation for the time ahead. Clearly the facts are pointing out to myself that doing a step back to take a break can really refresh you.

This is a post by Sanne.

Last night I edited the video material we shot at the Liege competition last weekend.

The first video is Dynamic with Fins (DYN), a first timer for me at a competition to use a monofin.

The second video is Dynamic No fins (DNF), especially focussed on technique and minimal amount of strokes to reach 25 meters.

Although my mission was to reach the 25 meters in 2 strokes, the positive buoyancy made it harder to accomplish. I took 2,5 strokes for 25 meters, but the speed is still at the level I like it to be.

Enjoy the videos.

This is a post by Sanne.

Since I made a good comeback last month in the Wiesbaden competition, I have been training with a few different things. Yesterday – Sunday 25th of october – I competed in the competition in Liège, Belgium, amongst a whole bunch of fellow Dutch freedivers. It was nice to meet up with all dutch freedivers again, met a few freshly trained freedivers as well. Good to know the dutch competition interest is still around!

It was the perfect time and place to give my change of training methods a better test, as in Wiesbaden I was more focussed on proving myself I was able to do solid performances.

Dynamic with Monofin

Getting ready for the turn

The major change in dynamic with fins for me was to go for monofin. I have been training with it, but never did a competition with it. In training, my technique has been far from good and that might have been a reason as well to never show it to anyone else in a competition . But as we’re trying to change some things over time, It was a “What the heck” moment which made me decide to just do it!

Preparing myself for a push off in a 1m 25cm deep pool at one side (2m 15cm at the other end), I was surprised to see that the push off was fairly good. I had trouble finding the rythm and balance, but after lane one I was up for a turn. I remembered Pim pointing out in the briefing that there was a ledge of 10cm’s, so reminded myself last minute “Ow yeah, touch above the ledge!”. So I swam up a bit and made proper turn, trying to find balance and rythm yet again. On to the ‘harder’ turn at the shallow part of the pool, all the way there I visualized how I would try and make a flat turn, which I managed to do fairly well. But after the push-off the wall, I drifted sideways and my balance was kinda not there anymore. On my way to the 75m, I decided to call it a day as my technique is still failing me to make it a relaxed and easy run. Although I wasn’t out of breath, I think it was a good thing to make 75 meter my first monofin personal best

Dynamic without fins: 2 strokes or …
My mission for DNF was to try and make it across the pool in 2 strokes, which I had been training in the Tongelreep last Thursday. After the start I felt that the somewhat shallow pool made it harder to be properly balanced and I felt my legs drifting upwards. At the 2 strokes mark, I did not make it far enough to just glide the last bit so had to make an arm stroke to get there. The way back to 50m’s was no different and after the turn at 50 it became more vital to pay attention to technique. Because I had been focussing on that quite a lot lately, I found that holding my hands flat on my legs after the arm stroke did help in gliding further. So on my way to 75m’s I usually feel myself getting a bit sloppy on technique, so I put in the extra effort to keep the technique on a good level. All the way to 75m’s my technique was proper and it all felt good. I decided to make a turn and push off the wall and resurface. Immediately after I surfaced, the safety guy gave me the resting board and I made a clean surface protocol. A training in a training to be honest, as the line wasn’t strong enough to support a freediver hanging on it, I decided to try the board for a change at the deeper part of the pool.

Concluding
All in all this was a super training session, I learned a lot from my efforts that day. Dynamic with monofin was far from perfect, but did taste like I could do more. Also on DNF I made progress, but need to have more neckweights to be able to work with different pools.

Another lesson I learned and put to practice really well was the fact I was happy with a 4 minute 20 seconds static. With most people whom I explain this to it’s an eye-brow raiser, but this is where I am at for the moment. I need to have fun in freediving and anything more the 3 minute 30 seconds was good for today, so I’m happy with it!

At the end of the day I borrowed Daan’s monofin for a quick test. Did 50 meters with it on my normal style, which already felt so much better than my own monofin. After that Daan and Jorg asked me to try the kick-kick-glide technique and that went surprisingly well. Made to the 25m’s in 3 kick-kick-glide’s which Daan explained was a good tempo. So to get back on a comment I got from Eric van Riet Paap on facebook, yes I will be switching to monofin for now and really would like to get a glide monofin.

This all sure taste’s like more and gives me some new opbjectives and new energy to train hard! Most importantly I had a lot of fun at a freediving competition.

We had another pool training yesterday. First time for me doing static without goggles. I even decided to stop using a breath-up technique to increase the CO2 in my body before going down. It takes some getting used too in the coming weeks. Especially to get relaxed in the mind again. Also  the water is very high up in my nose during static, and as I’m not used to that, it makes relaxing difficult.

At the end I did 3 statics without preparation. 2 minutes was the max time, but I was so high on Co2 and really not relaxed. Lets see how it goes the next time. Sanne also did a no warm up no breath-up static. The pool was even hotter than last time. So when he made the sign that he was very hot after holding his breath for over 4 minutes I made a practical joke and he had to laugh and came up at 4:10. He made it look easy!

Dynamic training was next. After a few 25 meter laps with my Gara 2000 fins(who are almost celebrating their 12th birthday!) doing monofin style kicking, it was time for the mono-fin. First two laps were the same as usual. Felt pretty good, not much upper-body movement and going fast.

But then Sanne made the comment that I should take it much easier. After doing a few easy and slow 25 meter laps, Sanne told me it looked great. I needed 24 seconds for a 25 meter lap in 8 amplitudes and it felt sooo easy. Did a total of 6 different techniques for testing it. Kick and glide, arms besides the body, etc, etc. In the end Sanne and I decided that I should stick to the 8 amplitude kick for the coming weeks and see how it goes from there.

Next week I’m going to continue with this technique training and also do some longer laps then 25 meters. Normally I got an uncomfortable feeling with dynamic at around 35-40 meters, bifins and monofin. So I’m curious how it will go with this technique. Can’t wait to test it!