Food definitely was holding me back in performing like I should. I think it’s good to test if some habits are justified, as you would normally continue with these habits and never question them. Jorg and I like to test these habits to see if they’re just habits or if they exist for a reason. That’s what our training sessions are for, to narrow down problems and optimize the body for perofming.

So this friday I had a “normal” training session again, performing felt good again. Normal as in back on track with the slightly altered shedule and ready for more… Performances don’t come without setbacks, just make sure you learn from the setbacks and make them your advantage next time you train.

As the Rhein Main Cup-competition in Wiesbaden, Germany is on our schedule, we started training for this a few weeks ago. The first training-sessions were without any troubles and were promising, but this week added a little bump in the schedule. I try to eat at normal times, also at trainingdays. This seems to be keeping me to make progress as we planned according the schedule. This friday I should be back on track with my training, as we narrowed down the problem.

Why should a dinner cause a problem during training? This is probably different for every freediver, but for me it’s just working better with an empty stomache. Meaning no dinner before practice within 5 hours before the start of the training. Friday I will optimize the food-schedule again, so we can conclude our little test-phase.

As I reported last week, my back tooth had been keeping me from diving into the depths of Panheel. I immediately contacted my dentist, but unfortunately he wasn’t in that week. So I decided to discuss the situation first thing monday morning, luckily for me he could help me monday afternoon.

After discussing it with my dentist, we both agreed to replace the filling. Although the roentgen-picture didn’t reveal any sign of a cavaties, when replacing the filling the actual problem revealed itself. The backtooth had a little crack on the side, which must have caused the pain during diving.

Now with a new filling in my back tooth I went out for the weekly practice with Jorg and I could dive into the depths again. So whenever you have any problems, contact your dentist immediately and get it fixed. I thank my dentist for the quick assistance and his professional approach to the situation.

Panheel, August 3 - 2006

As usual on the thursday we go for the outdoor training, descending into the depth and relaxing the mind while going there… This is the main focus for my exercise at the moment. With the good weather and right circumstances I started the training. The preparations for the exercise were good and the first 2 dives commenced without any difficulties. On the 3rd dive however my back tooth seemed to think differently, making the deepest dive impossible.

It wasn’t a normal tooth sqeeuze which is the most common problem with teeth and diving. In my case it must have been a little crack in the back tooth, which allowed some water underneath the filling. Although this is what Jorg and I agreed upon after discussing the awkward situation.

Never the less, we continued the training to depths where the pain wasn’t there, so after all a good training day. With some nice pictures and relaxing dives.

Next thing on my agenda is contacting the dentist and discuss the possible solutions. Hoping I’ll be able to dive to some good depths again… I’ll post any news on the situation.

Since I started with freediving in 1998, I’ve seen, read, heard maybe hundreds of ideas about how to train, how to improve, how to get good performances in competition. Especially the last 5 years I really had the chance to test and develop some of the techniques we’re now using. From all these techniques and ideas, together with our own research and testing, we’ve now developed our own Shark way of freediving.

As you may recall from part 1, the main goals of our training is that you can always do a near maximum performance without warming up, not depending on long times of warming ups or doing tables in the pool. In the last years many freedivers have turned to so many different ways of training for freediving. Reading all kind of medical and scientific reports and studies, but also looking into the eastern ways, like yoga or meditation. Some others use NLP or other western ways of mental training. They believe that their mental power will give them a better performance. Everybody is just jumping around with so many ideas!

Freediving shouldn’t be only a science! Freediving should be a sport! To excel in a sport you have to train, you have to train hard. Your body should learn what it has to do, what’s it capable of and by going to it’s limits it learns to cooperate with these limits and even put the limits some higher. You have to stimulate your body in a correct way, so that during recovery it makes it self stronger for the next time you will train.

With any sport you should rely on some mental preparation. But with freediving people seem to think that they can break their limits on mental preparation alone. Let me tell you that when you’re a competition freediver you should rely on your physique and not your mental thoughts. For the past months you trained your body for the task ahead and it’s completely ready. If your body will go in standby modus (Blackout!) after a 7 minute breath hold you can count on it that you can have the nicest thoughts about anything you want and be completely at ease in your head but you will still have a problem at 7 minutes and not 1 second later.

If you’ve trained and trained and trained for many times your body knows exactly what it can do. The mental part during a competition is only a brake! The mental part should trust the physical part. If it doesn’t trust the physical then you’re putting boundaries on yourself, which you normally can cross.

Don’t get me wrong! There is definitely time for the mental ‘training’ in freediving! During recreation and try out! But if you’re serious about training for competition you have to train your body. And no, not like hours in the pool doing laps and laps. If I look at Sanne’s schedule we’re a in the pool for one hour, maybe one and half hour max a week. But when we’re in the water, it’s really high intensity. It’s like an in and out mission! When we’re in the pool it’s just intense. Even when we go to the pool you can already feel the concentration. We don’t have to speak. It’s already known for days, weeks, sometimes even months about what we’re going to do today in the pool.

Afterwards it’s time for analysis and the talking! We take training seriously, that’s why we also do a lot of fun freediving besides the training sessions. Just some freediving in the pool or swimming outdoors in a new lake. You’ve got to keep the saw sharp, and we sharpen it by relaxation.

You can think a thousand times a day about your goals but you’ll never reach them if you don’t make the first step.

See you in the next part of this series, where I’m going to talk about the theory of a sharkbait athlete. If you got any questions, let me know and I try to answer them in the next part.