Another week has passed by and the tempo is up! Amazing how fast everything is going and how fast someone can progress when he dedicates himself to something. Progression with Sanne is not just about new personal bests and maximum performances. It has much more to do with stamina, consistent performances, self belief and technique.

We are just done with the first week of the transitional phase from shifting the training from an intense set of general exercises to a more specific set of exercises performed in a lower intensity. If you’ve read Sanne’s last post, you could have make out that he is doing pretty well, even in such a way that we’re almost 1,5-2 weeks ahead of schedule. I suspected that Sanne needed at least two weeks to change the style of training, but in the end he almost didn’t need a transitional phase and surprised me once again. He just went from schedule A to schedule Z in one training, which makes clear what kind of potential Sanne has.

So for the coming week I have slightly altered the schedule and put in a test moment. Next Friday we have hired the pool exclusively for ourselves in the evening for an hour and a half. This way we have a possibility to see where he is with a near maximum performance. This together with all the other data I want to collect (heartbeat, oxygen levels, video footage, etc), makes sure that we enter the last 4 weeks with the correct plan. If someone is in the neighborhood of Eindhoven on Friday evening and wants to witness or maybe also try out a maximum performance in a safe environment (oxygen and safety divers will be available), you can send me an email here.

This reflects the current progress to week 8 of the 13 schedule. Jorg set out a sequence of exercises over 2 weeks time as a transitional part, but as last night’s training showed; I was already able to perform the exercises planned at the end of the transitional part. Looking out of the water after the last test-exercise, I saw two amazed eyes staring at me and re-evaluating the things they’d just seen…

I also tested my new Heart Rate monitor, the Polar RS400. I think it’s a good thing Jorg told me to buy one. Only problem until now is; it does not do the job it’s supposed to do. I wanted to put the HR-monitor to use whilst doing my cardio and freediving specific exercises, both types are done swimming at the surface. But as soon as I hit the water, the watch doesn’t receive a signal anymore… This RS400 HR-monitor was chosen because of the swimming capabilities, so now I’ll have to figure out what and how I will be able to use it whilst swimming at the pool surface. But I will find a way to get it working !

Weekly drywalks sessions are improving steadily, the way I execute them now is slightly different then before. First off I’ll start with a 2 minute breathe-up, then 1 minute static from which I start my drywalk. The 2nd drywalk for this week I got to the point were I did a 2 minute drywalk again, so a total of 3 minutes breath-hold. At the end of the dry-walk my heart-rate had dropped to 49 bpm, although the end feels like my heart should be pounding like hell

Furthermore the fitness sessions do bring a lot to the rest of my training. Overall body fitness and certain specific fitness exercises make it possible for me to do the specific freediving training in a good manner.

In my last 3 posts I talked about each pool discipline. First we saw a dynamic without fins performance that could bring some improvement, after that we talked about static and last week was time to analyze dynamic with fins. In all 3 articles I talked about separate disciplines without any connection with each other. Well, in real life training that is of course not the case and one of the most challenging things is to let it all come together.

Yes, I know, it would have been easier if we only had focused on one discipline for these 13 weeks. Then everything is set to fit to only this discipline and maximum gains could be expected. Well, for us that’s not the way how we work. Sanne has clearly mentioned to me his goals and which he clearly let come out that he would rather be an average performing all round freediver then a specialized world ranking freediver. And I couldn’t agree more! And not just for the extra exciting and challenging effort I have to put in to make it all work. Just by the fact that freediving in our opinion is still a combination of time, distance and depth and not for example only time. That’s one of the reasons why I have so much respect for Herbert Nitsch. He’s really a master in all disciplines.

Let’s be clear, it’s not that Sanne has to train like a triathlete with 3 different sports, he’s more training like a swimmer by training for multiple disciplines. But each of them are different by approach. One of the main objectives I set for these 13 weeks is the improvement of Sanne his breath hold capability under stress. As you maybe read in the other analysis, Sanne really has no problem setting down good performances, and he always comes out easy. That’s because he’s got an excellent base level of relaxing. The first part of relaxation can be extended pretty far. So one of the things we are focusing on now is the part that comes after the relaxing part. And of course daily max statics and dynamics in your schedule would drain every freediver in the end, so we have to take a different approach by that.

We do that by using all kind of different swimming schedules and change the sorting, distance and speed variables of these many times. This way we prevent a mental breakdown. That’s one of the things waiting around the corner while you train for your max. If you look at the specific freediving training, then we are talking about dry statics, dry walks and 2 freediving pool session of maximum 45 minutes. In the pool we don’t use fins. Technique for bifins is carved in Sanne his brain. And because we set the goal to switch to monofin 2nd half of this year, we don’t put time and energy into the bi-fin technique anymore. So fins in the pool are useless, at least during this schedule (and for this Sanne!).

We are now in the third phase of the pool training. In the beginning focus was more on the volume of training in the pool, and getting Sanne through the complete schedule. After that focus shifted to an increase in intensity towards the end of the session, and the last weeks we focused on an very increased intensity in the beginning of the session and slowly tapering it down to the end. Tuesday will show phase 4 in which we start the last 6 weeks of the schedule were he will go slowly to his max attempt.

So how does in short such a pool session look like? Without getting in too much detail, it goes as follows. Sanne walks into the pool, takes his mask and neckweight and gets in the water. Within one minute that he gets in, he starts his dynamic without fins distance he knew already a week before. Last Friday it was 100 meters and he made it look so easy, that I’m wondering where the end is. Let’s be clear, within 3 minutes that Sanne opened the doors of the pool, he did 100 meters, just cold. I don’t know why but Sanne was rushing through the water and technique was far from what it should be. Especially the last 75 meters looked so out of focus. No rhythm, variable speed, all in such way that I wasn’t trusting it fully. So very alert as I was, I stayed very close to him. At 100, the wall, he was still at the bottom, slowly rising by using his positive buoyancy, so I already put my foot behind him so he could sink anymore. When he came up he looked like he had done 25 meters and the only comment he could give about it was that he couldn’t focus today. I was so surprised by this, amazing!

After this first set distance, it’s time for another 50 meters of dynamic without fins but in high speed gear. This way the legs get really full and heavy so they are already pre-exhausted for the rest of the training. Then follows just 1300 meters of all kind of different swimming and breathing techniques. Crawl with only breathing at every x number of crawls. On your back using only bifin kicks without fins to propel yourself. Many many others come by during these 1300 meters. And the correct combination of these make an excellent freediving training, without exhausting the mind, that prepares Sanne for the most difficult part of freediving; the fighting part.

Last time I wrote about the results of Sanne during the AAAC 2007 competition I analyzed his static performance and things to look for. Now it’s time to look at his dynamic with fins performance of that competition.

First of all take a look at the performance of Sanne where he does a clean and easy 108 meters, which is his first dynamic with fins since 6 months.

http://www.shark-eye.com/flv/tsb/aaac2007-sanne-dynamic.flv

And now let’s start with breaking down all different aspects of the performance.

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Last week I’ve been training pretty intense; the hours after work were mostly consumed by training, cardio and relaxing. The relax part is actually important this week as I’ve entered a next phase in project 13, where the freediving specific schedule is changed. The first weeks the schedule worked as a climax in intensity, so ending with the hard exercises. The coming weeks I’ll be starting with the extra hard exercises and anti-climax to hard exercises ;).

So why is the 1st week after such a schedule intensity change important ? Well many of the exercises do have a certain way of bringing technique vs intensity to a certain level. Jorg has to check if I execute the exercises properly, resulting in a good balance between technique, endurance and intensity.

Not only the freediving specific training schedule has been altered, but the cardio part has gone up a notch or 2. Focusing on intensity-training, the rounds per minute on the pedals has to be somewhere between 90-100 rpm. This week I started with this highly intense way of cardio and have to say that it’s a challenge, it makes the body and mind face a good exercise. Although I sometimes felt like Jochem Myjer on his home-trainer in his ADHD-show.

To reach the end goal, Jorg set a few process goals which I must show to proceed in project 13. For the 1st period of 6 weeks the goals were:

• Dynamic with Fins (DYN): 105m
• Dynamic No Fins (DNF): 90m
• Static (STA): 5:40

Dynamic with fins was the 1st one to go, by swimming 108m in the AAAC Competition the process goal of 105m had been achieved.

2nd one to go was the dynamic without fins, which I did last night before the freediving specific training. The first 50m’s I did not have any problems at all, were I usually do have a few contractions. Then the turn and on to 65m where the harder part started, but actually lasted not for very long and I heard Jorg swimming above me. Jorg was waiting at 75m’s and from there he swims the last meters with me at the surface. Before I could actually think that it was getting harder, I heard the sound that I reached 90m. Surface protocol also no problem and completed within 9s. Overall a good performance and easy re-surfacing is promising enough to see if I can break my PB of 109m again.

The last one to go was static, although I did a 5:33 in the AAAC competition, Jorg wanted me to do a 5:40 today. No matter how many tries I had to do to achieve the 5:40, it had to happen today. So I prepared to do it in as less tries as possible and did it at the 3rd try, after the first two were kind of interrupted (no excuse of course )

Last week I also competed in Heemstede Static competition. For myself I wanted a better time, but after reviewing the circumstances and little things the 5:14 was a fair result. The 5:14 got me into 2nd position in the competition, all in all satisfied with that, also because the intense training weeks.