Dec 21 2007
Relaxing body and mind with focus ?!
What I’ve been noticing throughout the training weeks is that my mind stays totally in focus during a high intensity training. There will be no thoughts distracting me and my mind is only busy with doing its best to execute the exercises as they should be done. This is a totally different world than during the day-life, this is where I get enough time to think about a lot of things.
I’ve asked myself the question, why do I think of all those things? Why should I seek the edge of the sane-explainable and still think some more. Well I think I’ll have to accept that my mind is made for thinking, but on the other hand…there seems to be a way to focus and think of nothing but my mission.
Last Friday Jorg, Kostas and I were training in the pool again and it was dynamic with fins time. The 1st time I just used my swimming goggles to see where I can go, without my nostrils filling up with water too far. At 75m my mind suddenly decides to come up, where this time I wasn’t able to predict this action.
With my next attempt I was looking out for any sign of bailing, knowing my own weak point at the 50m’s turn. Jorg and I decided a long time ago, that it would never be acceptable to do a 50m during training. So as my 2nd run was progressing towards the 50m I felt my minds urge to come up at 50m. But this time I beat it by looking into the reflecting pools edge and actually just waited a few seconds and looked at myself…telling myself: 50m is NOT ACCEPTABLE. Whilst thinking that I could hear Jorg making noises through the water, knowing he was seeing what I was about to do.
Surprisingly he saw that I turned around and headed back towards the 100m mark. At that point I just managed to clear out any thoughts and made the turn-point and made my return lap to complete 100m’s of dynamic.
It’s not the distance that tricks me, but mind control seems to get more important. All we have to figure out is how I can implement this “focus through training”-concept into my freediving performances. Time to clear out the mind 
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Hi Sanne,
What I realized some time ago is that (at least in my case) I’m unable to actively clear my mind. The thing I could do is observe my thoughts and try not to get caught up in them by letting them float by. What works for me to do that last part changes constantly. For example I use to imagine a cloud that takes the thought away, or I label them thinking and move on, or I visualize the thought as a bubble that I gently break by rubbing it with a feather - those kind of things. I’m actually not very creative with coming up with these things. I simply ‘borrow’ them from meditation books.
What I now need to learn is applying these things to dynamic because in static I have more time to see what tricks my mind is up to next. During dynamic I get caught by surprise more often.
Thanks for your reply Eric.
Good to see that you’re also learing how to control your mind in a way that’s best for you.
Focus in my story comes down to actively “do” and “think” what I’m doing, otherwise my mind gets bored and thinks all the stuff I do not want it to think