At the end of 2003 I started freediving and ever since that time I’ve been evolving and growing in my freediving experience. However with all the good that comes from freediving, somewhere along the way a bad habit has been digging itself in my way of experiencing freediving. I’ll try and put it in words as the “Split second decision”.

When I’m doing a freediving performance, whether it’s for training or for competition, my decision making isn’t controlled in a way I’d like. It should be as simple as this: if your brain doesn’t send a signal to your body to surface, you won’t surface from a performance.

So, why is it that I never had the urge to really push my self and see where I end up when I wouldn’t have made the split-second decision? In all my freediving I never had a single black-out and I actually think that on itself that is quite a remarkable achievement, since I’ve been freediving on a certain level where you’d expect it to happen. So far I’ve been looking at this from a negative/rational side and keeping in the back of my mind that blacking out sets you back in training, competition and in general.

Why shouldn’t I try and find my real limit and go for the experience and see how I recover from a black-out, as there have been just as many positive/inspiring stories as there are negative/rational stories. Maybe it takes away my split-second decision making organ and persuades it into not making the early call to bail.

The quest to end this habit has been around since Jorg, Marieke and I have spotted it in my behaviour… And after looking at this part of freediving from a certain point of view it’s time for me to look at it from a different point of view and meet my match in finding out where real limits are defined. I won’t go blindly into black-outs now, but I see it as the process where this whole training period revolves around. Explaining it in two key-phrases:

Breaking the mental limiter.

Black-out not as a means, but a consequence I’d be willing to accept.

I would like to hear your Feedback
If you had a black-out:

• What is your opinion on this matter?
• How did you experience a black-out vs. eventually raising your limits?

If you didn’t have a black-out:

• How is your point of view in this matter?
• What is your opinion about a black-out?

In training I do a lot of different stuff and to keep track of it all I used to keep track of it on a forum or locally in a spreadsheet. Now with the great features of Google Documents,  I keep track of it in the spreadsheets from Google.

One of the new features is that I’m able to share my data in a graphed form with my readers. So this way I can give you a little insight into my performances and you can keep track of my current training goals.

I put up the Training Progress page so that it’s all easy to find and the neat thing is, whenever I update my spreadsheet online, the images showing my progress graph’s will automatically be re-published. That way it’s always the latest news, just in!

Last night I went out to the tongelreep with a tweaked Pyramid schedule for DNF training. It’s a shortend version of the one William Trubridge tought in his CNF course. Not the whole schedule, but half-way into his schedule. The complete schedule featured a build up phase to a certain plane and after that it would gradually go back to the start of the schedule.

Freediving 25 meters of DNF I take about 24-25 secondes, on which the following schedule is based.

• 6 x 25 meter starting every 1 minute 10 seconds
• 6 x 25 meter starting every 1 minute
• 6 x 25 meter starting every 50 seconds
• 4 x 25 meter starting every 45 seconds

Totalling 550 meter in 21 minutes and 550 seconds immersed.

This is a very good schedule to start with. During the following weeks I’ll be adjusting it to a level William Trubridge made me do in his course.

The 25 meter pool in the Tongelreep is perfectly in distance, but the pool depth is 5 meters. This makes it all a little harder as you really have to worry about your altitude in the water. On the other hand, what better training circumstance could I have for improving my awareness of altitude.

I have been busy upgrading the back-end from this site since quite a while and I put in a few nice functionalities, which also came with the renew core of this site.

As I really couldn’t find more time in the past few weeks, I decided to go with a nice clean lay-out which is able to show the different features and functionalities. This should make it better to read and easier to navigate.

If you find any errors just let me know through the contact form.

As I’m busy with my personal life my blogging about how training progresses gets a bit left behind. I do update my progress after every training in my Twitter-feed, but I’d like to update you with a small progress report.

When I started freediving for Team Sharkbait, Jorg and I put up a plan of how I should always be able to do a certain performance under any conditions or preparation. At the time I put all my faith into that believe, but guessed it would be a long shot to be able and do 5 minutes static in any condition and a 100 meters of dynamic with fins no matter what.

Last night I’ve proven to myself that the disbelief, justified or not, was groundless. In the last few weeks Jorg dropped me in the small whirlpool at the Tongelreep for static sessions and all of the statics have been 5 minutes or more. 

Last night was the perfect example for myself to see that no prepration and stomachache resulted in a 5 minnute 10 seconds static. Also the Dynamic with Bi-fins didn’t pose a problem. 103 meters without a hassle proves for myself that my disbelief and doubts were not justified.

This provides me with a confidence boost for the coming weeks. So let’s see what happens.