Is there such a thing as training too much…I think it depends on what your goals are and how you implement them into your life. In the past six months I had quite a few questions coming to my mind about my goals, motivation and what I like to do in life. It occurred to me that I experience more joy in freedive training itself then participating in a freediving competition. Although it’s always a lot of fun to go to freediving competitions, it doesn’t bring me the joy a training can bring me. But don’t get me wrong that I’m going to set back in my participation in freediving competitions, I just like to highlight the fact of enjoying training.

Whilst training I can focus on my goals more easily, whilst keeping in mind that I’m doing it all to make progress in my freediving experience. When Jorg and I set goals for a certain period, these goals will keep my mind strong for a “down” period where I don’t have a strong motivation. When I go into the gym for my fitness-exercises, I won’t think about how big my arms will get after training them. My thoughts will be that I’m training for my overall body fitness and I’m trying to stay in shape so that I can elevate my freediving performances due to a fit body. I’ve found that to be a good motivational factor to get more from my training and myself.

So how come you never see it paying off in competitions? That’s the question… and not a odd question to ask. But if I look at my training and performances during the past freedive years, I’ve booked some serious progress over those years. For me knowing that I’m capable of doing a 7 minute static and actually doing it in a competition is a world apart. I’d rather do this in training and see Jorg smile about it*, then doing this in a competition where proving yourself means more than the performance itself (in my experience).

* An example actually caught on camera: at the end of this clip from my 13 project Jorg was just as pleased as I was with my 125m performance.

I enjoy my training and I will train as much as it takes to keep myself satisfied whilst relaxing at home.

…my training !? Ofcourse I’ve been busy training in the Gym and water again, but… not posting here enough. As my training is not yet in the progressing phase, there’s usually not much to write… Not quite true ofcourse, There’s always something to tell !

The past weeks I’ve tried to pick up my freediving specific swimming schedule from week 10 in the last Project 13. I had to say it’s pretty challenging again I could not completely finish my schedule in the first week of training, but now I’m approaching the requirements for week 10’s schedule. I do think I’ll have to pick up the drywalks and dry-statics again, so that will be on the list for next week ;).

Another news-item is that Kostas from Greece is training along, he’s studying in Eindhoven and is coming along every friday now for training. Good to see him progress in his enthusiasm and in his training. Last sunday he participated in the Marathon of Eindhoven so his legs were still a little weak, but never the less he gave his best again during training.

It’s nice to see so many questions being asked to me about Sanne’s schedule and how to make such a schedule for other people. After answering some of the same questions several times I just thought about our great forum and how easy it would be to just ask questions over there so that I or Sanne could answer them. So, instead of emailing me, sending me private messages or even call me, it’s better to put your question in the Team Sharkbait Training forum here. There are already some interesting questions and comments over there, so have a look.

If you have a question of your own about training, the only thing you have to do is a very easy registration on the site and put your question down. And to make it more interesting; as we speak we are talking to some high level freedivers (who also competed in the world championship) to include them in our training program. This way we will gather even more data and can be even more specific with creating training programs for freedivers. And of course we will also publish this data on our blog or forum for everybody to read, so that others may learn from it as well.

It’s clear that the weeks of hard training are paying of, but that we are also slowly reaching a certain breaking point. Not so much physical as well mental. All the weeks of serious dedication and training to some clear and well defined goals can be very hard work. And all in all, not even counting the progress in performance, it’s already been some very good 12 weeks. New insights and theories are proved and can help us further in the 2nd half of this year and further to even make a better schedule about how to train.

So, what is going on currently? Slowly Sanne is tapering down. We do this by decreasing the volume of work only. Intensity keeps the same and in some aspects it’s even a little bit higher. The last 2 weeks of the schedule, weight training is completely out and not important anymore. More and more concentrating on the more specific freediving exercises like dry statics, dry walks and the pool schedules.

Also we’ve added some outdoor training again, to get the fun factor into the game. Panheel is visited every week again with great joy. This weekend it’s time to go to Nemo33. Not for freediving, but to see if we still got our scuba skills. Sanne and his girlfriend are going on vacation soon, so it never hurts to do an update and give confidence to yourself that all is good.

Next week is the last week, with Thursday the main day. Dynamic is on Thursday, with and without fins. Next day is rest, and Sanne’s birthday (you can leave him a message on the site… From Saturday Sanne will start his end goal of doing a 7 minute static. Maybe it takes only 1 time and maybe it will take several days. We will see! Training results are in such shape that I’ve got big confidence that he will make it soon.

So after the test in week 9 it was very clear were to work on an that the general direction in which everything was going, was going very well! Except of the human errors that we made in executing the test as I mentioned in the last article. Oh well, points to learn from.

Four weeks to go and it’s the last phase of project 13. Preparation is done and the shift has been made to more freediving specific exercises and a more intense, lower volume of training. Last week went very good and showed some interesting developments including some heartbeat graph’s that made a lot more interesting to take another look.

Next week will be more of the same, but again a small shift to specific stuff. The heart beat sensor Sanne has bought will play a more crucial role in his trainings. Even so much, that I wonder how we could have done it until now. More on that later!