Comments for Team Sharkbait News

Comment on Small schedule change by Leane

Leane — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:58:19 +0000

Well said.

Comment on Avoiding a Split second decision by Paul

Paul — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:24:23 +0000

I’ve recently gotten into free diving while meeting a free diver from FL during a water survival instructor school on the east coast. I was really impressed on he performed on water and controlled himself. Now trolling around website and trying to learn more I came across yours. I never blacked out from a breath hold but my black out experience came from a swim qual evolution during recruit training for the Marine Corps (boot camp) which landed me in the hospital for several days. What contributed to the occurrence was I had been recovering from bronchitis and pneumonia and I hadn’t picked up on bi-lateral breathing yet (hyperventilated). So there I was in a full combat load ( as they say) swimming 50m usually horrible technique. I was underwater swimming and then come up to breath out and in for air (the hyperventilation). I was already borderline drowning as at 25m I wanted to give and called out for a bouey. Well someone decided I made it half way and I could continue, so I did. Well I was determined to make it and tried but arms length away (or at least that’s what I was told how close I was) it happened. No idea, no control, no sense of what happened. I came to feeling like I was twitching and convulsing for what seemed like maybe 5mins where actually I had just been pulled out of the pool and stripped of all the gear I had on. No clue what happened but with my rescuer over me asking if I’m ok and what my name is and that they pulled me from the bottem of a 13ft pool. I was taken via EMS to the ER where I had fever and water in my lungs and kept there for several days like I mentioned earlier. My view is that it is a very real situation. But I my health and other circumstance contributed to it. Just one second you are in control and trying your hardest the next you are regaining consciousness on the side of the pool. Hope this gave you some answer or incite.

Comment on Improving my personal best performance by ericvrp

ericvrp — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:17:06 +0000

Oh shit Glenn - I wish I read that last sentence 10 minutes ago!

Mental barriers… I have plenty of those. Really wanting to cross them usually doesn’t work for me. It’s very hard for me not to keep trying. ‘Really wanting’ is such a mental process in itself that I’m quickly running/swimming in circles. I have not often tried the things Glenn wrote but they might work well for me with my future mental barriers.

What does work for me is different every time. Often it has to do with getting more sleep. Othertimes it can be any random thing that makes me feel better about myself (cleaning up my room is one strange thing that comes to mind). Very often my mental barriers tell me I do not deserve some success. When I do improve myself I always reward myself with a new monovin, a piece of chocolate, some very nice wine, or whatever.

The best mental barriers for me are the ones where I spend many months trying to get somewhere without success and than one day, for no particular reason, I tell to myself - ‘fuck it!’ - and shatter the old barrier. Oh man - I wish you many of those days!

Comment on Improving my personal best performance by Glenn

Glenn — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:19:21 +0000

Mental bariers tend to only get higher when you confront them straight on. Try and be creative. I break a static mental barier by starting to swim just before I want to give up my static. Then it suddely becomes different and i cross the barier with ease (make sure you buddy know this. I had Peter chasing me thru the pool franticly since I had not told him on one of the occasions
With dynamics you could do the opposite. Swim to just before the mental barier point. Then grab the wall and do a small static at that point . Again a very fast a good buddy needed. Or what we do in some advanced classes do a simulated resque of someone on the bottom of the pool at the end of a mental heavy swim.
But I bet you can think of a million other ways to use this approach.

Of course only do this with clear MENTAL barriers. If you start swimming after an 8 minute static things will end up different

Comment on Improving my personal best performance by Sanne

Sanne — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:50:43 +0000

Hey Glenn,

Thanks for commenting, appreciate it! These are interesting things to try and test, as we also have tested some things related to the heart rate.

The hypothesis we want to prove is: “Maybe you can only withstand a certain amount of heartbeats before your body gives in.” Which would support your advise on trying to slow down my resting heart rate and in most cases the first period of apnea during performances.

I found one way to lower my heart rates faster when doing static, which were always sky-high ca. 100 bpm for at least a minute and then gradually dropping down, until the first real contraction where it makes it drop like it should to ca. 50 bpm.

What I do now is do my static’s without any facial equipment just let the water run up my nostril. I also extend this way to my dynamic’s now, which does seem to do the trick.

Major problem at the moment seems to be my mental limiter, which I need to break…

Comment on Improving my personal best performance by Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:30:01 +0000

I do similar drywalk as Eric and they definately seem to help in my weak point of beeing able to withstand longer periods of very high CO2 levels/contractions.
Depending on the total length of the program a significant buildup of waist products in your leg musles (and in my case also arm muscles since i simulate DNF movements while walking) is to be expected.
So an anti oxidant suplement could help in taking care of that and the whey shake could help with the repairing of muscle tissue altough that is debatable in this context.
Heartrate is irrelevant in this type of excercises and highly dependant on mental relaxation. CO2 concenration is the key. The higher the better.
If you have problems with too high a heartrate , which I think could be an issue with Sanne’s high resting rate, a modified program could do the trick. For example a combination of a static followed immediately (wthout breathing) by a dynamic walk could keep it down to more comfortable levels. (static for bringing down the rate and slowly increasing the CO2 and then when the contractions start , start to walk for the training effect). I actualy realy like this excercise in the water. It helped me increase my bottom time while swimming. Most of the times a single 50 meter DNF swim feels more difficult than a 3 minute static (or until the first contraction) followed by a 50 meter swim which i understand but still feels amazing.

Comment on Improving my personal best performance by ericvrp

ericvrp — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:17:51 +0000

Hi Sanne,

I will definitely have a good look at the RS400 or it’s future follow-up when my Suunto T4 has lived its live. The T4 has served me well so far, but the extra’s of the RS400 sound tempting.

Eric

Comment on Improving my personal best performance by ericvrp

ericvrp — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:14:10 +0000

Hi Jorg,

Will repeated this recommedation in an email to me. I will PM you the line about this, though it doesn’t give a scientific explanation.

Yes, this is all in one training. The training is quiet intense but it lasts about 30 minutes.

I don’t agree that a heartrate monitor is a must have for drywalks. It all depends on what you want to achieve with your drywalks. In this case I want to learn mentally (and if possible physically) to ignore higher CO2 levels. In this case I don’t care what my heartrate is, nor do I see what relevance it has.

Comment on Improving my personal best performance by Jorg

Jorg — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:22:32 +0000

I don’t really see how the whey protein will help recover specifically for freediving. As a general sports recovering method it’s ofcourse a well known fact. If you have anymore info about this I would really like to know more about it.

Eric, you schedule you described above, do you do this all in one training?

I find that a heartbeat monitor is a must have for drywalk training. Time is of no essence during drywalk training. Heartbeat is!

Comment on Improving my personal best performance by Sanne

Sanne — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:46:29 +0000

Ofcourse you can do this with your iPod, but another useful tool could be the heart rate monitor. I got a RS400 from Polar, which you can set to certain times to beep and give you a message what to do. It will record these parts as laps and in the software-interface you can get an overview table with data per lap. You can create/design these pre-programmed schedules on a Pc or Laptop. Furthermore the RS400 is also capable of capturing per second heartrate, well worth it’s investment.