Team Sharkbait News

This is a post by Sanne.

The other night I was coaching Jorg while holding his breath at the hottub pool in the Tongelreep Eindhoven. He was experiencing his normal barrier and trying all kinds of different preparation techniques to break out of it as you can read here. As we know from our previous competition and other training sessions in the hottub, it can be very hot in there . This high temperature poses a range of problems which seemed easy to explain why they happen, but it turns out I was wrong about 1 of them.

When I was coaching Jorg, the time I spent in the pool doing nothing but coaching increased to a range of 25 minutes orso. That’s when I started sensing the same thing as when I’d have vasoconstriction. But although I assumed it was a free pass into having the vasoconstriction, I learned that it is actually vasodilation and thus the exact opposite of the thing you want happening with freediving.

To prove the theory I decided on doing a schedule to counteract the vasodilation and see after how many times the tingling sensation would fade away. So I did 1 minute 30 seconds breath holds and in the last 5 seconds I’d release all my air, after that I’d surface and immediately take one deep breath again and do another 1m30s. Normally with this schedule you would get the vasoconstriction kicking in at around 6 or 7 times.

The test showed us, that after only 3 times into this schedule the vasodilation was counteracted and I didn’t have the tingling feeling anymore. Theory proven and a lesson learned .

This is a post by Sanne.

In freediving air intake, consumption and efficiency are key factors in reaching longer breath holds in both dynamic as static performances. Although you might think that the more air intake you do will equal a longer breath hold, this is only partly true. There are a lot of other variables in play which make it a specialism to master as a freediver. Consider the difference between a dynamic and a static freedive on the level of aerobe or an-aerobe. Or even simpler, consider the difference in a dynamic pool freedive and a dynamic depth performance. In this article the focus is on the air intake.

Air intake
One of the variables that make a difference – in any type of freediving – is the air intake and how comfortable you are with the ammount of air in your lungs. I am not even discussing the difference in lung volume different freedivers have. I’ll dissect the air intake into three topics:

• Optimizing air intake
• Comfortable vs. Packed
• Increasing lung volume (advanced techniques)

Read more…

This is a post by Sanne.

Sanne swimming with the Leaderfins Flyer mono-fin.

…or actually how we think we should choose a mono-fin. As Jorg  and I were training last week, we tested a few different kinds of mono-fins. We wanted to see the difference between the fins in areas like;

• if they were comfortable
• how they performed
• what the efficiency is
• how the balance is using the mono-fin

The tested mono-fins were three kinds, two were from Leaderfins and one was from Special fins.

1. Leaderfins Freediving Sport
2. Special fins ‘Dolphin‘
3. Leader fins Flyer

Read more…

This is a post by Sanne.

Sandi Bitenc

First and foremost I’d like to say that Sandi Bitenc earns great respect from me and any freediver…actually. Last weekend he pulled off the amazing 24 hour marathon dynamic freediving for the Guinness book of World Records. Jorg and I set out to meet up with him for the event and we would do some reporting from the event. But what started as a somewhat small reporting schedule, soon grew into a (almost) 24 hour live stream of footage from the event.

Sanne & Jorg

How we did all this…
Jorg and I were at a small cafe near the pool (with some free wifi of course ) preparing for the event and it popped into our minds that we had the opportunity to use live-streaming from a mobile phone to do the coverage report. As these services have been growing lately, we agreed to just go for it and see where it would go. We started reporting with the idea of just streaming the every hour the first few hours, half-way through and at the end. But it was so much fun to do and the reactions coming in from the freediving community made that we went for the coverage of the whole event.

Left writing, middle video streams, right video editing, front live stream phone

We had a seperate office from the swimming pool for our headquarters to be setup. In this office Sandi had setup the streams of 4 camera’s from each end of the pool, the whole lane and a screen featuring his progress. He needed this to record all his actions for the Guinness committee, so they can verify his record and thus this will take some time for them to go through . In this office along side the pool we had the perfect overview of all things happening and so we agreed to go for full coverage. Every hour I picked up the mobile phone and Jorg walked with me for the comments on what the progress of Sandi’s attempt was at that time. In between the hours we streamed the view of his total progress from the screen. This left us with just enough time for Jorg to update the shark-freediving blog and for me to shoot photo and video material to edit, mount and upload to youtube in between the hourly reports. As we progressed into the night, at some point we took turns in the reporting alongside the pool, as one of us took a small sleep, the other could report the event. In all we both did not get more sleep than 1 hour and 20 minutes maybe…but that’s worth it!

Hardcore Sleeping

Final 6 hours
The last 6 hours of the event Jorg had to be the formal witness for the event and could not walk alongside the pool anymore, so I walked the camera around and commented where I could, returning to Jorg for his comments and to relay the messages from the freedivers watching the live stream. Seeing all the responses and Sandi receiving all the good luck wishes and congratulations was great to be a part of.

From a freediver point of view to get a real good impression what Sandi was doing, I joined him in the pool to do a few dynamic laps with him in the lane next to him. I mounted the GoPro camera on my head and started freediving with him…. It’s just an grueling schedule what he was doing. To be honest after six lanes I would have to say I was getting short on breath, of course I was using bi-fins and not all to streamlines, but this is really intense and deserves my greatest respect! What an athlete!

To keep awake we've got our own branded energy drinks!

Difficulties
Of course we had some difficulties as it was our first ever live reporting event. Sometimes the sound would drop from the live feed, or the feed would stutter…and of course this would happen on the most important moments So for the final hour we really put all our efforts in to show you what we were experiencing and for the viewers to see the final laps from the event!

Concluding
Apart from the small problems, we had a great time reporting and we do hope everybody who’d joined us liked the live-coverage as much as we enjoyed the event.

close-up of HTC TytnII phone record 1 of the 4 live streams

Jorg and I congratulate Sandi on the very impressive performance and would also like to thank him for having us over and taking good care of us, even though he was in there doing the dynamics he really thought this thing through, organized it into detail and thus making it an awesome event with an even more awesome result! 51,1 km’s > 1022 laps in a 50 meter pool… Hard to grasp, but a stunning world record!

To find all ins and outs about the event and our stories during the live event, check out http://www.shark-freediving

Ever since I started freediving I’ve had a great time doing so. Only thing that is actually bothering me to explore the unexplored, is the fact that fear sneaks up on me. This totally chips of the relaxing edge of my freediving style.

Somehow along the way I might have picked up a few drops of fear for the unknown, or even the things I’m not able to control. Why is it that when I dive down in the blue depths of Egypt I have no trouble to find my equalizing limit at about 40m’s deep, but back in the Netherlands when I try to dive down to 35m’s in Panheel I get stuck at 33m’s deep returning with a small lung squeeze caused by the stress of it.

Pinpointing the culprit
Jorg and I have analyzed this and concluded that it has something to do with a feeling making me uncomfortable at Panheel’s depths. What could it be that triggers this phenomenon?

• First thing that comes to mind is the colder water, which makes it harder for me to equalize at depth. I found out by doing a CNF to 15m’s in only a swimming short. Equalizing stopped at 8-10m’s just because of the colder water on my face.
• Second thing I can think of is the strange feeling I get in the dark and murky waters of Panheel; Fear! It’s a strange feeling and god knows why it’s triggered, but it’s a hell of a tormentor.

Fear analyzed

Staring into the abyss...

When it’s a fear thing, why do I fear the things I love to do;

• Could it be that whenever I’ve done it once, I know what it is and the culprit is kicked out forever?
• Would that mean that the fear is triggered by not knowing?
• Or even by the fact I can’t control the outcome?
• Could it be I had an earlier experience, which triggers these feelings?

My theory to my fear is that I’m having a fear from not knowing, I know for myself no one can control the outcome. You can influence it but never control it, I’ve accepted that a long time ago. It might be that it’s one event that keeps haunting me, but as I discussed it with Jorg, this didn’t seem to be the culprit. When I relate it to my freediving past, there are several items which also trigger that same feeling; I have the same feeling about exceeding my limits, the unknown… Maybe by writing it down in this blog makes me realize I shouldn’t fear a thing which is uncontrollable and just let go and hold on to my motto with freediving; Just do it!

So next time we ride out for Panheel, I’ll surely have to try and freedive with my eyes closed to give my theory a go…