Team Sharkbait News

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Another good training done and while the physical training is going pretty well, I noticed while driving to home I didn’t have a real mental challenge. When I do static training it is always mental, but with dynamic the focus has been to technique only.

So it’s time to change this the next time. I need more mental training and combat to overcome some ‘fears’ I have in my head.

Mental note to self: transform some of the leg training pain you can endure into freediving pain…

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 Jorg Jansen.

As it was Carnival this week, we skipped our usual Tuesday CO2 training and focused ourselves for the Thursday pool training. This also gave my body a chance to recover from the big crash on Monday with my Snowboard.

When we arrived at the pool we saw three times as many people as normal. Extra club in the pool, so no real room for our monofin training today! Damn… I hate it when we can’t execute a plan. Almost we packed our bags and went home, but I’m glad Sanne convinced me of a good static workout.

I did several experiments while holding my breath and it seems that the 2nd and 5th static felt the best during this training. On all, except one, breath hold I did no preparation what so ever. Just talking until 5 seconds before the start and down. On the one I did prepare with some good breathing I just noticed no difference at all during the hold.

It’s clear that my statics are suffering from a mental barrier in the end and I need to find a good work around to break this barrier that I already have for 8 years or so. Strange thing is that I don’t have this barrier when doing dry statics. Time to think about some static exercises that break the barrier in the coming weeks.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

We’re getting there. After some weeks of training with the monofin, it’s clear that Sanne and I are getting somewhere with the monofin. For the first time it’s starting to feel like it’s helping our performances instead of costing more energy then with bifins. I even had a crazy thought of wearing the monofin in the open water, wow!

Of course there is still a long way to go, but the great thing is that we documented the whole learning curve here. We know exactly how we started, what we did wrong, how we fixed and improved it. An essential learning curve we had to go through and which could help other people as well.

The main kick is now pretty clear to us and it takes around 2-3 kicks to get in the right movement and flow of it. Now we have to practice this a lot so that we can go in the flow immediately, so that we can also start experimenting with kick-glide cycles.

Next is also starting and turns. And if these are also in the pocket it’s time again to also look at performance. For now we alternate with the fin and the video camera every 150 meters of training, and it works pretty well. Maybe we post a video in the coming weeks about our progress. In the mean time, we just keep practicing, practicing and practicing.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

After another painful dentist session this week, it was a no go for the in-water training. Too much distraction by the pain prevents me of doing long workouts where I need dream-modus to enjoy it enough so that I can endure the pain.

So, instead of some long workouts I decided to test a few short workouts to see where I’m at. All without warming-up:

• Walking while holding my breath: 56 seconds
• Running while holding my breath: 28 seconds
• Walking with neutral lungs: 40 seconds
• Walking with empty lungs: 26 seconds
• Holding my breath while watching TV, 20 minutes after dinner: 2:38 minutes
• Holding my breath immediately after waking up: 2:58 minutes

I’m not writing down how long I could hold my breath on my bicycle and while driving in a car. Because that is stupid and dangerous and of course I would never do that!