Team Sharkbait News

This is a post by Sanne.

As you might have read in my previous posts, I am preparing to compete in the Shark Sports dynamic competition, this Saturday in Tongelreep, Eindhoven. I have no set goals for this competition, but I just have to prove my self a minimum I agree upon on the day itself. Furthermore I’ll be swimming with a new prototype for better alignment. In combination with the new monofin we now use, it’s going to be interesting for myself to just compete with the new setup!

Besides the fact of competing I’ll be doing safety as well, gives me a chance to wear my Gara 3000’s again.

Yesterday I’ve been setting up the streaming ability for the camera, which we are going to place behind the window at the 100 meter turn point in the pool. This should deliver a few nice images of competitors making their turn against the window. Hopefully the wireless connection is strong enough to reach that basement the Tongelreep created to view/analyze what athletes are doing underwater.

So if all is proceeding according our plans, than the competition will start at 14:00 CET, this is also the time that the LIVE internet broadcast will start. If you’re unable to join us at the Tongelreep in real life, then surf to http://shark-freediving.com/live/. I’ll start the first run, so I can do the safety for the other competitors. Hopefully it will be lot’s of fun and good atmosphere, see you all on Saturday 14:00 CET.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

Yesterday Sanne and I did a good freediving pool workout crawl style. While my inflamed tooth didn’t really cooperate during the first part of training where I tried to do 8×25 with 1:20 min countdown for each lap (and failed), the next part went much better.

I tried to do 50 meter laps with one minute rest in between doing crawls with 6 strokes, 1breath for 200 meters. Then upped it to 8 strokes, which still felt pretty good in a training sense of way (Ouch!). And then it was time to explore the limits somewhat and tried to do 10  strokes and 12 strokes with 1 breath each time.

It seems there is a certain technique in it. Because when I do my long distance swims (1k-2k) I use a very shallow breath, so when I’m preparing to breath I only need one stroke to exhale. This doesn’t work when you’re high on CO2 when you’re holding your breath, so in this second session I started to exhale fast in around 1,5 stroke, so that I get completely empty in between. All in all great CO2 work!

Today it was monofin testing time. Sanne brought his prototype weight that he will use on this Saturdays competition in Eindhoven. And I must say it already works great. I think he’s at 80% of solving all the problems now.

While Sanne was so nice to create a prototype that is adjustable so that it also could work with me, it still didn’t fit me So I had to do some other way of testing my streamlining. In the end it appears that 3 kilo’s is just a little bit to heavy for me, so next time I’m going to try for 2,5-2,8 kilos.

It’s really clear that the time of just playing around with a monofin without weights is over. The difference between my technique without weights and with weights is so  major, that if I wish to improve I have to use weights from now on. So time to create a streamlined weight for myself as well.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

On Tuesday we went to the pool. Sanne for his schedule and I for my schedule. I’m pretty happy with it and how it went. It was hard for sure, but I really felt like I did a good Co2 workout. Just what I needed.

To be exact; at the end of each exercise it feels exactly the same as at the end of a static. Only here I know that if I do one more stroke I reach my goals, while at  static the end is open. Maybe it’s time again to start doing statics for certain times and do schedules with that again, now I think of it.

The 8 times 25 meter with 1:25 minute countdown cycle per lap where doable. number 3 and 4 were the hardest, but I managed to continue. The last ones felt pretty easy, so a clear example that a small warmingup for me works. Crawling with 6 and 8 strokes without breath went pretty well. I really needed the 1 minute rest period between each lap, but then again, the feeling was good and Co2 was trained.

On Thursday, as Sanne already mentioned, our new monofin arrived and it was play time. Wow, what a difference! The footpockets are so much better, and the kick so much easier. The one thing that will need a lot of practice again will be the turn. But then again, you need to enjoy the trip as much as the destination, so this will be a good challenge.

I’m wondering where this fin will bring me in the coming weeks and months! Let’s work hard, enjoy the water and get some results.

This is a post by Sanne.

Last night Jorg and I had the chance to test our new Waterway Glide fin from www.finswimworld.com and it’s hard to not like it instantly. Although I’ve already tested with Daan and Judith’s Glide fin, we now had the chance to properly train some more with it. Although the technique to use for both these fins differs, I’ll try and put down my findings for both monofins independent from the technique used.

Buoyancy

The first difference I noticed between the Leaderfin Flyer Pro and the Waterway Glide is the difference in buoyancy. The Leaderfins monofin has been built with 5 kilograms of lead in the arch, which contributes to the motion by stimulating it by lagging the motion. The Glide fin on the other hand has a positive buoyancy, which stimulates the glide phase by leveling the monofin out horizontally. I experienced the difference in buoyancy by trying to stay balanced through a 25 meter lane run. Where the Flyer Pro tends to start whirling left and right, the Glide seemed to stay at course. I checked with Jorg runs if these findings were also happening to him in the runs, which they did. So either this means, that the Flyer Pro needs more getting used to or more specific strength put into the blade. But out of the box it seems that the Glide does a better job at being balanced.

Turning

After swimming with the Flyer Pro I got used to having the weight from the arch help me in swinging the fin around and planting it against the wall quite effortless. But when I tried the Glide for a turn, I noticed that I needed to help out with my arms to swing around and plant the fin on the wall. Now of course this just needs some getting used to turning with the Glide fin, but it was a point which both Jorg and me immediately pointed out after trying it. Next training sessions will have more focus on making proper turns with the Glide, if we want to use it properly and not loose too much energy by pretending to be a bird underwater.

Pockets
Having a tight fit into the foot pockets is essential with both monofins, to keep the efficiency of the throughput of power into the fin optimal. Both fins go at this a different way and of course in that way it’s not fair to compare these versions. But as we’re giving our first impressions on the difference in these fins, we’ll do it anyway .

The Flyer Pro doesn’t really feature an internal profile of a foot, but just a pocket with a tight band around the heel. Where as the glide does feature a more profiled inside pocket, which genuinely has advantages over just having a tight fit like the Flyer Pro. Even though both fins do have a proper tight fit and do not loose a lot of energy that way, the profile in the Glide fin makes it overall more comfortable to swim with.

Overall performance
If I compare the first thing I noticed between the two fins, it’s the fact that I need far less kick cycles to reach 25 meters. Where I use 3 kick cycles or more to reach the 25 meters with the Flyer Pro, I now seemed to be able to reach the other side by only using 2 kick cycles and one arm stroke. This is due to the fact that one fin is a glide fin and the other fin for a continuous motion, but I did want to point it out. As I believe it felt less of a hard performance to reach 50 meters if I compare both fins. Which in the end matters most, because with less energy wasted it will leave you with more distance in the end.

I believe that the Flyer Pro is a very good fin, but it doesn’t work out good the way I seem to be able to utilize it. (Also the reason to put the fin up for sale.) So for the time ahead we will try and optimize the use of the new Waterway Glide fin and I will write a more detailed impression about the experience with the fin when I have been training with the fin for an extended period of time.

This is a post by Jorg Jansen.

With a new year it’s time for a new training regime. After some lengthy talks with Sanne, we decided to up the volume of freediving training we are doing.

Thursday stays reserved for our freediving discipline training, doing statics and some dynamics. Focusing on technique and performance and not so much on doing schedules.

Due to the fact that I have a horrible small co2 buffer in my body it is mandatory to start doing some schedules again to fix this problem. Sanne already explained the crawl without breath technique we developed for his own personal training and it’s now time to convert these exercises to myself.

We decided to add another 30 minutes of water time on Tuesday afternoon. People sometimes wonder why we don’t plan longer training routines (our Thursday schedule is 60 minutes), but that is just not for us and our busy lives and so many other activities.

These 30 minutes will be filled in the coming months with 2 different exercises. The First will be a series of 25 meter long crawls without breath. Tuesday I set the repeated countdown timer on my watch to 1:25 minutes and I will swim 8 times a 25 meter without breathing, rest and go again when the timer reaches zero.

The second exercise is crawling with an extended breathing rate. Where I normally crawl every 4 stokes, I will up this to 6 and 8 strokes. I will do 4×50 meters with a breath on each 6th stroke and rest after each 50 meter for 1 minute. After the First four laps are over I will continue and do another four laps but this time with one breath every 8th stroke.

I’m curious if I will manage to complete it. It will for sure give me a good burn, just like I need it. If everything goes all right I plan to change the schedule with very very small steps each time I manage to complete it successfully. Wish me luck! I need it!