Team Sharkbait News

This is a post by Sanne.

Last night I edited the video material we shot at the Liege competition last weekend.

The first video is Dynamic with Fins (DYN), a first timer for me at a competition to use a monofin.

The second video is Dynamic No fins (DNF), especially focussed on technique and minimal amount of strokes to reach 25 meters.

Although my mission was to reach the 25 meters in 2 strokes, the positive buoyancy made it harder to accomplish. I took 2,5 strokes for 25 meters, but the speed is still at the level I like it to be.

Enjoy the videos.

This is a post by Sanne.

Since I made a good comeback last month in the Wiesbaden competition, I have been training with a few different things. Yesterday – Sunday 25th of october – I competed in the competition in Liège, Belgium, amongst a whole bunch of fellow Dutch freedivers. It was nice to meet up with all dutch freedivers again, met a few freshly trained freedivers as well. Good to know the dutch competition interest is still around!

It was the perfect time and place to give my change of training methods a better test, as in Wiesbaden I was more focussed on proving myself I was able to do solid performances.

Dynamic with Monofin

Getting ready for the turn

The major change in dynamic with fins for me was to go for monofin. I have been training with it, but never did a competition with it. In training, my technique has been far from good and that might have been a reason as well to never show it to anyone else in a competition . But as we’re trying to change some things over time, It was a “What the heck” moment which made me decide to just do it!

Preparing myself for a push off in a 1m 25cm deep pool at one side (2m 15cm at the other end), I was surprised to see that the push off was fairly good. I had trouble finding the rythm and balance, but after lane one I was up for a turn. I remembered Pim pointing out in the briefing that there was a ledge of 10cm’s, so reminded myself last minute “Ow yeah, touch above the ledge!”. So I swam up a bit and made proper turn, trying to find balance and rythm yet again. On to the ‘harder’ turn at the shallow part of the pool, all the way there I visualized how I would try and make a flat turn, which I managed to do fairly well. But after the push-off the wall, I drifted sideways and my balance was kinda not there anymore. On my way to the 75m, I decided to call it a day as my technique is still failing me to make it a relaxed and easy run. Although I wasn’t out of breath, I think it was a good thing to make 75 meter my first monofin personal best

Dynamic without fins: 2 strokes or …
My mission for DNF was to try and make it across the pool in 2 strokes, which I had been training in the Tongelreep last Thursday. After the start I felt that the somewhat shallow pool made it harder to be properly balanced and I felt my legs drifting upwards. At the 2 strokes mark, I did not make it far enough to just glide the last bit so had to make an arm stroke to get there. The way back to 50m’s was no different and after the turn at 50 it became more vital to pay attention to technique. Because I had been focussing on that quite a lot lately, I found that holding my hands flat on my legs after the arm stroke did help in gliding further. So on my way to 75m’s I usually feel myself getting a bit sloppy on technique, so I put in the extra effort to keep the technique on a good level. All the way to 75m’s my technique was proper and it all felt good. I decided to make a turn and push off the wall and resurface. Immediately after I surfaced, the safety guy gave me the resting board and I made a clean surface protocol. A training in a training to be honest, as the line wasn’t strong enough to support a freediver hanging on it, I decided to try the board for a change at the deeper part of the pool.

Concluding
All in all this was a super training session, I learned a lot from my efforts that day. Dynamic with monofin was far from perfect, but did taste like I could do more. Also on DNF I made progress, but need to have more neckweights to be able to work with different pools.

Another lesson I learned and put to practice really well was the fact I was happy with a 4 minute 20 seconds static. With most people whom I explain this to it’s an eye-brow raiser, but this is where I am at for the moment. I need to have fun in freediving and anything more the 3 minute 30 seconds was good for today, so I’m happy with it!

At the end of the day I borrowed Daan’s monofin for a quick test. Did 50 meters with it on my normal style, which already felt so much better than my own monofin. After that Daan and Jorg asked me to try the kick-kick-glide technique and that went surprisingly well. Made to the 25m’s in 3 kick-kick-glide’s which Daan explained was a good tempo. So to get back on a comment I got from Eric van Riet Paap on facebook, yes I will be switching to monofin for now and really would like to get a glide monofin.

This all sure taste’s like more and gives me some new opbjectives and new energy to train hard! Most importantly I had a lot of fun at a freediving competition.

This is a post by Sanne.

Pyramid
I just finished a great Pyramid schedule, which was built up for 40 meter lanes:

Qty x Distance [m] | Start every [mm:ss]

• 3 x 40 m | 01:50
• 3 x 40 m | 01:35
• 3 x 40 m | 01:20
• 2 x 40 m | 01:10

It proved to be a harder schedule as I thought. I just couldn’t get lower than the 1 minute 35 seconds » thus I finished the rest of the lanes with starting every 1 minute 35 seconds.

Alignment

My Current 800 grams Neckweight

Halfway into the second part of my 23 schedule, I have had a more technical and oberservative character. Continuing with my effort in getting my alignment right, it seems I’ve been way off for a while now. I’m currently swimming with only 800 grams neckweight, goggles and a swimtrunk. Last week when I visitid Eric in Zeist, I tried to add 500 grams, which already felt better. But last Thursday when Jorg and I were analyzing my alignment in the way I was describing it on this website, we actually found out I wasn’t aligned all that well

These conclusions were made after seeing the video material shot during the training, which clearly indicate that I’m highyl buoyant and will surface like a float on a fishing rod. The reason I believe we didn’t spot this over the years, is due to the higher speed (~ 1m/s) I’m using whilst executing my DNF’s.

I’ve added a goal for this week, which is; getting the alignment right. Our first guess as to what additional weight should be placed around my neck, would be in the range of 2 – 2,5 kilograms. Hopefully we’ll have this settled on Thursday during the pool session.

Technique

Arms stretched BAD

Arms stretched OK

Another strange phenomenon I’ve had in my technique, seems to be easily repaired by crossing my arms the otherway. The way I’m doing it now, causes my left arm to stay a little bend, while the other arm is fully stretched. As Jorg had spotted it again last Thursday in the Tongelreep, he had a good thought about it to just change the arm which rests on top. This seems to get rid of the bend in my left arm, so I’ll be focussing on getting this into my technique the coming weeks.

This is a post by Sanne.

Tuesday evening I had planned my goal realization for Section 1 to take place at the pool in Zeist, where I was able to train with Eric van Riet Paap, Danny Martherus and Jouke van Riel.

It is a good pool featuring a small area, shallow depth and 27 degrees water, which made it perfect for static. Danny and Jouke started with their static CO2 tables, almost not getting distracted by my GoPro bottom camera . Eric and I teamed up for a static session, starting out with a small empty lungs of a minute. After that I did my first real static since a long while and it actually felt quite good. I didn’t really give Eric a chance when I aborted my mission and directly surfaced, only to find out I was 35 seconds away of my goal. So, lesson learned and made a deal with Eric that whenever I wanted to know the time I would ask and after that I would hold for at least two additional safety taps. Going into my second attempt, I felt really relaxed and didn’t start having trouble until 4 minutes 15 seconds. After that I heard Eric telling me that 5 minutes was also a good point for me to focus on and I continued to relax. At 5 minutes and 3 seconds I decided that I reached my training goal and that gave me a fantastic overall feeling. As a side note for myself, this is actually the time I should start the real fight phase.

Eric and I swopped places and he started his static session. As he’s adapting a new technique, which includes shallow breathing through the snorkel, Eric does some very impressive empty lung statics. Ranging from 2 minutes to 2 minutes 30 seconds, but he told me 3 minutes 30 seconds is his best in empty lungs. Now it was time for him to test his packing through a snorkel technique and went for a full lungs static. Looking fairly easy and relaxed all the way, somewhere around 5 minutes contractions seem to have kicked in. I reassured him with the time and he totally relaxed, arms of the ledge and on a mission to 6 minutes 4 seconds. Good static!

Next up was my goal in Dynamic No Fins with a goal of 80 meters. I got ready prepared my goggles and neck weight and entered the water, I added an addition weight around my waist of 0,5 kilograms. After a good start, I was nearing the 50 meters and my mind was ready to give up on me. But I felt strong after my good static time, which convinced me to continue. After turning at 50 meters, the urge completely vanished and the goal of 80 meters was easily within reach. Only one good turn at 75 meters a few arm strokes and I’d done it. It has been a long time, but this actually felt liberating and puts me in the position where I had been waiting for almost a year. Ready for more!

Eric did his dynamic with fins schedule with a nice full pocket mono-fin, with the pockets placed under an angle. He started of with a new technique by using an arm-stroke in between the mono-fin kicks. Which actually doesn’t look all that tiring when you look at it, he made it to 136 meters which impressed me yet again . Eric continued with a distance schedule for dynamic and I shot a few underwater videos from it. Jouke was training his technique on the mono-fin and getting a proper balance for his Orca suit. But I can hear him say that he didn’t find the proper weight balance yet.

I would like to thank the people form Freediving Utrecht for having me over in their pool. I had a really good time, freediving, chatting, catching up and of course I reached my goals!

This is a post by Sanne.

Last night I went out to the Tongelreep for some freediving training as it’s thursday again. Jorg only just got back from holiday and pointed out that he would be joining again next week, but both Kostas and Yugyug were there to join me in training.

I didn’t really set up a schedule for me to work on, but I did want to do a few crawl without breath’s, DNF’s and some static at depth. Unfortunenately the Tongelreep was on summerschedule, so the 5 meter deep pool was not available to us at this time. We had to switch to the 50 meter official competition pool section to do our training. This is the section also used with the dynamic’s during the 4th dutch Apnea Open. The pool is 3 meters deep and has a lot of lanes available, but it’s rather hard to get a lane to yourself » so you’ll always have to be alert to swimmers going about their own business.

So Yugyug and I agreed to start with some warm-up laps, which for me meant doing about 4 lanes of 50 meter crawl without breath. Yugyug was doing 25 meters of DNF’s to get his system prepped. After our warm-up Kostas joined up with us and it was time for the static’s at 3 meter depth. Yugyug and Kostas did really good static’s and I got inspired to do a static as well. I agreed with Kostas on their tapping strategy and told him I would see how things progressed but I set the max to 3 minutes. This all went really good, I wasn’t all that relaxed as the last time with Jorg I had a good 3 minutes at 5 meters, but in general I did not have a hard time taking the contractions for the last 60 seconds.

After the static session I had a go at DNF’s over 50 meters, which had been a while in a 50 meter pool. First lap was progressing good, but confidence was lacking a bit so for safety reasons I went up at 40 meters, as I was training alone at this moment.  But after resurfacing I instantly could feel and notice that this safety measure altho good to do, no where near any out of breath signs . So as confidence was up again I started at the other side and did another DNF run back and this time the 50 meters went away easily again. Although touching the wall at 50 meters did feel as a relief, I think that’s only due to the fact I haven’t been doing this at all lately.

Kostas decided to go for a DYN over 50 meters after he first tried 2 x 25 meters to warm up. He came up easily, but one of the things to note here was that he’d decreased his swimming speed and now did a dynamic over 50 meters in about 1 minute 10 seconds, which he said did make him more comfortable. We’ll see how this progresses over the weeks to come.

Overall we had a quality training, learning a lot and having fun. I’ll try and write an exercise post about the crawl without breath to give more insight in this good training exercise. So stay tuned.