Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Dry training for competition 2

Between my first and second competition I had 46 days to train and most important, to figure out how to train. Although my dry training approach made me confident in my breathhold and lungs, I knew I had to start doing some wet training.
Main focus was on DNF. I wanted to find a good technique and a speed that would suite a longer swim than my 110 meter in the Swedish Championship. That was done in 2.30 min which is just way too slow. But I also didn't want to give up on the dry training, only wanted to focus on longer breath holds, longer Apnea Walks and shorter recovery time on the Co2 walks.

Out of 46 possible days I trained 43 days, and on 82 occasions.
During the training time I,
increased my Static PB from 7.45 min to 8.15 min (dry)
increased my DNF PB from 110 meter to 125 meter

- I went to the pool 11 times. Did mostly 50 meters technique swims with long rest times.One 125m swim.

- Did 20 Apnea Walk Co2 "tables" The Co2 Apnea walks consisted of 1 min breathhold/5-15 seconds recovery, or 45 seconds breathold/ 1 breath recovery.
All between 5 - 10 sets. Again kept walking during the recovery.

- And did 21 Apnea Max Walks              2.30-3 min   10 times
                                                                  3-4 min        11 times

- 20 Static Max dry breatholds                5-6 min         6 times
                                                                    6-7 min         7 times
                                                                    7-8 min         5 times
                                                                    8+ min          2 times
Again I trained up until the day of the competition.

Results the Finnish Pool Freediving Championship
 
DNF 134 meter     STA 6.12min     DYN (DNF) 111 me
ter


Thoughts?
I need to spend alot more time in the water. It has been a consious decision to this dry approach, but from here and to the World Championship I really need to get to know the water. Even if i can stick out a pretty grusome 3.30 min Apnea walk in decent speed, I am not close to pushing myself that hard in the water. Fear? Respect? Probably. Inexperience? Absolutely.

And I'm still struggling to find good weighting , so to keep great hydrodynamics. On the 134 meter dive I tried with 1 kg on the waist belt, plus extra on the neckweight. I had only tried that on one occasion before and I got much more push in everything.
This time....I went straigt to the bottom. I mean really the bottom. After the first push my belly was rubbing against the pool floor so I had to keep swimming fast strokes so not to sink. It was not pleasent. Kind of ridiculous. My hole dive plan went down the toilet after 10 meters. From the first 25 meter I just thought I needed to get the hell out of there. In the end it was by far my worst technical swim and the least enjoyable one so far.

There is only one way to sort all of this out, right?
As my fly-fishing brother say...»Wet the fly»

Also, I think I will have to get some more rest in the last week before a competition as this time I got really drained out. 3 events in one day and the last DNF in the 50 meter pool was 1 hour after my Static and I could really feel it. Plus the random rookie mistakes that I will have to deal with (mixing up the Static warm up so there was 4 min from the last warm up to OT).
But I really like watching and learning from others and how they do it.
If you look at the video during my DNF you see one young and skinny Danish diver preparing in the warm up lane. Concentrating. Focusing. 5 min after he swam 200 meters DNF. That is probably the most interesting thing I learned watching the video.
I have thought of freediving in a more physical oriented way I guess. If you want to do 6-7 minutes in Static, make sure you can do 8 min. So you don't need perfect circumstanses to do 6-7 min. And now and then hit 8min. And so on.. You know you could always do that. I don't go into a swim thinking I want to enjoy it. I'm thinking that I have «this» in me so HOW could I get to that. I try to treat it as any other swim that I know I could do. I try not to make it into this otherworldy thing that needs extraordinary preparations.

I don't aim at 200m. Or 9 min. I'm not there. It's not for me now. Maybe it will be. It's only up to me.
But I will treat the numbers I know I CAN achieve like it's mine. Like I own them. If I attend a competition I do it to see how I behave away from my ordinary training comfort. And to get a good results out of it.

But I also really would liked to have been inside Runes head those 5 minutes before OT when he knew he could swim 200 m but still hadn't done it. Those are interesting minutes...

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