A radical shift in training for me

[Cliff Etzel]

For many years, I have espoused doing hard core apnea cardio and weight lifting with pool sessions to develop my freediving.

Problem is, my body can't take that kind of training any longer. When I trained with Aharon Solomons in January 2006, he emphatically stated that the Pipin way of training was detrimental to my achieving good technique both above and underwater while freediving. In other words, grunting my way through training. He was right. He insisted that Ashtanga Yoga alone combined with pool and open water training would get me where I wanted to be in physical fitness both personally and for freediving. It took me until May of this year to finally take his advice.

I'm sure there are others on the forums who practice some form of Hot Yoga and all I can say is WOW! Since beginning, I have noticed a radical shift in my overall body strength and flexibility. Now I only do a mix of Core Power Yoga/Pilates and mix it with Dynamic Pool with gear and the Static Apnea tables (PB of 4:20 to date).

I'm specifically training to shoot video while freediving, handling a Light & Motion Bluefin housing, sometimes with full HID lights. I want to work mainly in the depth range of 5-10 meters -maybe a little deeper where the light will allow me to not have to take my lights unless absolutely necessary.

What are others thoughts on this type of training?

[Fondueset]

Hi Cliff,

I have a lot of yoga under my belt - 30+ years. Lately my interest has been drawn more to Taiji/bagua/Qigong - approaches emphasizing deep relaxation and feeling/energy work. The interesting thing about these practices - and also pranayama and some of the other Yogic energy work - is they work from the inside out. Bagua is a more vigorous martial form encorporating some interesting back bends that act on the midsection and rigcage. Flexibility, however, is not the same as relaxation - and I've found Taiji facilitates a kind of whole-bodily equalization with the environment that gives rise to efficient, minimal movement. I try to apply the sense of movement as an expression of space to my work with the monofin.

Just focusing on deep relaxation during surface intervals increased my dive times by a full third.

[shoutatthesky]

Ashtanga yoga is great but it won't replace cardio. I have found that ashtanga is good for improvement of many things - breathing fully, flexibity, mindfulness and relaxation. I found however it didn't improve my fitness for running - at least in terms of getting 'puffed'. I would suggest you keep up the cardio. Just my 2 cents

[wes]

Cliff,


Asthanga yoga can be very many things. In the "most pure" form that I have studied, you do poses in a certain sequence without stopping (sometimes called flow yoga) with long holds that are quite intense. Also when doing these poses and holds there are prescribed places when you inhale and exhale so that you essentially are doing the poses and flow in a hypoxic state. In other asthanga yoga I have taken the breathing is hardly mentioned and the emphasis is on motion and not the holds which can be very intense (though only if the student makes them intense, its easy to go light on them). I sarcastically call this type of "astanga" yoga "jump around" yoga as it seems there are lots of people jumping around and not much else happening. The point of all this is it is not really possible to say "astanga" yoga does this, or "hot yoga" does that or "bikram's" yoga does whatever. With yoga it depends mainly on the teacher, not the style of yoga and also what the student puts into it how much of a cardio vs flexibility vs strenght workout it is.

[shoutatthesky]

You are right Wes. I was lucky enough to have one on one training daily over a 2 month period. Breathing correctly with ujjayi breathing. And yes the holds are intense.
I wouldn't say my practice put me in a hypoxic state but I do feel the same sort of calmness I used to feel after yoga as I now do after an apnea session. In fact I quite often would fall deeply asleep in savasana!