138m no fins

[bruno]

At the first Dutch DiveInn yesterday Herbert Nitsch did a nice 138m without fins. This new world record will however not be homologated as an official record, because there was no camera nor doping test.

Seeing someone swim 138m no fins is very impressive, i assure you, homologation or not.
Congratulations for the champ.

bruno

[Jorg]

Apparently a video was made of the attempt. So we only needed a dopingtest but they cost 500 euro from AIDA.

What was even more impressive is that the pool was a 50 meter pool!

This evening (GMT+1) a complete resultlist and english report will be published of the competition on http://aidanl.org

Jorg Jansen
Organiser of the competition

[Ben Gowland]

Was it an open international - presumably so to count as WR (pending a drugs test)?

[Jorg]

It was an open competition including an international AIDA judge assigned by AIDA International. We didn't have the drugtest because of the high price. We had an higher priority with money on safety then on a dopingtest

[air4sale]

138m with no fins!! very impressive. I hope that one day i will be able to do 100m

[Fred S.]

I'm curious for which drugs they test a freediver....

[pim]

Fred, don't tell me that you, as our National herbal doctor, haven't got that list almost completly already.....shame on you.

But without joking, me as a NO-medical educated person ask myself what substances can help freedivers in their performances? I tend to think most substances used in althletics/cycling/etc will do more harm then good to a freedivers performance. Maybe some medical educated people can explain this to us.


Greetings and keep breathing,

Pim Vermeulen
Netherlands

ps, It was a great dive and Hebert made it look very very easy!!!

[Fred S.]

The only things that might be interesting (and perhaps very dangerous and expensive) is blood-doping, EPO, artificial oxygen-carriers, tranquilizers etc.
So if you consider the danger and the costs (compared to the incredible $$$ to be earned in this sport ) I'm wondering if the chance is real that freedivers might use prohibited substances....

Fred S.

[ivan]

hi

138m wow freakish. Anyone know how long it took, i reckon he could be competition in the no fins constant ballast category with David, and Topi. Has he considered it.

cheers

[Jorg]

It took him 2:13 min. It looked very easy!

[pim]

Fred,

Will there be a freediver thinking of using EPO; because I tend to think this would more or less suicide?

In theory your body, through apnea training, already adapts to the low oxygen environment by producing more red blood cells. Then there is the diving reflex, one part of this is the enlarged urine production and the coupled dehydration. Both these processes thicken the blood…..using EPO on top of that?

But maybe a medical educated person can clearify this!!!

Greetz Pim

[efattah]

After I bought my blood analyzer, I measured the blood of some local freedivers. The results were very strange. I then did a lot of research on why this might be. The bottom line is that while most freedivers do all sorts of apnea exercises in hope of getting better, all those exercises stimulate red blood cell production (erythropoeisis), but in the end the freedivers almost never have enough iron to build any blood, so the erythropoeisis, instead of producing hemoglobin, produces zinc protoporphyrin (ZPP) which is zinc based hemoglobin, a useless molecule. So, most of the freedivers I tested were actually anemic (dangerously low hemoglobin). Some of them were even taking iron supplements, but more research confirmed my suspicion that common iron supplements have virtually no effect in most people (some people, however, do seem to absorb them).
The couch potatoes I measured at work had higher (sometimes FAR higher) hemoglobin than the freedivers. This is not true for all freedivers; some freedivers adopt a diet which does give them enough iron. I was one of the anemic divers, with [Hb] = 12.8 g/dl (Laminar had 11.5 g/dl)

With the help of the blood analyzer, I have so far improved to [Hb] = 15.7 g/dl (Laminar is up to 14.5 g/dl). The new progress had nothing to do with training, and everything to do with diet & nutrition.

Just another reminder that training *harder* is not the answer. You must train *smarter*. Don't spend 90% of your time training. Spend 90% of your time figuring out how to train (i.e. what to eat, how/when to train), and then spend 10% of your time actually doing it. You will beat your friend who spends 90% of his time sweating his butt off doing the wrongs things, even though he spent 9 times longer training than you did.

Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

[hydro]

Great information Eric, thanks.
For the rest that may rush to start chewing on your golf clubs, first check out the site below.

http://www.ironoverload.org/anemia.htm

Hydro

[efattah]

The above link is interesting, but it doesn't provide any references. If you do your homework on medline, you will find a different story. After going through a zillion abstracts on medline, the story I found was:

1. Sedentary people who don't exercise and eat lots of red meat & liver, get enough iron. These are the only people who get enough iron.

2. If you are not sedentary, or you don't eat lots of red meat, then you don't get enough iron

3. If you stress your body with extreme exercise and/or hypoxia, and you are vegetarian, then you have serious iron deficiency

4. Normal iron supplements (ferrous fumarate, ferrous sulfate) have little or no effect on most people, except to cause stomach upset and infection

5. When people go to high altitude, hemoglobin production is so high that there is no way to get enough iron into the body to keep up, even with injections.


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

[ivan]

hi

Thats crusin for 138m. I usually take around 1:30-1:40 to do 72m I think i should speed things up a bit. Do you know if he has tried no fins constant.

cheers