NEW Dynamic World Record !

[TRITON]

Ant and Dave, on your 200+ dives ,when do the contractions start?

[ant williams]

If I get contractions, they normally start around 80 - 90m. They hang around through bloodshift till about 130m then usually stop for the rest of the swim. I was talking to Dave about this at the last comp. He normally experiences his first contraction at 40m. I guess he swims a long way with some significant discomfort.

Ant

[TRITON]

Thanks Ant............how do you actually stop the contractions?Heh.......I too feel the first contraction at 40-60m but can't imagine swimming 200m more meters like that......really impressive!

[f3dive]

For those interested Dave will be on Radio Live with Marcus Lush at 7.50am this morning.

I'm still blown away by the efforts of Dave, Ant and Kerian who blitzed the 200 metre mark and to all the athletes who put so much effort in. There were 8 new personal bests achieved over the 3 days and some athletes improved in more than one discipline.

The results will be available later today.

A huge thank you must go out to the volunteers: Jude who made the most amazing medals for all the top three places of each discipline, Colin Gans who captures every one in the moment (underwaterdisplay.net) Graham who took the underwater footage of Dave's swim on Friday, to John who acted as safety and is the whole reason freediving exists in NZ, the wonderful Tracy who judged the event with baby and Grant and Wal of course. Karl our medic come videographer, top timer and girl friday
Lastly to my magnificient husband Paul who is just the greatest, 6 weeks ago after Dave swum the 234mtrs I came up with this crazy idea of getting A judges over here to give Dave and everyone else the opportunity and he never complained once while I drained our account dry. I love you baby!!!!!

As a side note: Just after Dave's marathon swim we took Grant diving on the south coast to get some paua, Dave felt 'a little' tired so he waited on the beach after telling us where all the good spots to find crays and paua were. Dave you are the best!

Best wishes for the Egypt trip, just keep swimming.

Fran

[samdive]

congrats guys - an awesome record and sounds like a fun event too. Wish you weren't all on the other side of the world!

Sam (and of course deepest bear......)

[Mullins]

Triton - I got contractions at 45m on my 226m dynamic (high stress) and about 55-60m on my 244m swim (more relaxed). I can actually put them off 'till around the 110m mark if I want by using a wetsuit and doing more of a breathup, but that's counterproductive as I don't get a strong enough dive reflex. So really I do the most minimal of breathups and try to get contractions earlier rather than later. It feels like they go away after about 150m, but people tell me they can still see them clearly. So I suppose I must just stop feeling them!

[f3dive]

Just to add to this, Dave had two massive contractions on his 226m swim coming into the 200 metre turn where he stopped to 'suck' them down. On his 244m swim I only witnessed small contractions and nothing that was quite so strong. His form went from deep undulations with a glide to kicks with smaller bends. He looked up at the wall around 230m and made a great decision to come up where he did. Dave suffered some shaking but still in control as he placed his arms on the pool side, everything was slow and deliberate. The minute wait took forever.
We are all so very proud of Dave, Ant and Kerian who pulled off the most amazing 200m+ swims on a lazy winter weekend in Wellington.

[Goran Colak]

Hy Dave, would you tell us a bit more about your's breathup preparation before the dive, amount of packing, weight of neckweight, suit you are waring... Maybe a word or two about your training, that look as really sick C02 tolerance if your contractions start that early. I hope I did not go overboard whit all this questions Dave

Congratulations one more time, really impressive stuff from you New Zealanders !!!

[Mullins]

No problem, though it is not very complicated

I was packing about 30% on my first dive and 50% on my second dive. I haven't been packing very much because I have been training at 30% (10 packs) and didn't want to stuff my stroke up. If I pack heaps during training I risk injuring my diaphragm on the turns, has happened twice now. Increasing the amount did seem to help with the distance though. I think my neckweight weighed a bit over 7kg once I'd added some lead but I'd have to weigh it to be sure.

I was wearing a TYR 'aquapel' suit, basically a lycra/nylon racing suit similar to the sharkskin ones. I bought it because they cost a scary amount of money and this one was cheaper Nice and smooth, not very restrictive. I think it's also good having a bit of compression for the leg muscles, in fact I would prefer a tighter suit.

Breathup? Not really. In the last minute or so before top I really don't ventilate much as you will probably see on the videos. At least I try not to. Sometimes I end up taking bigger breaths than I should.

Training? Pretty much 2 diff. training sessions which I alternate between. 1. fast repeat 100m dynamics then 50m sprints with training fins, that sort of thing. Lots of lactic. 2. repeat long, slow (1 kick - glide) dynamics with a wetsuit so I don't get cold. Doing them slowly means I can do several long swims and get hypoxic without lactic acid building up and stopping the session. When I say 'long' I mean 150m and sometimes 200m. Then in the leadup to this comp I started doing long 'medium pace' swims in the same style and config I was going to use at the comp.

It's a fairly unscientific approach so I'll probably look at it more closely when I next start pool training seriously. Essentially though I'm training a little on either side of where I want to be (train fast & slow, compete medium), and with an eye to upcoming CW comps.

[Goran Colak]

Thank you allot for the answer Dave. It's wary interested and informative stuff, at least for me.

[TRITON]

Thanks Dave!!I can't wait to see the video on your dive....see you in Sharm.

[UWDisplay]

Images of the event can now be found at:

www.UnderwaterDisplay.net

Cheers,

Colin

[wes]

Dave,

Very big congratulations and thanks for sharing your training methods. What brand/type of monofin did you use for your record swim and do you usually train with that same fin?

Thanks and Cheers - Wes

[Schmalensee]

Congrutulations Dave! Great performence and I have a feeling there is much more to come. Some questions for you if you have time.

1. How would you describe your physique in general? For example rest pulse, strength, length, weight, blood pressure, lung volume?

2. What do you train when you are not freediving and how often? For example gym, running (short/long distans), swimming and what have you been training before you started freediving?

3. Have you tried doing long dynamic with bifines latelly and do you plan trying it out more?

4. Do you think a lot about what you eat, coffé, meat (vegetarian?), nutritional supplements, alcohol? have you been testing different dietes?

Thanks for telling the "secrets" about your training. Wish you good luck from Sweden!

[Mullins]

Wes - it's a Leaderfins Hyper Freediving. Basically a CW fin that's also reasonably good for DYN. I need more angle on the footpockets though, Nat is bringing a Hyperfin to Egypt for me so I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Schmalensee - Tall and skinny. 200cm, 90kg, VC=10.6l no packing, 14l with packing. Resting pulse is around 55bpm. BP tends to be high when measured, probably because I don't like men in white coats!

I don't do any training except for freediving. I have a regular job so I only just have time for that! Did a few sports before I began freediving, most of which involved a fair bit of strength and sprint training. Lost about 12kg muscle mass around the time I started freediving.

I don't think bifins would get me any further. All that energy wasted trying to rotate my body with each kick? I think monos are more efficient, even at lower speeds. And I'm doing 1m/s which is not that slow. I'm gliding for a lot of the time, which means my peak speed must be quite a bit higher. Plus dynamics were really just a way of training for CW, and bifins wouldn't be much help there!

No special diet. Just healthy