Any correlation between Still Apnea results and your weight?

[Jozef]

Stavros thanks a lot for such a detailed explanation. This is what I was looking for. I am similar case. I just started to practise freediving and I am very good anaerobicaly, but quite bad on the aerobic side.
I used to run 100m, but I could never run 5km straight. I could benchpress 100kg when my other classmates had record 50kg and by the time I was 19 years old I did benchpress 200kg.
Now over 10 years later I am 175kg, 95kg and starting to do something completely else. Where I differentiate from you is, that to start with, I can hold my breath only for little over 2min only.
Anyhow, once again, thanks a lot. It's good to know, I will have to work on my aerobic strenght.

 

[SanderP]

That's what Rudi Castineyra says about aerobic training:

Another point which is very important, and about which I get countless questions as well is to use of cardiovascular training for freediving. Cardiovascular activity is basically a continuous activity we do for a somewhat long period of time, where our heart is beating at between 45% and 90% of its maximum rate. In simpler words, this means things like running, cycling, rowing, swimming, skating or even skiing for at least 15 minutes and a minimum heart rate of 45%. This will make your whole body fitter, and it’s an essential part of training for those who are aiming to loose weight, lower their body fat or just stay generally fit. However, performing too much cardiovascular exercise while training for freediving will have negative effects on your freediving. Why? Well, cardio training “teaches” your body to work with a lot of oxygen, which is the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve in freediving, so we need to keep cardio training to a minimum if our first priority is to improve our freediving. You should not do cardio more than 2 or 3 times a week, and each of those times, do it for a maximum of 15 or 20 minutes.

source: http://www.divingfree.com/ask/ask02.htm

Any thoughts?

 

[Waterysmile]

On the other hand Tanya Streeter does lots of cardio in her early training. Up to 2 hours on certain days!

Seehttp://www.redefineyourlimits.com/?sm_id=2211&sm_nm=Training&smt_id=7&aPost=

 

[Stavros]

Thats the reason why you cycle your training around the year.
Start with a cardio and resistance training segment for a few months to build up general fitness and strength - then move to speed - hi lactic acid - low O2 training while reducing the amount of cardio - then finally moving to the sea segment which is mainly freediving.

I do not think that having a large volume of cardio work at the same time as you are doing deep freediving or max dynamics etc would work very well even from a recuperation point of view. Furthermore I would agree that essentially you would be telling the body to do two different thing at the same time.

One problem I have seen in my first training year is that if the Freediving segment is too long - like it is going to be this year with dives starting in May and due to the Worlds in Egypt they will have to be kept up until December (thanks AIDA Egypt) - your body tends to gradually loose the benefits of the first two stages (ie general fitness) with problems in recuperation time needed.

It is all a jugling game if you want to do it competitively as the time periods depend on when organisers decide to have their competitions.

If you are doing it for fun things are much easier as you can have 3-4 winter months in the cardio stage 3 spring months in the specialized work stage and keep freediving for the three summer months. (then you can take a few months off and go spearfishing )

Cheers Stavros