Assesing your deficiencies with a graphic tool

[Dr.Freedive]

Training for freediving the Importance of Self-assessment

Today I was doing a self-assessment of freediving for a friend.
This is a graphic tool that shows the potential and the weaker points of the skills needed for freediving:
I remember talking to Matt Malina a few years back, when we were training in Dahab and one of the things he said, still holds true today.
Make your weak points your strong Points.
This helps to decrease the limiting factors on your performance.
My graph tries to identify those points. First it should be filled out for self-assesment and then for
feedback by a coach.
It's much easier to go form 10% in flexibility to 30% than let's say from 70% to 90 % in anerobic fitness.


Self-assessment of a Freedivers Skill by Bernhard Zogg:

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1.General skill level: Where do you see yourself?


(I have the same for very specific skills.)

Max can be where you want to go or the level of a top athlete.
I will also post some of my thoughts regarding training:

1.
Be honest with yourself….
Work on your weaknesses
Focus on one thing in a session or a training
A lot of preparation can be done dry, like flexibility, equalisation excersices, relaxation excersices, yoga, tai chi, fitness
To get a reasonable not to high vo2max swimming is great then running and spinning, at the start of the training cycle ( autumn ) it’s okay to do cardio, later if a reasonable base is reached, it’s not that important.
Anerobic capacity and the ability to perform muscle action under severe local hypoxia are very crucial (CNF).
Remember to work your core.
Be in the water as much as possible
Rest is especially for top athletes most important. You can do Yoga/Massage ect. on your Off-Days.
Be open to new ideas about training, do other sports, climbing for instance.
Mix it up, don’t do the same stuff to long
Find a group to train with.
Technique and relaxation are the two most important factors for performance in freediving .” 20% better technique => 20% performance. 20% more fitness or whatever => 2-5% more performance”
Never dive alone
Read the safety guidelines.
Train safety every month at least once, it increases your confidence level and allows you to make a good connection with your buddy

My blog Evidence based Freediving

 

[esom]

Hi dr. freedive

for sure sometimes cutting works, sometimes not.
cutting works best, if you know 1.what is the hole and 2. what are the parts (otherwise trying to detach them from each other ends up in the mess) 3. of course, how to put it together again afterwards. for putting it together you have to know the functional interrelations because those are the base of any machine construction work.
to explain a little what i mean regarding 2. : what is "water awareness", what is "flexibility"? and so on
regarding 3. : how is water awareness and relaxation connected? if you try to apply knowledge regarding this connection you need a different model, because there is no connection between water awareness and relaxation in your graphic tool. actually there are only 6 connections that are possible to be described* , although there must be 30.

sounds like a big load of nonsens?! i´d agree, as "tool" in this context is just a phrase. but if it´s just a phrase how to solve this, and get in touch with reality?

i´d say that a freediver using this model profits from being aware. aware of what? aware, that his or her interpretation of the model becomes one of the crucial points, which were originally pointed out by the model.
differently said: the concepts of connection and separation of someone´s self can be put in line with concepts "flexibility", "equalisation",.... --- this "line" would reflect a concept of concepts again (it´s a line! just to give another example of what kind of circularity i mean).
i think this stuff is a "forum problem" too, because our forum is not a scientists´ congress although we are typing only, but its us freedivers, giving truth to our concepts, by creating them. differently said: we are not talking about something outside when we talk about freedivers, freedivers training, freediving, freedom and so on.

so far... . these things are at least six times bigger than developing a concept of "technique"


*poorly though, since one dimensional

 

[Dr.Freedive]

This is just a simple graph to selfasses no need for overinterpretation, yes i do have a lot more graphs like this for each dimension and yes the graph is not properly alinged meaning the order if points is random. I actualy have this graph from a football manager tool. So it gives you a profile of freedivers strenght and weakness and yes it needs to be improved and thought through more. For me it works. This is just an overview graph though and not anything super sophisticated. I developed it when i trained at only one anpnea center. By the way awarness is also a term taken from video games, where an experienced player has more awarness and can readjust to his suroundings better. For instance if your line gets entangled you will notice it if you have high water awarness. When u get to my room I will post an example of my estimation how this model can be used to model a freedivers strenghts. But i'm not gonna post more detailed graphs for every dimension that should be evaluated because I use this to help my friend and not everybody on deeperblue.
Best regards Bernhard

 

[Simos]

Poor Michael Phelps... How did you come up with that graph??? Lol

 

[Simos]

By the way no offence but my view is if you are going to post something in a public forum like DB then be prepared to talk about, don't post it an then say 'I won't post details because I did it to help my friends and not everyone on DB'. Then just keep it for your friends in the first place.

Just saying...

Ps apologies if I misread your tone, it's easy to do in a forum. But apart from the obvious points this is way too general to be very useful, at least in my opinion. I do obviously agree that assessing your weaknesses is important - sometimes it's not that obvious what's keeping you from doing better unless you give it some thought

 

[esom]

Hi Bernard,

maybe you got me a little wrong. my post is no harsh citisism at all.i just jump into a disscussion i feel we are already in when a such graph is put online on a forum.

This is just a simple graph to selfasses no need for overinterpretation,

i don´t understand very well, maybe leave a comment, how your post was ment to be read and? replied.

regards

 

[watts]

Where does the dive / survival response fit?
A major part of freediving.

 

[Dr.Freedive]

[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Thank’s for the feedback. Okay agreed i will post everything I made till now. Don't get me wrong but I just needed someone experienced to have a look at it. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]And yes MDR should fit in as well. I find it however difficult to self-evaluate it, I will try to look at that In a separate graph and do some literature research but for now I find it too complex. And it would be rather simple just to say okay I need to improve it since we don’t really fully understand how to train it besides Freediving and being in the water a lot.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] You can use the graphs as you like anyways and adjust them, they were done rather quickly and need to be refined so any suggestions and own graphs are welcome. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Here are the other dimensions:[/FONT]

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[FONT=&quot]Do this evaluation a few times a year. It doesn't have to be exact as it's more a way to think about where you can improve than an exact tool to compare against others[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Remember to have good performance you need to have a balance of skill as this is the easiest way to improve. One thing to understand is that the things we don't like to do, we don't do often and thus we are worse at them. For me at the moment it's stetching.[/FONT]

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