hmmm.. Before I went to Kalamata I made some research here on DB:
I bought as Eric advised and was using daily:
Iron 40mg (ferrochel)
B12 5mg (sublingual methylcobalamin 5000mcg once per day)
B6 50mg
Vit C 1000mg ( ester C)
Folic Acid 2mg
I got amazing dive times, however I don't know if that was due to suplementation (I will explaing it later in the post). My longest dive was 4:32 to 103m FIM, there were big waves so some of the pulls were not effective, that's why it took me so long to go up. Few days later when sea was calm I did 106m in 3:54 and it was very easy dive in term of oxygen. Generally dive times around 4 minutes in FIM were not challenging at all. In CNF I had my lognest dive time 4:22 (with big samba) and 3:56, totally clean.
Now comparision,
year before without supplements:
- longest/deepest FIM was 4:09, 1 FRC warmup 30 minutes before diving and with no breath up.
- longest/deepest CNF - 80m in 3:48, no warmup no breathup.
Kalamata with supplements:
- longest FIM was 4:32, but I was diving without warmup and without breath up.
- longest/deepest CNF - 79m with 3:56, no warmup no breathup. I don't count deeper and longer dive with 4:22 cause it was not clean and I don't think I would make it in term of rules. (yes I know I have too long dive times, but that's because I don't do any other training than dynamics and my technique in a sea is not really good)
When I look into it I see some progress in breathhold capacity, but I'm relativly young in a sport and I'm progressing year after year, so it could be only that....or the blood building vitamins.
I was in Kalamata for 2 months, training a lot. My last dive was on the 24th of September. After I came back, I went to make blood test on the 28th of September and I got this results:
Hemoglobine - 14,2 g/dL
Hematocrit - 44,5%
Red blood cell count - 4,7
it's nothing special as You can see...now the question is, could it drop so much in just 4 days?? Well this 4 days were really intensive...like a typical eastern europe citizen I was drinking A LOT on the party, a lot on the after party..then there was a long way home, so I was really exhausted, dehydrated, and not eating proper food...maybe this got my results back to normal...or they were there all the time and blood is not so important after all? or maybe blood is important as I think about it, but just blood building vitamins doesn't have much effect.. maybe due to intensive training there are some changes in a blood that can't be measured in a simple blood test?
that are just my 2 cents,
Matt