COMPETITION FREEDIVING: HARMING OUR SPORT?

Mullins said:

With all this death and 'extreme consequences' it's a wonder I'm still alive.

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. I like your sarcasm !

Completely disagree. If the person mature enough he understand the difference between "fitness" level and "competition" level. Any sport include freediving. Well known sport - boxing. Is it "ready" for competition? KO's more than on regular basis. Should the person who experience KO be banned because he stepped in a ring with a heavy puncher? Have you seen blood in a ring? They split it as well after nice shot for the press.
Compare it to "fitness" level with easy sparring and no KO's AT ALL. No fractures, no blood. Nice and healthy.
Everyone can decide what they expect from freediving. For someone it can be numbers. For another something else.
I DO know that boxing and freediving completely different.

G.Kothonidis said:

. I like your sarcasm !

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Thanks I get the greek crisis now, I was confused about it before, but I always understood about the land of the long white fluffy sheeps bum.

Just teasing, I have to defer to yours and mullins experience and expertise in these matters.

In the ring it´s your opponent who can kill you, in the deep water it´s you. In depth diving your own pride is a lethal enemy. No matter what level are you doing.

Education:

I think we are going through a collective learning and growth process here.
Like people do starting freediving.
People starting freediving need to learn that water and physical limits can not be forced into submission. They need to learn to find a way around their barriers.

I think education makes a difference, when it can show a difference.

For instance I've offered beginners the following experience. Let them do a far dynamic dive, and ask how they feel. Then I'll have them change the approach, adding a small feeling determined static before continuing their dynamic. Then I'll have them do the start static and dyn in FRC. Every time when they surface I ask about their feelings, and within a short time they experienced and learned that using force is limiting and using smarts is the way forward to longer, further and most of all much more pleasant dives.


It has been a long time ago since I did my old 2* AIDA course, but I don't recall much practical information on how to safely explore, know and extend your personal limits. I was one of those competitors who had many samba's and BO's, and I had a really difficult time recognising limits during the dive.
I wish there was attention and practical advice on how to learn when to turn and when to come up.


A new competition rule:

I wonder how much the announcement and the penalties for not making the announcement affect divers. Off cause not making the personal best/NR is also part of 'loosing' the investments of training and getting to the event.
I'm thinking about offering the competition diver the opportunity to have the plate up to 10m shallower then announced. This would allow athletes to adapt to the day's/ hours weather, and personal mental and physical conditions, which often are very different then the forecast and feelings the day before.
With only this addition some athletes would announce 10m more then they are able of, so they can adjust to beat others or have a monster pb for when they feel great that day or when in the mood to beat others. So in order to counter this I think it's important to have an individual upper announcement limit. What could that be based on? I think it should be something like +3m of a maximum depth of a month old logged dive, in the same discipline.

Example:
Diver has a month's old pb of 80m CWT, as witnessed, signed and identified by another person and a dive computer log. This diver can announce up to 83m in CWT. On the dive day up until 45minutes before the first official top, he can have the depth reduced to 73m without a penalty.

I think this rule change could yield at least 3 benefits.

1) Less risk taking due to changing circumstances, including personal.
2) More exiting competitions, because the actual dive depth is determined only 45 minutes before OT.
3) The rule creates more space for and awareness of diving according to changing external and internal circumstances.

A disadvantage will be that the competition line possibly needs to raised and lowered between dives, because the start list, based on the previous day announcements, may not exactly follow the normal shallow to deep sorting. This will demand more attention from the jury and organisers to have plate positioned at the correct depth.

What do you think?

Thank you PJB for starting this discussion, for it inspires reflection and adaptation to a new phase in the life of our sport.

Limiting comp increase over recent training pb shifts essentially the same risk of overreaching across to training. Reduces organiser liability though.

TBH I'm more concerned about recreational diving harming comp diving. It's more dangerous and accidents limit access to pools, insurance etc.

Enough understanding of the body with enough tech to monitor it on the way down to determine the turn point, and then measure the achieved depth by other means so it's completely adaptable to what the diver chooses at that moment , possible and reliable ? Humans differ and it'll never be perfect of course, other problems I'm not sure of.

The understanding of the body to the extent required would I think need to come from the trials and errors of freediving participants, having the right biometric sensors on competitors should eventually show a correlation between these and unacceptable end results for competitors, the adaptable measurement of the achieved depth I'm sure isn't a major problem even though I've given it no thought, but I'm not sure about all this as my design for a space ship hasn't worked out so far, so what do I know.

The recent pb +3 m is just a suggestion, it could also be +5 or a percentage like + 10%.

Yes it will shift more importance to the training sessions, but I ask isn't that the goal, people being adapted to depth before a competition starts?

I remember Aharon Solomons complaining about the increasing numbers of BO and squeezes, saying that those could have been prevented with more depth training, and more time for depth adaptation.

I added changing the depth up to 45min before the first OT, to offer the diver a penalty less opportunity to reduce their announcement to reflect less then optimal in and exterior circumstances. If you feel somehow crap, or the wind, waves, current sucks you don't need to cancel that precious dive and not have any points at all, you just reduce your announcement and dive within your current ability.

I can remember competition days where I for sure would have lowered my announcement, instead of going for a long shot.

At the moment I do not think technology is good and reliable enough to consistently monitor divers at depth. It sounds expensive, not fun and not effective.

Kars said:

The recent pb +3 m is just a suggestion, it could also be +5 or a percentage like + 10%.

Yes it will shift more importance to the training sessions, but I ask isn't that the goal, people being adapted to depth before a competition starts?

I remember Aharon Solomons complaining about the increasing numbers of BO and squeezes, saying that those could have been prevented with more depth training, and more time for depth adaptation.

I added changing the depth up to 45min before the first OT, to offer the diver a penalty less opportunity to reduce their announcement to reflect less then optimal in and exterior circumstances. If you feel somehow crap, or the wind, waves, current sucks you don't need to cancel that precious dive and not have any points at all, you just reduce your announcement and dive within your current ability.

I can remember competition days where I for sure would have lowered my announcement, instead of going for a long shot.

At the moment I do not think technology is good and reliable enough to consistently monitor divers at depth. It sounds expensive, not fun and not effective.

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I think that the whole "meters thing" might complicate the competitions. There are divers who might be able to dive to 60-80 meters cwt easily and they haven't ever competed officially (if they are deep spearos or whatever)..what is going to happen with them..there are also divers who want to do conservative dives in their first comps just to take their first white card but their actuall capabilities are far more (for example + 10-15 meters). If a rule like the one that you recommended existed they should compete in 2-3 competitions in a season to perform their actual performance or they would be forced to start their first competition with a non-conservative dive. just some thoughts . P.s. I don't write so well in English so forgive any mistakes please

G.Kothonidis said:

I think that the whole "meters thing" might complicate the competitions. There are divers who might be able to dive to 60-80 meters cwt easily and they haven't ever competed officially (if they are deep spearos or whatever)..what is going to happen with them..there are also divers who want to do conservative dives in their first comps just to take their first white card but their actual capabilities are far more (for example + 10-15 meters). If a rule like the one that you recommended existed they should compete in 2-3 competitions in a season to perform their actual performance or they would be forced to start their first competition with a non-conservative dive. just some thoughts . P.s. I don't write so well in English so forgive any mistakes please

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I think you forgot that a signed, identified witnessed clean (sp+no injuries) performance + computer graph is enough to prove the months' best depth.
Also many depth competitions have training days in advance to the competition; so there is room to record a witnessed performance there.
But there may be there is a need for an under limit, so that people who've done 100 the previous season can do say 75% of the last pb?
Remember the point is that we want people to be more prepared to do near personal best performances in order to prevent the increasing numbers of BO's and squeezes.

Kars said:

Yes it will shift more importance to the training sessions, but I ask isn't that the goal, people being adapted to depth before a competition starts?

I remember Aharon Solomons complaining about the increasing numbers of BO and squeezes, saying that those could have been prevented with more depth training, and more time for depth adaptation.

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One extra dive isn't much adaptation

Feel free to propose something that may help to reverse the trend of more BO and squeezes in competition.

Thanks

hi All )) here's a bizarre trend from looking into pool competition results. Looks like the more experienced and strong a freediver becomes, the less he is there "going for it at all costs"? Just for fun, I collected the data freely available online from the 3 national federations, and voila. Since a round number might be the most wanted result for those who are looking for results/competition in the first place, the loss of interest for round numbers would reflect the overall loss for "seriously" competing? Or a reflection of a zen mindset. If competition accidents happen more frequently to those who are surpassing their actual capabilities, seems like the will to surpass themselves and the risk is diminishing with the rank of an athlete. Not sure this is serious science )) but it's a curious picture.

For me the problem stems from Education, The majority of competitive and deep freedivers would of gone through the freediving education system. So its safe to say that is how there attitude towards freediving is shaped, at least in the beginning.
You can become a 20m freediver in 2 days, 30m 3 days later and be diving below your RV 4 days after that. The courses are focused on depth not feeling or awareness.

Education Agency's are trivializing our sport by squeezing some minimal information into a few sort courses.
Something that is even more worrying than experienced divers squeezing or blacking out in a comp, is inexperienced divers squeezing or blacking out on "shallow" training dives (none of which get reported). Different freedive centers will deal with a black out or squeeze in different ways, but i think it is safe to assume some will be trivializing the incident to make the diver feel better and to keep a customer.
Freediving agency's Believe all that it takes to go below your RV is to do a 4 day course and you are prepared, But I would say it is just not possible without a LOT of self awareness and training.

So to me the whole education system needs to be remodeled, courses need to be much longer with a focus on relaxation and self awareness (this can be done by introducing Modules to each level each of which can be done on a different holiday/weekend) and an emphasis on training in-between courses should pushed (this can be done by dedicating one modal on setting up a buoy, saftey skills and rescues).
I agree that anyone can enjoy freediving, but going below you RV has serious consequences and i have seen enough to know it is not for everybody and should not be marketed so.

I don't see any problem with competitions, its a great way for us to come together, socialize and dive in the safest environment possible. Its peoples mind sets that needs to be changed through knowledge and experience.

..sure, Harry Chamas : "awareness and training". This "zen" problem is imho pervasive, not only in the field of our sport.
Just came across this quote from a 2009 interview after the 101-m by NM (quote bellow). Clearly this "safe freediving" aim is unattainable in a few days of training. Or is it just unrealistic? (btw I wonder why there's no such a device with a built-in computer: it would sense/analyse the depth profile on ascent, and if the freediver or a spearo would blackout i.e. re-dive immediately after a lengthy dive or not even reach the surface, the safety device would inflate a west or something. Should not be that difficult to engineer. It won't protect against a squeeze, but would be o.k. for shallow water blackouts. Competition accidents are less frequent or dangerous compared to leisure-freediving accidents, right? Another btw: do newbies train to instinctively drop their weightbelts? Sort of an automatic-without-thinking-reflex conditioning). Competitive freediving being a tip-of-iceberg/on-top-of-recreational-freediving, if we'd get the habit to freedive safely, we'd continue to do it in competitions, I guess.
quote:
[Q]: Do you have a dream about freediving?
[NM]: It is a dream about safe freediving. Would be great if all of us people would cease to fight and enforce results despite actual personal limits. Would be great to control ourselves, to gain pleasure not from personal bests, not from records-for-pride or show-off, but to get pleasure purely from a dive.