Hi, I'm Grace

[Grace]

Hello!

I'm Grace, and I've been visiting Deeper Blue for a while, but have kept very quiet. Usually, I'm a SCUBA Diver and I've have been lucky enough to dive in some beautiful corners of the world, including the UK!

Starting as a complete beginner, I've set myself a freediving challenge to raise money for charity. I've called it the '100 ft Freedive Challenge' and it's in aid of the MS Society, since both my Mum and Aunt are sufferers. Sam Kirby and SaltFree Divers have kindly offered to subsidise my training and lend me the kit I'll need.

What do you think? Is this an achievable goal? I'm sure that it is going to be a real journey of discovery and I'm looking forward to learning lots from more experienced Deeper Blue freedivers.

If you'd like to follow my progress, I'll be blogging about my experiences and hopefully raising awareness of freediving amongst the general public.

Here's the link! 100 ft Freedive Challenge for the MS Society

Grace

 

[podge]

Welcome to Deeper Blue Grace.
Tis a worthy cause that, well done and I wish you the best in achieving your goal.

 

[devondave]

Hello Grace,
welcome to db.

 

[Kars]

Welcome! I'm sure you'll find much inspirational material around here!

My suggestion to achieve you're goal is to freedive often and while doing focus on streamlining, economic swimming, equalisation technique and - most importantly - Flow.

Freediving is one of those weird sports where in circumstances like competition willpower actually limits. So while diving forgo any reach for a numeric goal.

You can do a search for "finding flow in freediving".

Love, Courage and Water.

Kars

ps a few extra pounds surely isn't a show stopper! I know very elegant people, who reguraly outperform those skinny athletic types. It's about style and the ability to relax and surrender to the water.

pps but training freediving sure helps getting in shape, just make sure you always eat your meals after an exercise. It's very easy, just like in nature, first hunt than eat. Eat only whole foods. Avoid artificial stuff.

 

[Salehthefish]

Hello Grace and welcome on DB

All best

 

[agbiv]

Grace, Welcome to DB from TExas! Keep at it. Blessings on your endevour.

 

[Trelawney]

Hi Grace. Welcome to Deeperblue. Sam is a great tutor, and I hope you have fun.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[Grace]

Hi All,

I'm so pleased that the freediving community is such a friendly one . Thanks for all the greetings and encouragement!

Thank you Kars for your helpful advice; as my most recent blog post shows, I'm already learning small lessons about the importance of relaxation. I hope that once I get into the water this will be the starting point for finding my flow.

Podge and Trelawney, I'm glad to see that two of my favourite literary influences are represented here: Shakespeare and Blackadder!

Grace

 

[Kars]

"I took a breath and looked at my stopwatch. 2 minutes 42 seconds. Maybe I could do this after all! I drifted off into a peaceful sleep, and dreamt of whales..."

Well done lady!

I see you're a fast learner, great job!
Challenge for you the next time is to repeat this preparation and anchor it.
You'll find that parts of your body may get a bit tense while breath-holding. When you notice you can mentally command and imagine that part relaxing again. When your flexible diaphragm contracts, let it do so, but relax it right after the contraction. For fun you can count them if you like. This principle of noticing tension and relaxing is vital to freediving.

For depth you are right, diving with a monofin is so much more appealing to the imagination and witnesses. Learning to swim with one can take a while though. Training in a pool is sometimes challenging too since staff may have the fear your might behead some of the other customers. But with small fins you can also train well. And starting you monofin carreer I highly recommend working on your upper back and shoulder flexibility by swimming back crawl. When you do pool training 2x (later when you got the stamina 3x )a week, and eat and rest well you can achieve incredible progress when you focus on relaxation and technique. Avoid the number game.

Free Immersion vs Constant Weight.

FIM is much simpler than CWT. In CWT you have to have a reasonable duckdive, good swimstroke, good equalisation. In FIM you can have a sloppy duckdive, modest pull technique, reasonable equalisation. In FIM you can pause to equalise, to relax, to correct some other things. In CWT your swimtechnique needs to be more or less in order, balanced and streamlined. Your speed is faster than FIM to go economical through the buoyancy phase. After the turn you need to have a efficient technique going up against a few kg negative buoyancy swimming in dark waters at a depth were even fish carry lanterns

I suggest you use plenty of FIM in your depth training, learning to equalise and relax slowly falling down. after a slow turn and a little relaxation hang, you can use the fin and fly up where you seek to have a compact fluid and rhythmic swim stroke.

I get the feeling you'll get hooked and become one of those strange mermaid people .


Love, Courage and Water,

Kars

ps. I'm a whale person too

 

[Simos]

I get the feeling you'll get hooked and become one of those strange mermaid people .


Love, Courage and Water,

Kars

Sounds like Grace is already addicted Kars

Welcome to DB Grace - nice blog and worthy cause for sure. All the best and enjoy the journey... If you need anything post here as you have already seen there are plenty of awesome and friendly freedivers on DB, NR and WR holders etc. Mark H is great so you are in good hands (I am sure Sam is too, just never met her!)
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[Grace]

Yasou Simos!

I admit it, I'm obsessed. I have 12 job applications to do this weekend but all I can think about is getting to the pool for some swimming and to the diving shop to buy some kit! Glad you like the blog, it's been really fun to write so far and the cause is very close to my heart.

I really like DeeperBlue, a mine of information and lots of friendly people . I'm starting my Introductory Course on Thursday so I'll let you know how it goes...

Grace

 

[speardaver]

Grace,

Good luck with the challenge! enjoy!

Dave.

 

[Simos]

Great! Have fun - let us know how it goes Grace!
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[Jonny250]

Good luck Grace, keep us informed how you get on

 

[Grace]

Hi Guys,

Thought I'd let you know how I'm getting on...thanks for all your encouragement so far.

I did my Introduction to Freediving pool course with Mark, which was brilliant! I learnt loads, and feel confident that I now have the tools to train and improve in static and dynamic. I'm going to keep doing my pool training there as they're a really knowledgeable, encouraging and friendly bunch.

I've been doing my CO2 table regularly and managed a surprise 4min dry static, which I was really pleased with. On Kars' advice I'm going to try and increase the breath-hold time for table A to between 2' and 2'20 this week. I'm doing statics in my next pool training session, so I'm curious to see how this time will translate "wet".

Any suggestions for other things I can try? Mark's asked me to outline my training plan over the next 6 months. I'm sure he'll help me to refine it but I'd be grateful for your thoughts...

So far I have come up with:

Regular aerobic exercise, mostly swimming
Stretching/Yoga
Diet
Dry statics and CO2 Table A
Weekly pool training sessions
Twice-monthly depth training

I've been reading the relevant forum threads to try and work out the detail of each of these.

Really looking forward to my AIDA** next weekend - my first depth dives!

Best wishes to all,

Grace

 

[Simos]

Wow - really great progress well done Grace! ;-) if you can translate the 4 min to wet, you have enough breathold to get you to 100ft and back. One less thing to worry about

Glad you enjoyed the course - say hi to Mark for me! You're definitely in good hands...

Regarding your training schedule - definitely along the right direction. I don't train a lot so can't offer much advice on that but just a couple of suggestions:

1. Make sure you can get as much time for depth training as you can. No that many 'diving months' in the UK so make the most of them. Your challenge in reaching 100ft won't be breathold by the sound of things but probably depth-related like EQ, relaxation etc. Make sure you do the right kind of stretching, especially for diaphragm etc to prepare for depth.

2. Make sure you have fun. I know you have set yourself a challenge but in freediving it's not good to be driven by numbers. Focus on enjoyment and relaxation and the numbers will come

3. Don't know when you'd want to do your 100ft challenge but if you can get yourself in nice warm waters for a week's training or so (eg Egypt) I'm sure you'll be very close to achieving your goal...


Some obvious advice I know but often overlooked in my opinion..
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[Kars]

I agree with Simon's pointers.

You are really nice on schedule, I think even ahead. While you can solidify your breath-hold ability, your next focus is going to be swim technique, followed and accompanied by depth training.

It's really good you'll have your first depth training early, this allows you to discover weather you also manage to relax at increasing depth, where the water pressure and the idea of being 'far' from the surface is a nice challenge. Also it's a change to know weather equalisation is going to be easy or a steeper learning curve. I can tell you the ability to equalise is also very much related to relaxation.

My suggestion in the "cold" water is to have some simple burning food, like bread, burning inside, be hydrated, rested and warm, and make sure you keep a warm upper body and head. A silicone swimming cap underneath the hood helps to keep the head warm.

Running up to this open water session I suggest you practice at least valasava equalisation, duckdive (think streamline and keep the chin on the chest), and relaxed surface snorkelling. Study some of the 'pro' video's and see how they prepare, and start their dive. Like stated before, I suggest plenty of Free Immersion, and focussing on finding relaxation under water. Keeping the eyes partially closed while going down really helps. And since you can easily can do 2', you can do a relaxing hang at depth and maybe even hear your own heartbeat slowing down eyes closed!

Your 6 month schedule is at this time difficult to draw, you first need to charter your abilities. Take notes after each training.

Taking a week off to practice in a warm place is really helpful, but it's even better when you do that after you got a good base in breath-hold and swimming technique.
Having more than 1 deepdive session a week also very helpful since it helps a lot giving your body and mind more experience and time at depth, allowing your chest and diaphragm to become more flexible. Exhale dives (under supervision) in the deep end of the pool can maintain this flexibility, but I think it's best to gain it at the real depth.
Furthermore, I think diving in a British lake can be lovely and very educational.

I'm looking forward to your next report, hopefully with some cool images

Enjoy the ride

 

[Simos]

Yes good point Kars - didn't mean to book something abroad right now (be a bit of waste of money as you'll still be learning the basics) but after a few months of training might be worth the investment, especially when it gets too cold to train in the UK... (Oct/Nov time?)

Would be cool to see some pics - I've never been to Chepstow...

 

[pinoycatfish]

good morning grace... welcome to DB. i hope you achieve your goal. good luck and please be safe

 

[Mr. X]

Good luck grace