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Hi, I'm Grace

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Thanks for all the good wishes :).

Simos and Kars, thanks for your lovely long messages, I've tried to take on board all of your advice when thinking about planning my training. I particularly like the part where you both encourage me to take a freediving holiday! I *wish* I could take myself off to Egypt but I'm saving for further study so I'm stuck in Blighty for now.

Kars, I'll certainly practice the elements you suggest (equalisation, duckdive) before my first depth session. I've been watching some videos already, it's fascinating to try and break down all of the elements of the techniques used.

We'll be doing CWT CNF and FIM on the course this weekend. Your vision of hanging in the water, eyes closed, listening to your heartbeat sounds incredible; hopefully I'll get to do that soon. :)

I doubt I'll be able to do depth training more than 2 times/month, so I might have to come back and ask you guys about these exhale dives at a later stage when I have a bit more experience.


Simos, I'm having so much fun! But you're right, it's easy to focus on the numbers and I need to give myself a rest before any more max statics. I've upped the breath-hold time on my CO2 table to 2'10, which is pretty challenging so I'm going to stick with this for now.

I've been recommended a book of yoga specifically for freedivers, but if you have any other suggestions as to where to look for the right kind of stretching *preferably with pictures!) that would be amazing.

It probably is impossible to plan for the next 6 months, so I'm going to plan for the next 8 weeks or so instead and take notes after each training session, as suggested. Your advice has been really helpful, so thank you!

I'll make sure I post some Chepstow photos for you both although they might only be topside, since I haven't managed to get an underwater camera sorted yet. I've managed to line up 2 pool sessions before this weekend, so plenty to keep me occupied!

Grace
 
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Sounds like its all going well for you Grace, well done.:)
Best bit of advice that I was ever given is to not worry to much about the depth side of things and to just RELAX and ENJOY being in the water, depth will happen on its own if you really want it to.
 
Hi All,

Just wanted to let you all know that I'm getting close to the 100ft goal...I'm at 98.43ft and counting! I've been doing lots of training at the quarry in Chepstow with Saltfree and have really enjoyed it - despite the fact that the weather turns grey and rainy every sincle time I go! Everyone I've met has been really supportive of the '100ft Freedive Challenge for the MS Society' and I'm donations have started to roll in :).


It looks like there's going to be a competition at Chepstow in early October and Steve has said that I can open the competition, which should be great for sponsorship :). I'm also really looking forward to seeing what a freediving competition is like.

Thank you for all your support - hope to meet some of you in person some day :)

Grace
 
Congratulations! You're a fast learner, and it's apparent to me that that 100ft is going to be made. Maybe you even dare to do it No fins?

On the other side diving under competition stress can be much more challenging, so daemons of the deep maybe surpassed by the official competition daemon. ;)

What works to be is to drop the worrying, and return to focus on the things you can do, such as tasting that nice fresh slow breath, feeling those limbs relax. Enjoy!

Kars
 
Hi Everyone,

The big day is tomorrow! I'm feeling really positive about reaching 100ft and am really pleased that loads of my freediving friends, who have offered me so much support and encouragement, will be there.

I had the opportunity to give a short interview about freediving and about the 100ft Freedive Challenge on Radio 2 this evening - I know I'm not the most qualified person to talk about freediving, but I hope I was able to convey my love of the sport and hopefully encourage a few more people to try it! If you'd like to listen to the interview, it's on the blog: 100 ft Freedive Challenge for the MS Society: 3, (Radio) 2, 1, Dive Day!

We're also having a fun "Deepest Bikini Dive" in the quarry this weekend, with cross dressing not only permitted, but encouraged, to help raise a few more pounds for the MS Society.

Thanks for all your support and I'll let you know what happens tomorrow :)

Grace
 
best of luck Grace, I am sure you will do just great. Just enjoy the dive, keep a smile on your face (or at least in your head) for the whole dive.
 
Thank you Azapa - I will! I'm always grinning at my safety buddy, or so they tell me :)
 
Go to bed! Lol

(or are you at NDAC already??)
 
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Have fun!

Be in the moment :) Absorb the moment, Enjoy the moment!

Love, Courage and Water!

Kars
 
Hi everyone,

I made it to 100ft and we raised £1,200 for the MS Society! It was a beautiful weekend and a very relaxed dive. I had loads of my freediving friends there cheering me on :D.

I haven't yet been able to do a write up for the blog but wanted to let you know how I got on. The video is here: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaZwcHKypT4&feature=share]Grace Dives 100ft for Charity (2) - YouTube[/ame] the first one's my warm-up, the second is the official 100ft (at 1:42).

Now, I promised some amusing photographs/video... I managed to persuade all my freediving friends (yep, including the guys) to wear my bikinis and compete for the 'NDAC deepest bikini freedive' title! Here they are: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBjZJvle4dw&feature=related]Saltfree Bikini Dives Oct 2011 - YouTube[/ame]

Thank you all for your support on DeeperBlue, it's wonderful to find such a friendly online freediving community. Special mention have to go to Simos and Kars, for putting up with all my new-freediver enthusiasm. :inlove

As you can probably tell, I won't be giving up freediving! I'm pretty excited at how much I've improved in the last 5 months. So I hope one day to meet some of you in person :)

Grace x
 

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Nice video's! nice event, I wish I had been there. Thanks for the credit, I'm looking forward meeting you in person some day. I'm glad you has a sunny warm day and some warm souls to share the feeling with!

Now maybe you want to pick up the 100m challenge? ok, I think that's Sara's :D

Love, Courage and Water!

Kars
 
Now maybe you want to pick up the 100m challenge? ok, I think that's Sara's :D

Maybe not 100m yet but I think the 200ft challenge should be coming up next Grace ;-) Many congrats, amazing progress in such a short period of time and fantastic news on the MS fund-raising front too!

Kars - one more reason for you to make your way to London some time soon :)
 
Thanks guys, it's been an incredible experience with a very steep learning curve. I'll take on your 200ft challenge Simos! Give me a year or three...

Right now I'm at RV at about 34m. I think I can probably add a couple of metres to that just by being a bit more relaxed. I'm not packing or reverse packing since I want to learn mouthfill first if I can.

Problem is, there's no more depth training for me until next summer and there's no hope of a winter holiday to Egypt or elsewhere. Is there anything I can do over the winter that will help me retain some of the benefit of all the depth training I've been doing this summer?

I'm going to concentrate on the pool stuff for now. Been doing DNF once per week for about 6 weeks - currently at 84m and aiming for 100m. Enjoying all the recent Deeper Blue forum debate about DNF.

Been awesome to see the GBR ladies doing so well at the WC - two new national records in the last couple of days - amazing :).
 
Right now I'm at RV at about 34m. I think I can probably add a couple of metres to that just by being a bit more relaxed. I'm not packing or reverse packing since I want to learn mouthfill first if I can.

Problem is, there's no more depth training for me until next summer and there's no hope of a winter holiday to Egypt or elsewhere. Is there anything I can do over the winter that will help me retain some of the benefit of all the depth training I've been doing this summer?

There are examples of training programmes on DB (and I think some examples in books like the manual of Freediving etc) that show how you can structure your training over the season. Different programmes differ a bit but the main idea is the same I believe.

You should get advice from people that are actually trying these programmes (as opposed to me) but I would probably aim to spend the first few months at least hardly worrying about depth training. Just use the time to build a good foundation, especially on whichever area you feel you are lacking (eg could be fitness, strength, flexibility and so on).

A bit later on in the season you can start swapping with more specific freediving training, again working on areas you feel you are weaker (eg could be static, dynamic or monofin technique etc).

I wouldn't worry too much about 'losing' the progress you made with your depth training. I'm always amazed to read that top freedivers who can't go deep throughout the year can get back to the amazing depths they dive too with a week or two of depth training before a comp.

In terms of specific things you can do, I would say that given where you are, equalisation is something you can work on throughout the year, even in a pool. Same with lung flexibility etc. Given that any pools won't be much deeper than 4-5m max you'd have to go empty lung from the surface (build up gradually and have a buddy) - I am sure Mark can suggest some exercises, give me a shout if you need suggestions.

Don't forget you can always make up your own exercises in the pool - you can be quite inventive and come up with exercises that even resemble more closely the pattern of activity that would take place in a CWT dive eg instead of a normal DYN, you swim for 15m, do a short static, turn and then swim back a 33m length and so on. Mixing it up keeps training interesting :)
 
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A small point (not wanting to start an EQ debate! Lol) - even if you want to learn mouthfill, I think it's still worth learning to reverse pack and work a lot on diaphragmatic/thoracic flexibility since you'd like to go deeper.
 
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