Ideal freediver

[TRITON]

How should an ideal freediver look like?
On one side we have ,for example, Tom Sietas who is pretty skinny(little muscle mass) and on the other Martin Stepanek who has substantial muscle mass.....but both achieve amazing results and world records.
I've heard various opinions going from: "if you have too much muscle mass it will increase your O2 consumption so it's detrimental for freediving" to: "if you have a big(not too big) muscle it will act as a "reservoir" of o2 and at the anaerobic stage of the dive it will actually help you..".

Alex

 

[BennyB]

From what i've seen, the best dynamic guys tend to be tall and skinny, look at Tom Sietas, Stig Severinsen, Per Westin, Walter Steyn, Dave Mullins - all over 6 foot, skinny and all have done over 200m Dynamic. Then you've got people like Henning Larsen, Alexey Molchanova, Will Winram and Peter Pedersen who are not as tall but still skinny, and still well over 200m. Then you've got people like Weine Gustavsen (sp?) who looks like someone has attached a couple of tree trunks to a semi-truck who is well over 160m. By and large though I think tall and skinny make the best dynamic guys.

Constant Weight is more of a mish mash. You have the same tall skinny guys that do so well (Herbert Nitsch, Dave Mullins et al), the tall big guys that do very well and are usually called Timo (Timo Kinunnen, Timo Jattu - both very solid blokes and good for 80-90+m), smaller guys like Martin Stepanek and Stavros that are prett solid and can dive very deep....

Doesn't really answer your question does it? My rough guess would be that if you're tall and skinny then you might have a little edge. But we're all individual aren't we?

Cheers,
Ben

 

[kelp princess]

well shame on you two boys! you've missed the most obvious choice :naughty

the ideal freediver is a female because she will have the mental discipline and focus to improve her performance....:girlie

rofl

in all seriousness while we know that males usually have a larger residual capacity it may not always be the case and you should also consider what attributes different successful female freedivers have had as well....

kp

 

[chrismar]

I would suspect that the perfect freediver would look quite like the perfect medium-distance swimmer in general. Tall, long trunk, well (but hardly excessively) muscled and with Dave-sized lungs . In fact, competitive swimmers are the richest hunting grounds for good freedivers for a whole host of reasons.