Personal bests

yeah, for sure. I do like it, but have a lot of concerns you know.
I feel like I should have the feelings of needing to breath... unless maybe it's unsafe and I'm just going to pass out?
is 3:40 too high for someone who hasn't accustomed their body?

If you did not hyperventilate prior the breath-holds (breathing more than normally), than there is nothing too bad to fear. Well, you can certainly blackout without a prior warning, especially if you are not experienced and do not know your body signals during apnea well (but it can happen to experienced freedivers too), and even more likely if you hyperventilated. So for that reasons you should always hold your breath in a safe position, where you won't hurt yourself or others when blacking out and collapsing, or when losing motor control (so called Samba or LMC), and, of course, you should never hold your breath in water when not supervised directly by an experienced person knowing how to recognize and handle LMC and blackouts. I do not mean just a wife, kids, friends or not even a life guard in the pool, but indeed another freediver who is trained to rescue blacked out buddies, and who taps you every while to see if you react and are conscious.

Please have a look at the beginner thread for more instructions. 3:40, unless you hyperventilated, is indeed nice for an absolute beginner, and you probably have a potential, but to get further you'll need a lot of discipline, and especially a good buddy who will help you to stay alive. So if you plan improving, please do join a club, find buddies, or take a freediving course.

nice old thread. Never read it before.

One thing we should all remember is that dinamic apnea whit fins depend on the fins used. So if you are doing 50 m whit plastic blade and you switch to large fiber glass monofin the results will improve a lot. So it is a good idea to say what type of fins are used. I know because i have plastic fins i have carbon fiber and i have a monofin. Best results are always whit a monofin on a Olympic size pool . 50 meters. Every time you stop and change direction you are loosing huge amount of momentum and oxygen. So the longer the pool the better the result . And for the fins if we use long blade plastic fins for base and we compare them whit carbon fiber the carbon fins are about 40 % better so whit them you can improve the results whit more then 20 % if you know how to use them. And the monofin is the king of all . It is more then 100 % better than long blade plastic fins . The problem whit the monofin is learning how to use it. So again if you want to get results fast get a monofin and use it in a Olympic size pool.

I believe those % are a bit too high

Sorry, Amihov, but almost all of your claims are absolutely wrong:

amihov said:

One thing we should all remember is that dinamic apnea whit fins depend on the fins used. So if you are doing 50 m whit plastic blade and you switch to large fiber glass monofin the results will improve a lot.

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Mostly it won't. Whenever you switch fins (even to superior ones), your performance will suffer and it will take weeks before you adjust your finning to really use the advantage of the fins. And even then, the difference will be quite negligible.

amihov said:

So it is a good idea to say what type of fins are used. I know because i have plastic fins i have carbon fiber and i have a monofin.

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Each fin requires different kicking style, but in dynamic apnea it does not necessarily make monofin superior to bi-fins, or carbon superior to plastic. Current DYF world records were set with bi-fins, and there are many freedivers preferring bi-fins for dynamics. And I know there are many freedivers that will pull practically the same length with plastic, fiberglass, or carbon fins (and yes, me too). On my mind, the fin upgrade won't make more difference than some 1%-2%, and that only assuming you adopted your kicking style perfectly to the new fin.

amihov said:

Best results are always whit a monofin on a Olympic size pool . 50 meters. Every time you stop and change direction you are loosing huge amount of momentum and oxygen. So the longer the pool the better the result .

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That's also not necessarily true. Many DYF and DNF records and PB's were set in 25m pools. Especially at slow DYF simmers, and in DNF the turn can be an advantage.

amihov said:

And for the fins if we use long blade plastic fins for base and we compare them whit carbon fiber the carbon fins are about 40 % better so whit them you can improve the results whit more then 20 % if you know how to use them.

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This is the biggest nonsense I ever heard. Your performance will most likely not change at all after swapping fins. The difference between DYF and DNF discipline (with and without fins) is at records and at most PB's around 20%, often even much less. So there is no way you could get 40% boost with just changing fins. People tend to believe that an expensive carbon fin will make miracles for them, but it is not at all true. Yes, many freedivers improve after upgrading fins, but that's not because of the fins; it is because they usually get the new fin in the phase when they start to be more serious about freediving, but still have miserable technique and endurance, and would improve anyway even without swapping the fins. You better invest into good training / coach / course than expensive fins - that will bring much more difference.

amihov said:

And the monofin is the king of all . It is more then 100 % better than long blade plastic fins . The problem whit the monofin is learning how to use it. So again if you want to get results fast get a monofin and use it in a Olympic size pool.

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Yes, monofin is powerful and fast, but that's about all. In DYF, many top freedivers prefer slow swimming, and then the monofin is absolutely inefficient. The world records, national records, and PB's are pretty close for both categories of fins (recently bi-fins win). Difference of 100% is a complete BS.

Tell us how you really feel trux

I thought monofin was more efficient? I guess not.

GreekDiver said:

Tell us how you really feel trux

I thought monofin was more efficient? I guess not.

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Thanks for asking. Not too bad lately. Yes, monofin is more efficient for fast swimming (it means for speed records) or for lifting your weight from depth (CWT), but that's not what is important at dynamic apnea. As you can see in statistics, bi-fins may be more efficient than monofins, especially when swimming slow. That's because the water resistance grows with square of your speed, so the slower you swim the (considerably) less resistance you have to fight and the less oxygen you spend per meter. And because with a monofin it is simply quite difficult to swim slow and with a clean efficient style, unlike at aerobic fin speed swimming, the fin efficiency is eliminated by the disporportionally higher consumption of oxygen. Well, there are some monofinners capable to swim with a clean style rather slow (i.e. Molchanova), but still with bi-fins you'll manage swimming with much less effort, so if you have good static times, you better rely on the slow bi-fins motion than on the fast efficient monofin.

Trux I am sorry to say that but your numbers are wrong about the difference between fins (2 to 3 % ) difference between plastic and carbon fibber fins is a bull. I am not sure where you are getting the info but for me it made a huge difference . A lot of people are over powering plastic fins because they are just weak. And then they are not only much worse then carbon fibber but they will slow you down because you are pushing them above they are specifications. O yes changing direction of a body whit huge mass is totally waist of energy . By changing direction you are losing all the kinetic energy .
It is true that water has very high density and water resistance is not a liner progression to the speed but well if you have a good style of swimming you can take full advantage of the monofin and achive great results.

amihov said:

Trux I am sorry to say that but your numbers are wrong about the difference between fins (2 to 3 % ) difference between plastic and carbon fibber fins is a bull

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That comes from personal experience, observation of others, and comparing results of diverse competitors I know. There is absolutely no way you could gain 40% with changing your fins to carbons and 100% to monofin. Since the performance with fins is usually around 20% above the distance without fins, it would mean that with your old plastic fins you can make only 80% of your no-fins performance, which is of course nonsense. Even with the worst scuba or snorkeling fins you will mostly do a bigger distance than in DNF (well, I believe there may be some exceptions, but probably rather rare).

When changing fins, you will first need learning to use them efficiently couple of hours, days, or weeks, and then you may improve your performance by a meter or maybe two, but the rest will come just from improved technique due to the training and not really from the fins. Well, the gain may be slightly higher if you originally used some really crappy fins not corresponding to your body build or technique, but there is no big chance that a simple change of fins could attribute to a gain bigger than a very few percent. I estimate that if you gain 10% then you really had some horrible and completely unsuitable fins beforehand.

Though you may be right that overpowering may be a problem at depth disciplines, it is rarely so at dynamic disciplines, except of at those "bull" competitors who try to gain the distance with speed instead of endurance and relaxation. And those competitors will sooner or later chose a monofin anyway. And since you can easily see that DYF performances of monofin and bi-fin freedivers are fully comparable (actually currently better at bi-fins), there is no way the swap to a monofin could bring you another 100%. Again, only "bullies" forcing the distance by speed will gain, but in absolute you will improve your distance much better by properly learning the technique (and that regardless of the type of fins you use).

amihov said:

O yes changing direction of a body whit huge mass is totally waist of energy . By changing direction you are losing all the kinetic energy .

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I see from where you come. Have you read what I wrote? Did you see that many records were set in 25m pools? Do you realize that when you have a good turn technique you can turn the turn into an advantage? Yes, there is a change of direction and loss of kinetic energy, but again there are way how to minimize it, and especially at the push you can gain more energy than losing and that using other muscle groups (still saturated with O2 and energy) than the ones used for kicking. So yes, you are right, if you do not have a good technique, or are a super fast swimmer, it may be a disadvantage, but that's apparently not the case at all freedivers.

I agree . All i am trying to say is that the type of fins used make a difference. And difference is not small. It really depends on the style of swimming. But when you are using a monofin changing of direction is just bad for you. When you are swimming whit a monofin you use small number of repetitions to achive the same distance comparing whit bi fins. So if you have the strength to move the monofin you will be able to swim faster and travel a longer distance. Because small number of muscle contractions is equal to less oxygen consumption. Now the question is how strong is the swimmer if you give a big monofin to weak swimmer whit big endurance and no strength he will fail whit a monofin but he will be good whit bi fins. And again if you give bi fins a to strong swimmer whit large amount of muscles he fail because his muscles we use more oxygen just because they are bigger and stronger. But if he is using a monofin he will be able to use his strength and reduce the number of repetitions and achive better results. Strong muscular body type will benefit from the monofin .

Since we are talking about %: How important is cardio? I hate doing cardio because its boring. I have a very good bottom time without doing cardio at all. So % people let me have it