Vlado said:
I did some 15 m dives before for fun.
It is my humble opinnion that jumping from 15m to 40m in one day is way too risky.
We plan to see what is safe for us to achieve in the competition. Of course the trick is to balance our ambition with safety. That's where I need your advice. Are there some signs that I've gone too far (other then equalization problems)? What can you say from your own experience from that kind of competitions to a newbie? I am also sure we are going to get instructions at the competition too.
That's a good plan, except I think it should be done BEFORE the competition. You should have dived enough to KNOW what a reasonable depth is for you. There are signs, but most of these are signs that are useless explained over the Internet, the trick is that they are individual and you must learn what they are by diving and getting experience. If you dived to 15m very easily, then you could propably add 5 or 10m to that reasonably easily. At these depths, if your equalization works, increase can be relatively fast. But after 30m or so, things get much more complicated. Your lungs compress beyond their residual volume and equalization in much trickier. Yes, in theory, you can hit -40m with one day training. But to me, the risks of doing so sound insane. You could end up seriously hurt...Is the "fame and glory" really worth that? How about saving it for the next competition?
I can also tell you that competition organizers hate nothing more than so called "kamikaze divers". Ie divers, who have absolutely no idea about their limit and come to a competition with a blind trust for the safety organization, that they'll catch you if something goes wrong. Let me correct this misconseption: the primary safety organization that is most responsible for your well being is YOU. And the only way you can be responsible for your self is by knowing what your limit is, and the only way to know that is by doing enough repetitive dives to your comfort limit. The safety organization is only the back up in case the primary one (ie you) for some unexpected reason fails to do it's job. It's not some magical safety net that enables people to do life threathening stunts. Very much the same way as your dive buddy. He doesn't go diving with you so he can pull you out if you're in danger. He goes diving with you, because he likes diving, hoping every single dive that you come up ok and he doesn't have to lift a finger. The safety organization in a competition doesn't exist to pull you out. It exists, so that it never has to be used. It is just that in case of absolute emergency, they are trained to do just that.
You don't trust them with your life (as if giving them the honor of protecting you), you give them the responsibility for your life, and they accept that responsibility (can you imagine a bigger one?), because they trust you. Don't abuse that trust too many times, or you'll find you don't have many friends in freediving circles.
Sorry for the long rant, I wish you all the best and safe dives. Your progress does seem promising, so keep at it. Just for your own sake, take it slow. This sport is not worth dying or permanent injury. It's just fun...