World Series Freediving competition series announced

[trux]

Trux, myself and most competitive freedivers I know are of this opinion.

I know, but it does not mean it is correct. There are roughly 10,000 freediving competitors worldwide, five to ten times more of organized freedivers not actively participating in competitions, and many fold times more recreational freedivers. All of them see the top athletes heavily packing, and many of them try doing it before they even learn the basic skills, because they believe it will make them progress faster. Perhaps it is perfectly safe as you tell. But imagine that we find out in 10 or 20 years, that the consequencies are much more serious that we thought, and that there indeed is some cummulative irreversible damage on the lungs as the scientists suspect. It may be then a bit late to be sorry for all those who packed until bursting for years.

Personally I prefere having the freediving masses spared from being pushed by the competition to such potentially dangerous technique. So I for one welcome the initiative of WSF. Those who don't care about the risk and are sufficiently confident that nothing bad will happen to them, can still pack as they want under AIDA or CMAS. Where is the problem exactly? Are you afraid that a non-packing freediver will surpass the packing records, or what?

 

[Walrus]

Trux I agree that it's very difficult to know what damage may have been done in 10-20 years. Myself I have been packing heavily for 10 years, my lungs are fine. I know quite a few freedivers who are fine with packing for 10 years or more. Like I already mentioned I can think of few sports where people haven't done some sort of wear&tear over time. You will find many athletes at the top of any type of sports doing muscle, ligament and joint damage and often under going surgeries and physio. I would put packing into the same category, and really should only be used by people at the top of the sport. It would be good to get information from people that have been packing very long term, say perhaps 20 years or more.

I have taught many freediving courses, if asked I will show people packing, just because they would find out otherwise. Always I will say this isn't useful for spearfishing or recreational diving. I also state even for competitive diving or trying to set your own PB's packing will be of little use unless you are already at the very limits of Hypoxia, and even then it can take quite some time for your packing PB's to surpass your non packing one's, particularly in static. Always I have emphasized that technique is the single most important thing to improve your PB's.

 

[Mullins]

My

[wheeeeeeeeze]

lungs

[wheeeeeeeeeeeeze]

seem

[wheeeeeeeeeze]

fine :blackeye

 

[trux]

I wanted to know who the leader in competitive freediving really is, so I analyzed the 50,000 results in the Apnea.cz database, and posted an article with some interesting graphs to the APNEA.cz - Blog

The results may be not exactly what many of you would expect. Well, indeed, there is no trace of WFS there yet, but that's not the surprise. More suprising for many can be how quickly AIDA loses the ground to CMAS, especially at pool competitions.

This is a graph for all competitions combined, but in the article there are also graphs separately for pool and depth events and other details.

 

[watts]

Are the CMAS comps predominately in Italy?
How would the graphs look if you kept Italy out?

 

[x_yeti]

Trux, like I mentioned before to Mullins in this thread, I personally believe that the organization with the best athletes will be the most respected and get the title of 'the' governing body. Has CMAS been able to grow its number of world and national records at a similar ratio to its competitions?

Regarding Packing-gate: Come on guys! Seriously?! Good thing they didn't ban hyperventilation or blackouts!

 

[Mullins]

No disqualification for blackouts?

 

[x_yeti]

No disqualification for blackouts?

No I meant something like a 6-month or 12-month ban from competition for a BO.... which actually makes more sense to me than the packing ban.

 

[Mullins]

Always thought that was pretty hard case too.

"try really hard. we will measure you against others and laud the winner"

[athlete tries hard]

"no, that's too hard. now bugger off for a year and think about what you've done"

 

[x_yeti]

Didn't say it makes sense, said it makes more sense. The point I was trying to make is that it is their competition and their rules so the fuss being made over this packing issue is pretty silly.

 

[Walrus]

I agree it is silly, but potentially for some people that perform well under different rules it could be a deliberate strategy.

As for banning people for blacking out in comps I'm with Dave, it doesn't even need to be about pushing too hard. I have never blacked out on a dive in comp where I was going for a PB. Rather it was a badly performed dive where it was well below a PB and should have been "an easy dive", instead, that brown stuff hit the fan. My last Vertical Blue comp for example,I went for a 105m dive on the 1st day, well below my PB, but it was a bad dive and I had a bad blackout due to dropping my airway below the water and partially getting it into my lungs. 4 days later went for 106m, and it was a trivial dive.

Wal

 

[x_yeti]

x_yeti, have you ever competed and are you even aware of the reasons how blackouts in competition are occurring ?

Yes and yes.

I wasn't suggesting that a BO should result in a ban. I was stating that if an organization did choose to do this, they would have every right to. Same with packing.

 

[trux]

Are the CMAS comps predominately in Italy?
How would the graphs look if you kept Italy out?

No, Italy is about as strong as France in the number of competitions and performances, but there are many competitions in other countries as well - other strong players are Russia, Spain, Venezuela, Croatia, Cuba, Mexico, Columbia, Turkey, and many others. Unfortunately I have only fraction of results from some of those countries, but even so CMAS is very far to be just Italy - for example 18% of CMAS 2011 performances in the database are Italian, but in reality (if I had all the results from other countries) it would be even less.

Trux, like I mentioned before to Mullins in this thread, I personally believe that the organization with the best athletes will be the most respected and get the title of 'the' governing body. Has CMAS been able to grow its number of world and national records at a similar ratio to its competitions?

Yes, CMAS indeed has a number of excelling competitors. Untill recently CMAS competed in fact only in DYN (and Jump Blue). They start adding STA, DNF, depth and other disciplines only now. Don't forget that the current AIDA DYN record holder, Goran Colak did DYN almost exclusively only under CMAS rules. Fred Sessa grew up in CMAS competitions and in a CMAS governed club. Same goes for most other French competitors - all clubs in France are governed under FFESSM/CMAS. Branko Petrovic did the world's best competition performance in STA under CMAS rules (he later did another one under AIDA too). As I wrote, CMAS closes up the gap very quickly, and may surpass AIDA in this area soon too. At least in pool competitions. In depth it won't happen as easily as that.

No I meant something like a 6-month or 12-month ban from competition for a BO....

Actually CMAS only disqualifies the athlete from the current event, which I find quite correct:

"2.1.6.2 Loss of Consciousness-Black Out leads to suspension from all events of the present competition from the time that BO happens, with a request to his Federation to submit the athlete to a medical examination before reinstatement in sporting competitions.

Communication to the doctor shall include the causes and circumstances of the accident occurring at the athlete."​

National federations then may have different rules. The French FFESSM bans the athlete for 1 month after the first BO, for 3 month after a repetition within the same year. I find it rather reasonable too, and safer for the athletes anyway. In consequence the number of blackouts in France is lower than the average. Anything what can prevent blackouts and sambas is welcome, since recent studies show that in such cases the brain shows the release of the S100B enzyme, which may point to a certain level of brain dammage. So the approach of the FFESSM (and some other CMAS branches), is in fact much wiser than that of AIDA.

 

[x_yeti]

I agree it is silly, but potentially for some people that perform well under different rules it could be a deliberate strategy.

Ok that's a legitimate concern, but I'm guessing that this rule is more about the continuation of the SSI education system (which as far as I know excludes packing) rather than a malicious attempt to disadvantage competitors.

 

[Walrus]

x_yeti, at least in Australia the WSF rules have the potential to change the results in favour to those that compete under those rules at the disadvantage of others. I have no problem with the rules in general with exception that some people that have a strong influence of creating the rules to their own advantage whilst reducing the performance results of others under the same rules. For example if people that can do reasonably good performances without packing, will be given a very good advantage compared to those that use packing. Myself I will loose %20 - %30 under WSF rules, so am given quite a severe "handicap". I cannot perform to the best of my abilities in the sport of freediving under WSF rules.

 

[trux]

Wal, I understand your argument, but still the rules are the same for all, so the competition is fair. If you find unfair that a competitor able of solid performances without packing organizes a competition where packing is banned, from his point of view competitions where packing is allowed are even more unfair.

Your arguments that non-packing competitions should not be organized, is the same as if you had low DNF performance and told that DNF competitions are unfair and should not be allowed because they put in advantage those who can swim without fins, but cannot perform well with them.

In fact there is place for both, but I see no reason why someone who does not want to pack, should necessarily measure with others who pack 30% more air into their lungs. You have your competitions, no-packers will have theirs, nobody forces one to join the other camp, so where is the problem?

 

[Simos]

Wal, I understand your argument, but still the rules are the same for all, so the competition is fair. If you find unfair that a competitor able of solid performances without packing organizes a competition where packing is banned, from his point of view competitions where packing is allowed are even more unfair.

Your arguments that non-packing competitions should not be organized, is the same as if you had low DNF performance and told that DNF competitions are unfair and should not be allowed because they put in advantage those who can swim without fins, but cannot perform well with them.

In fact there is place for both, but I see no reason why someone who does not want to pack, should necessarily measure with others who pack 30% more air into their lungs. You have your competitions, no-packers will have theirs, nobody forces one to join the other camp, so where is the problem?

Not sure I follow Trux - just because there is a set of rules which are the same for everyone competing, it doesn't mean it's a 'fair' competition or a 'fair' set of rules.

So let's say in competitive swimming there is a new federation that wants to be the governing body in world swimming and comes up with a rule all of a sudden that breathing on the right hand side is banned in front crawl and only breathing on the left hand side should be performed.

Don't you find something 'unfair' about this? Of course it's the same for everyone that participate but it's a rule that for no reason will handicap some competitors that are trained to breathe on both sides or only the right and not others (i.e. the ones on the left).

I am not arguing for or against packing but I don't think the logic applied here for 'fairness' is the correct one.

At the end of the day, everyone is free to come up with their own set of rules and run any competitions they like but everyone else equally has the right, in addition to not participating, to express their opinion on whether those rules are 'fair' or make sense etc - especially if you are aiming or claiming to be the world organisation in anything, you need to not only be prepared to accept that criticism but also to address it. If you want to run competitions in your back yard with your friends, there is no issue at all and you don't need to explain anything to anyone

 

[trux]

No Simos, I would not find it unfair either - all competitors who would agree competing under that rules would compete in fair conditions. Additionally their conditions would be harder than the old ones, hence if their performances surpassed those of the current federation, they would have higher value in fact, so not unfair towards the old federation at all. Rather the opposite. Same with packing.

And the organization can tell what they want about their status - nobody will take it seriously unless it is backed by the nubmer of competitions, number of athletes, and by the results. And there is no way WSF become a leader here so fast. If the really manage to organize hundreds of events worldwide and reach performances comparable to the current ones, their claims may start having some weight, but for now it is just a commercial pitch aiming to provoke.

 

[Walrus]

You are right Trux.

If I was the only person in charge of forming a new organisation and I could write the rules for it, I would be the first one to make DNF and CNF a mandatory requirement !
Under those rules I could easily take out any Australian competition. Those training strictly with bi fins or monofin only will be forced to now spend much of their time training DNF and CNF. Even the non swimmers would then struggle and forced to change their training regime dramatically.

With the current WSF there is no DNF, only CDYN so dynamic with Bi-fins using a flutter kick and normal DYN so any fin Bi-fins or mono fin any style. Either one with no packing. Even Dave, Will, Goran, Guy Brew, Stephan Misfud, Natalia, Guillaume Nery etc would have a pretty big handy cap in either event.

Wal

 

[trux]

There is still DNF and CNF at WSF as far as I can see: WSF Disciplines

I do not know what handicap you speak about, Wal - everyone starts with the same conditions in WSF competitions - nobody can pack, so nobody has any handicap worse than others. It would be a handicap if some competitors were allowed to pack and others not, but as far as I see, it is not the case. Or am I wrong?