Writing the freediver Bible

[BlueIcarus]

Hey guys...
What do you think about writing our DB
Freediving Bible/FAQ
. Something about:

-Freediving History (the Amas, the greek anchor diver and all that boring stuff )
- Freediving Physiology (Boyle, Dalton, Henry, Equalization, Frenzel, Frenzel-Fattah, Valsalva, no hands equalization, lungs, ears...)
- The seas: Biology, Ecology, Currents, Fauna,
Flora....
- Equipment (including diving watchs and more technical stuff)
- Breathing (hyperventilation, ventilation patterns and how to find yours,packing,empty lungs, abdominal/toracic/clavicular breath)
- Breath-Hold Training:
O2/CO2 tables, dynamic tables, swimming
/hipoxic piramid, apnea walking, apnea running,
lung stretches, lung flexibility
- Special PhysicalTraining:
Hatha Yoga & Pranayama, Cardio training, Weight Lifting
- What to do UW: Photo, Hunting, Sex :t
-Dangers (BO, Samba, Lung Squeeze, DCS...)
-Selected threads/opinions from some of our Blue Deep Personalities
- Competition categories, international organizations, etc...
- FREEDIVING SPOTS all around the world.
Also freediving schools
- Bibliography


Anyway... if you know a good book that covers
all this... let me know and I'll order myself a copy!! hehe
cheers!

 

[BlueIcarus]

of course... with an illustrated chapter consisting in 10 pages of disclaimer 8)

 

[jvoets]

Sounds like a perfect idea.
I know there's a German freediver called Stefan Seyer who already did a similar job. He wrote an excellent 71 pages ApnoeManual to be downloaded from http://www.stefansfreedive.de.vu/ .

Only drawback for most of you: it's all written in German.

For the world wide freediving spots chapter: the counter at my website is currently stuck at 125. I'm happy to convert it to some downloadable thingy for this project.

 

[BlueIcarus]

yeah.. the manual looks good!!
main problem: absolute no idea about german hehe
going to search some automatic translation prog
I am by no means an experts so my idea is to search for voluntary experts (maybe 1 chapter each) to do a collective effort and write our own manual.
Actually I thought of this because i saw the invaluable information trapped in this forum... just thought about organizing it

cheers!

PS: Maybe all of this will end up in a Freediving FAQ?

 

[Adrian]

Or a freediving encyclopedia!

A por ello tío!

Adrian

 

[marko]

i can try to translate something but only if im not going to be the only one.....i think it is not necessary to translate the whole thing....here are the best freedivers of the world so they could shere a litle part of their knowledge with us mortals

 

[jvoets]

Might be better to contact Stefan about it. Simply translating his work is not fair regarding copyright and legal stuff.
He might be interested in doing multi-lingual versions of his work too, who knows?
English after all is still not a comfortable language for a lot of people.

 

[BlueIcarus]

Of course in order to translate anything, we must contact Stefan.... It's his work man!!
Actually i've seen its work has a great breadth but not much depth (it's a one person work anyway!!): I think people from this forum has the knowledge to deepen his approach.

 

[majo]

Just a question:

Who is going to be the Jesus of the freediver bible?


Note: At the moment Pipin and Audrey have the same numbers
of votes in the greatest freediver forum.

 

[Uli]

Might be better to contact Stefan about it. Simply translating his work is not fair regarding copyright and legal stuff.

Hi guys and girls,

Stefan did not "write" the manual, but collected texts from other people (mainly via internet). Stefan asked every author for permission (quite a tedious task, I can imagine...)

I like the idea of writing a "freediving bible". One should, however, check the literature that's already there. Otherwise the text could turn out as a bad copy of much better originals...

I just had a look at my freediving book shelf and those are the books, that I would consider very worth reading (in the order of "worthiness"):

1. Corso di Apnea, Umberto Pelizzari and Stefano Tovaglieri
This is the best "overall" freediving book. I miss only: a chapter on monofins, another on packing and perhaps a little more details on freediving physiology. (Unfortunately written in Italian. Maybe an English edition will follow).

2. Homo Delphinus - the Dolphin within Man, Jacques Mayol
You won't learn anything new on freediving technique, but the history is covered quite well.

3. L'Apnée-Glisse en Monopalme, Francis Fèvre
Best book on dynamic apnea with monofin. (Unfortunately written in French).

4. La Plongée en Apnée, Jacques H. Corriol
Only book I know that deals exclusivly with freediving physiology. The book was published in 1996 and is thus already a bit outdated in some aspects. (Unfortunately written in French).

5. Guida all'immersione in apnea, Stefano Makula
Published 1987, therefore not up-to-date. (Unfortunately written in Italian).

And of course one should include Eric Fattah to publish a few preliminary pages of his "freediving encyclopedia"

Cheers
Uli

 

[BlueIcarus]

just a few lines of random-nonsense-pathetic humor lines:

Maybe we should post a poll about:
If there was a freediving bible..
who will be the jesus?
who the demon itself?=

my vote for jesus: for the physical appearance..
loic leferme
for the personality:
jacques mayol

the demon: maybe Pipin ? no pun intended hehe
i'm just talking about physical here... hehehe!!

cheers

and uli.. just a question... how have you managed
to read 2 book in french an another 2 in italian being from germany?

 

[fpernett]

I think this is a great idea.
I believe that the first step is to organize the chapters (what is the book about), then find the person or persons with more expertise in that field.
For example we have some World Record Holders that know a lot in the specific discipline training.
Just my opinion

 

[Roan]

Along the lines of Uli's reading list in the previous post, I would suggest Last Of The Bluewater Hunters and The Blue Edge by Carlos Eyles. Both of them taken together offer not only a chronicle of Californian and Mexican free-dive hunting, but also provide a biography of one of the great free-divers of the U.S. and a vivid history of the development of free-diving, blue-water hunting, equipment and the pioneers of West Coast spearfishing and blue water hunting who began venturing underwater in the 1930's. Worldwide developments are also covered and Carlos wasn't too much of a "homer" to leave out the Florida divers. He's a fine writer too, these are books that transcend genre and Last Of The Blue... is a certifiable ocean classic.

 

[jvoets]

Another interesting link is this page: Bibliography of breathhold diving
Someone has composed a long list of all scientific articles on breathholding.
Unfortunately you'll have to have access to a scientific library with subscriptions to these magazines to read them.

 

[Uli]

and uli.. just a question... how have you managed
to read 2 book in french an another 2 in italian being from germany?

Well, even someone "being from Germany" is allowed to learn foreign languages in our country

Just kidding: I had to take five years of french at school and thought it would be nice to be able to order a pizza in italian, so I took a course at the university. (Not quite enough for really speaking italian, :head
but sufficient for reading it.

Cheers
Uli

 

[BlueIcarus]

I totally agree with fpernett. First thing is think
about book chapters and structure... Then find
the best (and kind-hearted people or best articles
that fit the chapter write it....
So we can begin by making a list of people
who wish to act as voluntaries (of course I'll do )
: translating (I can transalate into english Italian and Spanish), composing pages, recruiting writers and then discuss the table of contents.

As I'm not a great freediver, just beginning,
and there are lots of people around here who knows lots about this than most of us do,
I can volunteer to write some "History" chapter
and another Yoga chapter (Asanas+ In-depth Pranayama). So what do you think about the TOC in the first post? something to add/delete?
any volunteers to write something in there?

cheers

 

[jvoets]

I've studied physics.
So I could write / check the parts on the law of physics, at least if we want that stuff in this book.
Can do it both in English and Dutch.

 

[DevonDiver]

Surely Eric Fattah is the ideal guy to write your bible since there is almost nothing he doesn't know as far i can tell

 

[Frank O'Donnell]

Originally posted by Uli
I just had a look at my freediving book shelf and those are the books, that I would consider very worth reading (in the order of "worthiness"):

1. Corso di Apnea, Umberto Pelizzari and Stefano Tovaglieri
This is the best "overall" freediving book. I miss only: a chapter on monofins, another on packing and perhaps a little more details on freediving physiology. (Unfortunately written in Italian. Maybe an English edition will follow).

Just a note to second this recommendation. I found it in a boating store on Capri when I was there on vacation in August. I wish they would issue an English edition! (In the meantime I bought a copy of the Italian and have been spending hours with Babelfish on my laptop translating key phrases as I slowly work my way through.)

That and two other books ("Freedive!" by Maas and Sipperley, and my manual from Kirk Krack's Performance Freediving course) pretty much constitutes all of the how-to freediving instruction on my bookshelf. (Of course there are books on freediving lore such as Carlos Eyles, Mayol, etc, etc.)

 

[Jon]

Plus, there's the IANTD Advanced Freediving Manual, which is almost identical to the Performance manual, and NAUI's Mastering Breath hold Diving by Jan Neal.

Jon