Goals set, Goals met (NYE-post)

~ @S2WFreediving ~ 1 Comment

December 31st, 2018.

No better day to look back and contemplate a year of freediving.

In October 2017 I started on a journey to learn freediving and took you by the hand as much as possible. It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, mainly because equalization of the middle ear didn’t come naturally for me. I had to grab every possible opportunity to learn about it and practice quite a bit. You can read about the whole process on this blog and hopefully it will help or has helped some of you out there.

When I first tried for my level 1 freediving certification I couldn’t equalize upside down at all. So I failed miserably. The bottom of the Dive4Life dive tower seemed very far away, reaching it so unattainable. However… in the back of my mind two primary goals formed: getting my level 1 certification one way or the other, and touching the bottom of the 20 meters deep pool in Germany.

After quite a bit of practice in between, in March of this year I went back to Dive4Life to do the re-examination for my SSI level 1 freediver certification. Luck was not on my side. I was having a proper nose cold that, together with the pressure to finally meet the requirements, had taken away all relaxation I so sorely needed. But all’s well that ends well. And so it did. Goal number one reached!

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to kill two birds with one stone. I’d have to return one day to truly conquer the pool by reaching the bottom.

In the meanwhile I have written about my summer practice in the Vinkeveense Plassen (one and two) and reaching new PB’s, but in my last post I left the readers at a Paris overlay ahead of a holiday in Spain, ending with a post scriptum hint that my luggage (full of freediving gear) did arrive at Malaga airport. Behold below the result of two good days of diving with my girlfriend’s brother who knew to find all nooks and crannies (watch in HD):

You can see the visibility was great and most beauty is to be found in shadowy places 🙂

I was really looking out for some encounters with octopuses. Which are a lot harder to spot than you might think. Especially if you don’t have that spear-fisherman’s eye… Unfortunately I got an ear infection soon after above images were shot and had to stop diving for a couple of days 😦 That was a huuuuge bummer.

The last couple of days I was able to enter the water again and I still kept on the lookout for octopuses. Sadly without having my camera with me, it was only on the last day of the holiday I had an encounter, but a long one that lasted maybe fifteen minutes. A small octopus in shallow water, constantly changing his colours, moving and settling, squirting ink when I came too close for his liking. What fascinating creatures.

After this holiday, going into autumn, regular diving had quickly stagnated. The outdoor waters of the Netherlands were still okay for a while, but the weather out of the water became too harsh to truly keep enjoying dives outside. Hoisting oneself in and out the wetsuit on the water’s edge became too cold a undertaking to keep it an enjoyable experience.

So what better to do than go back to Dive4Life and finally touch summit (read: bottom) there? Exactly: nothing… So when I was invited to come with some buddies I met at the Vinkeveense Plassen last summer, I took a day off work on the 7th of December and joined them for a day of diving in the pool in Siegburg, Germany.

What can I say… both goals were reached this year that day 🙂 I filmed it all (except for the shot of me freefalling) so best to join me in this predominantly POV-video and see for yourself:

And… you might ask, what about new goals? Any new years resolutions? Well… Next year I plan to get comfortable between 25-30 meters and possibly get my level 2 certification. I’ll keep you guys posted and I’ll keep the video’s coming. Oh yeah, and also, as a last but not least: I’m planning a couple of gear reviews for you guys!

Till next year! Best wishes, keep diving and keep safe!

Freediving @ Vinkeveense Plassen #2

~ @S2WFreediving ~ 1 Comment

I’m up 36,000ft in the sky while writing this blog update; barely having survived a Serbian wedding and now halfway a full day of travel to get to my girlfriend in Spain. 

It’s been a while, and I wanted to let you guys know what’s up before reporting on this coming holiday where I plan to do some nice Mediterranean dives and hopefully film some.

Don’t think I went for a freediving break in the meantime. No, no… I have been training at least once a week for the last couple of months. In the green, murky waters of Vinkeveen. 

We might have found the deepest spot within the diving area there. I know this because I touched bottom and took some mud back to the surface, and by doing so also set a new personal best of 23.7 meters! 🙂

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Dives of around 18 meters come more easily and regularly now. I found out that to go deeper I have to focus quite a bit on keeping the glottis (or is it called the epiglottis, I still don’t f**king know) closed, but also not forget to equalize the mask at some point. Slowly and steadily I’m getting to finetune this whole Frenzel equalization process.

Every now and then we still hang around the buswreck though. A backdrop like that is a bit more appealing for the images, since it’s absolutely pitch black down around those 18 meters and deeper. On one of our training sessions a scuba diver (from the dive school of my regular buddy) came along. He was interested to shoot some freediving stuff and ended up editing this short movie:

By now I’ve also introduced some friends to freediving. They all seem intrigued but everyone seems to struggle with equalization, even the guys with some prior scuba experience. Which makes me wonder why equalization has not yet really been made a part of the level 1 freediving courses. I would definitely make it part of one if I’m ever to become an instructor. Pinky promise. 

As for my travel today I can say that carrying the huge bag that can hold all the gear (including fins) is plain HELL… They should give these things good straps and maybe a back (rucksack) carry possibility like the North Face duffles do. Let’s just assume it’ll be all worth it 🙂 And I do sincerely hope it arrives at Malaga, because it’s been turning around on the Paris airport luggage belts for four hours during my overlay. 

For now I will leave you guys with this and my latest video:

Hasta luego!

PS My luggage with gear arrived!

Freediving PB testing the Apneaman Buoy

~ @S2WFreediving ~ Leave a comment

Last monday I went out diving with a buddy to properly test out the Apneaman Freediving Buoy. Or maybe it’s brand name is Apneautic; hard to say, but it deserves a mention here anyway.

I got the Apneaman Freediving Buoy a couple of months ago. I ordered the complete set with the buoy, inner bladder, 40 meters of rope, weight strap, carabiners and bottom plate. Mainly because it is very competitively priced.

I believe Apneaman is Martin Zajac’s company. Martin Zajac is a freediving athlete, coach, trainer and instructor from the Czech Republic and is competing at the Vertical Blue competition this year (held this and next week). I would imagine he can properly test (and stands behind) the gear he sells.

Since there is not a lot to find about this freediving buoy on the internet I decided to make an unboxing and first real use video about it (see below). “Firs real use” in the sense that I did use it once or twice before for some shallow and exploration dives.

As you can see in the video, the first buoy that arrived had a problem with the velcro. The Apneaman staff assured me this was something that happened rarely, if ever. Their service and understanding was exceptional and they sent out a new buoy within 24 hours. Not to mention that after I sent the faulty one back, they fully reimbursed my shipping costs. So… big props to Martin and the guys at Apneaman!

Now, to the diving. I took the complete set out; buoy, bladder, rope, bottom plate, weight strap, the whole lot. It was also a good opportunity to learn something about rope handing (line handling?). And well… that sh*t ain’t all that easy, guys! But I’m getting better at it and I plan to do a video about it soon.

My buddy (a PADI master freediver) and I swam to the furthest end of the dive zone at the Vinkeveense Plassen. We let down the rope with 9kg (+/- 20lbs) of lead attached until it touched the bottom. After we got the rope tight and right, we started warmin up.

We did some free immersion dives first, then some constant weight dives. In between we tried a couple of FRC dives. I tried FRC for the first time and went to 9.6m on it. It’s a strange sensation and you get to free fall very early. Also, FRC helps practising the right equalization technique, but comes with some risks and needs to be done with care and preferably with someone who can guide you through it.

IMG_1507

I did the final constant weight dives with full lungs again and managed to reach the bottom plate! With which I also set a new personal best constant weight dive to 18.8 meters (61.6ft) of depth!

If you’ve been following this blog, you might wonder how I fared with equalizing at that depth. If you haven’t been following the blog: equalization didn’t come easy for me, as you might also be able to guess from the titles of some of my previous blog posts.

As with lots of acquired skills I believe it takes some time for the brain and body to realise what is expected of it. In that sense the old adagium “practice makes perfect” holds true for anything you want to become proficient at in life.

When you train regularly and your mind and body are getting used to float about deeper and deeper under the surface of any body of water (even if it’s green, dark and murky), you get more relaxed, you start to have more time to feel what is happening inside. This makes it possible to process new things and adapt.

Together with my buddy I figured out it I was sometimes slightly opening my glottis and transitioning back to valsalva equalization at a certain depth. So focusing on not doing that and sticking to the frenzel I got deeper and deeper more comfortably, until I reached the bottom plate.

I won’t lie to you and say that equalisation didn’t become more challenging near the end (as before it became more challenging near the previous “end”), but I didn’t feel any uncomfortable pressure or pain. And that’s how going a bit further every time and getting used to it, relaxing into it, is how we will creep a bit further away from the surface every time we practice. Slowly.