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The third course day was all about safety and rescue procedures in the pool disciples (static and dynamic apnea). The theory focused on the importance of the buddy system and what happens to the body when you get a loss of motor control or black-out. To get a good understanding of these phenomena we were shown a long video with stuff going wrong.
This is what a loss of motor control (LMC), also called samba, looks like (skip to 2:03 if you’re bored by the swimming):
In the above video there is clearly no adequate safety near the diver, so at the same time it is an example how these attempts shouldn’t be done. If this diver’s LMC would have been stronger he could have hit his head on the edge of the pool and in the process he’d probably lose some of his teeth. Ouch.
You can probably imagine what a black-out looks like. Sometimes a black-out just occurs without a warning, but especially in the pool disciplines they can follow the LMC:
Generally they say a black-out is when you have a short gap in your memory (even if it just looks like a samba). Of course you want to avoid these situations altogether, but you have to know how to rescue your buddy when something like this happens to him or her.
So last Wednesdays course day was all about saving your buddy when they black-out. We practiced something called blow tap talk extensively in the static and dynamic setting. It was great fun and it’s definitely no exaggeration when I say that some of us are quite talented actors. Unfortunately I have no filmed documentation of this statement, but just trust me… 🙂
If you want to get a better picture of how to get someone out of a black-out, another great video by Adam Stern will show you how:
After we practiced the rescue procedures and Nanja was satisfied – also with our execution of the forceful advice to the blacked-out freediver that he is not allowed to freedive anymore for the day -, we did a timed static apnea and some more dynamic apnea’s.
My static attempt was a repeat of my previous personal best of 3:10 minutes. Even though I think I could have held out quite a bit longer if I had known I passed the three minute mark, I’m quite satisfied about this consolidation of my static ability. It was a relaxed and nice breath-hold where the contractions at the end didn’t bother me too much.
The evening ended with some more fine-tuning of the duck-dives and – while we filled in our logbooks – Nanja (our instructor) treated us to some bitterballs and chicken-nuggets because it was exactly two years ago that she did her world record variable weight dive, which is a record until this day!
If you read my previous post you know I was a bit concerned about my ability to equalize the middle ear when we would go deep diving in Dive4Life. As I write and now conclude this post, I already had the deep diving day yesterday and know how I fared. Even though I will have to keep you in just a little bit of suspense (at least until my next post tomorrow), I’ll leave you with a picture of the pool from the edge as a teaser:
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This day the theory was about the physiology of freediving. In the pool we further improved our techniques and practiced some buddy skills.
We talked about oxygen and carbon dioxide and their functions and influence on the body. It might surprise some of you that it is not the lack of oxygen that gives you the “urge to breathe”, but it’s the rising carbon dioxide level in the body that does so. This means it is actually the “urge to exhale”. This also means that you are easily able to prolong your breath-hold from the moment you normally feel that urge, because the oxygen level in your body would still be fine. But remember: never dive alone!
The mammalian diving reflex is fascinating as well. In this interesting TED-talk by Guillaume Néry the starts explaining about the mammalian diving reflex from minute 3:43, but the whole video is cool to watch for anyone even slightly interested in freediving:
What did I tell ya!? Cool, no?
At the pool we started with some static apnea’s, but mainly focused on a proper breathe-up, buddy skills and (of course) the recovery breath. My buddy, Peter, had some troubles with the breathe-up and signals. Since I already did the introduction to the static apnea and he didn’t, I decided to let him practice a bit more. I did no warm-ups and did a breath-hold of 2:20, not really pushing myself. Warm-ups are good to do though, because the first breath hold – to me at least – is always the least comfortable.
The static apnea pool – “pierenbadje”
After the static apnea’s we geared up to do some dynamic swims, also with focus on the buddy skills. When you buddy a diver who’s doing a dynamic, you need to swim a bit in front of him and on your side so you can make a full kick with the fins on. This way you can keep up with the diver, check on the diver, check if the lane ahead is empty and without obstacles, help the diver when in trouble or when finishing the dive or cut the diver off if so necessary for whatever reason. When the diver surfaces, you (as a buddy) need to stay close and place his (or her) hand on the edge of the pool and do so as near to his head as possible. This way, if there is any loss of motor control (or black-out), you avoid the diver banging his head on the steel or concrete of the edge of the pool.
Nanja (our instructor) was impressed with our progression and the way we picked up the techniques she taught us. This meant we already got to practice some duck-dives:
The pool we practice in is only 3 meters deep, so with a decent duck dive you are at the bottom almost immediately. Even without an armstroke. Eventually I got the hang of it and the speed with which I descended was too fast for me to get my equalization in order. Shitballs!
This worried me a bit, since equalizing has been an issue for me, also in scuba-diving. I usually have the most trouble the first couple of meters. After that it’s smooth sailing, at least when scuba-diving. With freediving I have no experience with depth yet and I do feel equalizing will be harder since you are hanging upside down and the descend speed will (probably) be faster. Practice, practice! But only in Dive4Life next week we’ll know if I’ll actually be able do it!
Cheers! Hope you guys liked this post and don’t be shy to comment or ask anything!
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Last Wednesday night everything unsatisfactory about previous week’s introduction to static apnea was made good in the first session of the SSI level 1 course. I think a big part of this was caused by a conscious decision to let all expectations go and to rely on my natural relaxation. This way – I figured – I’d probably have most fun and have the presence of mind to learn the most.
I didn’t want to focus too much on breath-hold performance anymore and even decided to just have a gruelling kickboxing training the night before. This ment a rising muscle soreness in my legs when I left work for diveshop The Wave. Not ideal I guess, as muscle pains probably ask for their share of oxygen during the recovery process.
Mischa the dog recognized me as I entered the diveshop and was rewarded with a last bite of the dried sausage stick I was still chewing on. The owner of the shop also recognized me, but wasn’t rewarded…
This time the class (consisting of a group of six enthusiastic newbies and our instructor Nanja) did start around 18:30 hours; with some theory. Nanja was now clearly teaching within the confines of the SSI training program. The first powerpoint slide clearly displayed the SSI Diver Diamond with the SSI training philosophy and we had to fill in and sign some SSI forms before beginning with the fun part.
Nanja mainly discussed the equipment side of the Diver Diamond and she taught us the differences between conventional scuba- and freediving-gear. It helped we were in an actual diveshop that had some of the stuff. She made us guess at almost all the reasons for differences between scuba- and freediving-gear. The majority of the story sounded quite familiar, since I studied the digital course material over the weekend, but time flew by nevertheless and before we knew it we had to relocate to the swimming complex a couple of towns away.
“Look for the white VW Polo in the parking lot and come and get the gear you don’t have yourselves,” Nanja had said before we left the diveshop. And indeed, upon arrival at the pool’s parking lot there she stood, ready with the trunk of the white Polo open, totally stuffed with lead, fins, masks etc. I practically handbrake-turned my old barrel into one of the parking bays, grabbed a lead belt and anxiously rushed inside to get changed.
A bunch of waterpolo players were still training in the big pool. In the shallow kids-area (us Dutch call it: “pierenbadje“) there were some profi-looking people in black wetsuits doing something I (since last week) immediately recognized as static apnea’s. It turned out they were members of a freediving club that rents the big pool for training on Wednesday evenings. Nanja in turn rents a couple of lanes for these SSI courses from the club so she can guarantee the space necessary for our pool-sessions.
As the waterpolo players finished up their training, we started doing some breathing exercises while seated on our towels. The goal was to get a relaxed breathing rhythm going, all “through the belly”, where the exhale had to be twice as long as the inhale.
So, for example: you put one hand on your chest and one on your stomach to check whether you truly solely breathe with/through your belly and then you count the time of your inhale and try to make a passive but controlled exhale that takes twice as long. You should find a rhythm that doesn’t make you really-really-really want to breathe normal again after doing it for a couple of minutes or so. For most people the ratio is 3/6, 4/8 or 5/10 inhale to exhale.
Next up was practicing the full inhale. A full (100%) inhale is done in three stages, with pursed lips (as if sucking through a large (thick smoothy) straw) and is the last inhale you do before going under. The first stage being: totally filling up the lower part of the lungs with the inhale through the belly; the second: continuing or expanding the inhale to the chest; and the last: using the last bit of the upper lungs you have by kind of feeling as if you are filling up your throat on the last part of the inhalation.
The notorious recovery-breath was last but not least of the breathing exercises. The recovery-breath is the way you have to execute your first three in- and exhales when you surface from a breath-hold dive. It is hugely important to re-oxygenate the right way after surfacing, since it prevents blackouts and loss of motor control. So extremely important even, that Nanja keeps telling us: “Merely learning a decent recovery-breath is worth the course-fee.”
And then Nanja said: “Put three kilograms on your weight-belt and wear it cool, like a teenager does his trousers.” Followed by: “Fins and mask on and jump in the pool!”
Now we came to fine-tune the amount of weight we needed on our belts to stay under without too much effort. I had to put on an extra kilo to make it doable, but I still felt a bit too positively buoyant. It might be some remnant of fat here and there, but for my ego I’ll keep carefully maintaining the big lungs theory.
As soon as everyone was weighted properly we started doing dynamic swims to the other side of the pool. Meanwhile Nanja swam along above us and gave us (physical) tips to (also) fine-tune our techniques. Sometimes I felt hands pushing my head in a different position or pulling my arms more alongside my body than I had been holding them. It’s quite a strange experience to get these kind of directions while being under water, but it works wonders for your awareness of what you’re actually doing (wrong).
Of course every now and then I made mistakes even before disappearing under water. It provoked some hard laughs from Nanja and the group when I did an awesome, highly focused, huge motherf*cking full inhale and dove under to realize I forgot to put my mask on! Sigh… Start over.
It’s safe to say that properly using bi-fins is not as simple as it might seem, nor is holding your head in the most hydrodynamic position. But the arm stroke Nanja taught us next was even more challenging. Without using our legs we had to swim to the other side of the pool using this newly-learned technique and do so with the least amount of strokes possible. The whole group laughed when I asked whether we had to do this with our heads under or above the water. “What did you sign up for here!” I guess you can blame a guy for thinking that you might practice a technique on the surface first 🙂
After practicing this arm stroke a couple of laps and getting some efficiency pointers, I managed to swim one length in the 25 meter pool using about eight to nine strokes. Which is still quite a lot, but not all too bad. Of course my talented buddy from the previous week (remember her?), who was also the only familiar face in this new level 1 group, managed to do it in a stroke or two less…
Unexpectedly Nanja decided to end the first pool session with a BANG and made us race (yes, again, underwater of course!), which was great fun! And we definitely have some competitive spirits in the group!
Back in our regular human clothes, we gathered around a table near the bar of the swimming complex. We still had to log our first (free)dive in the SSI-app and hadn’t completely finished the theoretical part of this first course day. Nanja nonchalantly sipped from her well deserved post-instruction beverage, opened her laptop and finished the presentation.
Seemingly out of nothing Nanja dropped a big pile of old wetsuit parts on the table, so we could get a feel for the different materials and densities. This was the finale of the first course day, which ended with Nanja giving advice on the right suit to buy for Dutch open waters (brrr…) – after she made us guess, obviously!
a journey from the surface to wherever 