Yoga Report

I arrived early at the pool. For some reason I decided to lay down and relax on a bench close to the water. I felt this calmness that I feel at home when I meditate and now it was like the whole place was more friendly and open to me. I visualised how I swam slowly and relaxed for the whole length of the pool, close to the bottom. Then I decided to do an apnea walk at the side of the pool to see how far I could walk, that proved to be 75 meters. We did the usual warm up in the pool and I was a bit surprised when the coach told us to do a 8 x 50 dynamic apnea since the longest we have dived so far is 25 meters. I get a reaction of panic very shortly into my dive and I have no clue on how to manage the whole length. Then this sensation fades away and I do 20 more meters without problems and then I want to see how much more I have to go. As soon as I see the finishing line, far away in the distant, I get depressed. I decides to hang in there until I get some signs of the breathing reflex. All of a sudden I am at the end of the basin and I am happy that I made it. Then it struck me that this is just 1 out of 8. With some struggle I made 7 more and I am quite surprised that it was possible !

I think it helped a little bit that I visualised the dive beforehand. I think it also helped that I watched quite a few videos on youtube with freediving. I got a tip, increasing the amplitude of my dolphin kick, and as soon as I followed that I got a better flow.

Just after shaving I did three breath holds in succession. First one was  2’00” and I thought this is my limit today. Decided to go through my whole body from the inside on the second attempt to make sure I was relaxed and got 3’00”. In the last try I stared at the watch and got 3’20” . If you are interested in this kind of training there is an on-line tool you can use:

freediving tables