Still on track

Last Sunday's national champs went almost perfectly as planned for me. The results were 2 gold medals (DYN and DNF), and a new DNF national record. And on top of those performances I'm 100% convinced that there is plenty more where those meters came from. Not bad at all.
I ended up using the following procedure for preparing to this competition:
Preparation

• Last endurance training (spinning) one week before on Sunday
• Monday gym training. I managed to hurt my neck muscles during pull-ups, and had to rest it for a couple of days.
• Light diving on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning
• Eating pasta and salad on Saturday evening
  

Competition day

• Stretching legs, arms and back before breakfast
  
• Eating rye bread and boiled eggs for breakfast (08:30) and only drinking some mineral water since then
• Mentally going through the dives several times before warm-up time trying to associate the dives mental feelings to different parts of the pool in order to be prepared for the fleeting urge to bail out too early
• Going into the pool as soon as the warm-up time started to do some full-lung statics and relaxation on the bottom of the pool; only 1-2 extremely light dives to get the feeling for the technique
• 5-10min break before OT
• I managed to feel slightly cold just before both starts, which was almost optimal.
  
• Diving only to win, not to gain meters in order to conserve strength and to avoid risking SP (my bigger AP:s gave me the benefit of seeing what my competitors had performed)
  

I had assumed that I would need to dive 140 in DYN and 115 in DNF to win the disciplines, but the other competitors proved me seriously wrong by turning from 150m in DYN and doing several hand strokes after 100m in DNF. Luckily I had prepared for that and the ranges I had mentally been prepared for was still higher than these competing results. It's good to see that the level of results in Finland is still high even though Kalle and Jyri were not there to give their best shots.
The DYN dive succeeded very well, and I did not feel lactic acids until 140m. At 160m I didn't feel any compelling urge to abort the dive, but instead chose to stop there to conserve my strength. The DNF dive was more troublesome as I was forced to do 4+4 hand strokes for the first 50m (normally easy 3+3), and after that the 'technique' collapsed completely for 50-75m. I almost bailed out at 80m, but my competitive drive forced me to go on. 75-100m was much easier and at 100m turn I was absolutely sure that I would be able to go to 125m mark if I wanted. Instead I surfaced at 121m to avoid risking SP unnecessarily.
The best dive of the day was still Anders Larsson's 132m DNF, which reinstated him as the Swedish DNF record holder. His technique and balance are close to perfect and it's going to be a hard day's work trying to outperform him in a 50m pool when the turns are few and far between and the differences are based more on technique. Let's just hope that Mikko Pöntinen (Sunday's #2 after only a couple of month's training (?!)) keeps improving the way he's done so far, or that Anders starts competing under Finnish colors...

The complete results of the competition can be found here.

Modifications to the training from now on

• Moving from current 80m standard DYN dives to 100+ turn standard dives. I was able to stay much more relaxed up to the 80m mark now that I've been training them regularly instead of just repeating those boring 50m dives. The 80m dives aren't the least bit challenging any more, so upgrading to 100 dives seem to be the rational next step.
• Actually learning how to dive DNF. Hand stroke efficiency and glide posture would seem to be good starting places... Now my performance has way too much variation, which shows as irregular amount of hand strokes in competition performances.
• More endurance training (running, spinning). I'll need to include more lower-intensity-but-longer-duration exercises to balance the current maximum interval tortures.
• Declining and avoiding ridiculously under-resourced projects at work to avoid being deprived of frequent training routine.

Q&A

There have been some questions posted in the visitors’ comments that I have not yet had the time to answer properly. So here comes:

Major barriers that I have broken that have helped me to increase my PB on quantum leaps have been the following:

– Sprinting in the end: Numerous other divers had told me that it would be wise to maintain a constant speed till the end of the dive, and possibly even slow it down in the end. This had felt terrible to me and I was not able to dives beyond 100m using this strategy. Then I tried springing close to my max speed after 75m, and I was able to push my PB to 125 almost instantly, and it didn’t even feel as challenging as 100m with constant speed. I guess that I’m more used to dealing with lactic acids than apnea, so I still use this approach. I know that this is not something for everyone, and majority of divers reach their best performance with constant speed.

– Equipment: Previously I dived without a pool suit and with a 1^st generation monofin (simple and soft foot pockets attached to a relatively soft blade). By upgrading into a 2^nd generation Leaderfins’ Hyper (better foot pockets, stabilizing wings and stronger blade) and to a 1,5mm Elios pool suit I was able to increase my speed, especially on sprints, and to standardize my performance by avoiding the hypothermia that prevented me to do proper warm-ups (or actually relaxation-downs) and forced me to dive in minute-perfect schedule to avoid shivering. These equipment investments helped me to reach 150+ mark.

– Nutrition: Traditionally the guideline for freediving has been to avoid eating for as long as possible to drive the body into a low consumption mode. This is fine for static, but in dynamic you really need some energy as well. I started drinking some protein before going into the water, but the price was exposing myself to stomach problems. This nonetheless helped me to achieve the 175+ mark. Apparently this problem can be solved with other means as well, and I think I’ll be attempting to replace the last-hour protein simply by shorter starvation before dynamic.

Warmth has been a delicate balance for a long time. Before I got my pool suit the dives required minute-perfect schedules to do warm-ups and avoid shivering hypothermia before start. The idea was, and to some extent still is, that cool temperature causes vasocontraction (=less blood flowing on skin), which strengthens dive reflex (more blood to brains and other more important organs). The problem was, that if I got too cold and started shivering the game was over: all the muscles on the skin and abdomen started contracting in an uncontrolled way to generate heat, which is very counter-productive if you want to minimize your non-essential oxygen consumption during the actual dive. As my last 150+ DYN proved this is not as important as I had assumed, but still I prefer to be on the cool side rather than warm side before start.

Hydration has been yet another area where I’ve been using somewhat eccentric approach. Traditionally it’s been advised to ensure hydration to maintain blood pressure to reduce the risk of packing blackout as the deep inhale lowers blood pressure. But I’ve been using the slight dizziness caused by max packing to relax during the first 10-15 meters of the dynamic. A bit over a year ago however I got 2 packing blackouts (not the least bit dangerous, but still extremely destructive to performances' standardization as the air from lungs is released), and I decided it was a time to change my preparation. Since then I’ve been adding some sea salt to the protein I’ve been drinking before dives and anaerobic trainings and drunken more mineral water before dives. These measures have resulted in avoiding any dizziness and packing blackouts since then. A couple of months ago I went to my employer’s bi-annual health check and the only indicator that was out of recommended ranges was my blood pressure. Since then I’ve stopped adding salt to everything, and still I haven’t had any problems with out-blown dizziness caused by max packing. Possibly as my blood pressure normalizes I’ll need to start using salt again, but this time more conservatively.

Competition build-up - National champs

Ok, now it's time to put all the new tricks into action for next Sunday's national champs. I've announced 135m for DYN and 80m for DNF. This competition will be the official qualification event for our national team (max 3 athletes per discipline provided that they exceed 135m in DYN or 102m in DNF). There are several divers capable of reaching those minimum limits, so I'll need to go well beyond those to secure my place in the team. As some US-divers like to put it: 'Failure is not an option'.

The preparation this week has been less than perfect: the working days have been 12-16h and I haven't been training at all. I did my last aerobic training last Sunday (hard 50min spinning), and I'll be doing only some light gym workout, stretching or diving every day from today until Saturday morning.

The plan I've set myself for the competition day is more or less the following

• We'll go to Kouvola the previous day, so there is no hurry in getting to the pool in time
• I'll get up at around 8-8:30 to do some light stretching
  
• I'll eat more or less a normal breakfast at 09:00 and drink some mineral water after that (my OT:s are at 14 and at 15:50)
• I'll do some stretching on the pool and try to mentally go through the phases of the dive as many times as possible
• For warm-ups I'll do some e-diving and some very easy dynamics (max 80m and 55m)
• I'll have 7-10 min break from warm-up dives before the OT
• In DYN my targeted range is 20-45 kicks over 100m mark. 15 kicks is about 25m, so 20 kicks should take me to 135m, and 45 kicks is somewhere around 175m mark.
• In DNF my targeted range is 10-15 hand strokes past 50m mark. This accounts for 100m+turn to 125m+turn in distance. I set my AP lower (80m) because I didn't know the rest period between the two dynamics, and if I'll end up going to a max-max dive in DYN it WILL have an impact on the other dives of the day. 80m should be achievable even if I went to lactic acids at 40m mark.

The biggest risks that I fear are getting the fever back that's been bugging me during the last month and upsetting my stomach. I try to keep out of cold and avoid disrupting my eating habits until Sunday.

Urea iacta est.

Back on track

In my opinion the road to burn-out has four steps:

• First you don’t have enough time for training and other free time activities
• Second you are too tired to train even if you had the time and opportunity
• Third comes depression and loosing control of your life
• Fourth is burn-out

I’ve been twice during my studying time on the third step (while having simultaneously three jobs and maintaining full studying speed without compromising my grades), and I’ve promised myself never to go there again. As I noticed last Friday that I’ve reached step two I decided it was time for a radical change. On Saturday I did three hard exercises (monofin technique, gym, hard 50min interval running). On Sunday I was in so much pain that I didn’t do anything and instead I spent that time catching up on other neglected tasks. On Monday I restarted my morning training program (abs, push-ups, calfs(? =pohkeet in Finnish) and stretching lower back/thighs; and after work I did a hard mid-section gym exercise and a hard 60min spinning training. Yesterday I did the morning routine and after work I did some statics and decided to go for one longer dynamic with monofin. I surfaced at 154m without any problems whatsoever: no lactic acids, no stomach problems, 3sec SP. I came up there because I had promised my safety diver (Ari Kylmä) that if I did the 150m turn I would come up instantly after that. But the important part is that I broke Kalle Rajala’s standing national season best result by 1m J. Looking for your response, Kalle…

But seriously, there were some important changes to the build-up to that dive that need further examination and exploring:

1. Usually I have drunk some protein one hour before going into the pool to avoid running out of energy during the dive. Now I had only eaten at lunch (11:30) and one muffin at 14:00, and the dive was about 21:15.
2. I didn’t hydrate as well as usually before the dive.
3. The preceding work day had been quite hectic and I was still running high on adrenaline as I arrived to the pool (but relaxed fast during statics).
4. I did some long (>3min) stretching of my legs and lower back before going into the pool. My legs felt extremely relaxed after that and I could clearly feel how the locked-up muscles started relaxing and blood started flowing in completely new places in my thighs.
5. I did some easy statics as we waited for the 50m pool to be closed from the public. The statics were 3:30, 4:30 and 4:15, and none of them required any catching of breath afterwards.
6. I did 4x50m warm-ups and 6-7min pause before the long dive.
7. I used 2kg on belt and 4kg on neck.
8. I felt slightly warm before start, which shouldn’t be all that good for dive reflex, as blood circulates on skin to cool the body down.
9. Most importantly, I set the right RANGE of targeted performance to gain concentration and motivation without loosing confidence in my abilities to achieve the results. Yesterday the minimum level I set myself was 125m, which I should be able to reach even under worst possible catastrophe scenarios, and the maximum limit was the 150 + short turn. If I had set the minimum limit lower e.g. 100m I might have bailed out sooner, but the 125m forced me to ignore the first signs of apnea and push myself through them. The 150 upper limit was one that I honestly believed was well within my abilities even though it’s been a while since my last successful 150+ dive. If I had set the upper limit to e.g. 175m I might have bailed out soon after 125m because I would not have been able to convince myself that 175 is within my reach quite yet. Thanks Kalle for the briefing/lecture you gave on the mental preparation for top performances!!! This dive was only the beginning of what this mental approach can lead into!

So, ideas to be tested further in the future

• Longer break from any eating / nutrition before dives to avoid stomach problems. There is apparently no need to risk this by drinking some protein etc.
• Reserve enough time for stretching before going into the pool. Fewer and longer stretches are better than more and hasty.
• No need to worry even if I feel warm before start. At least before 150m this only a lame excuse for bailing out.
• Gradually lifting the RANGE of targeted performance as my confidence in reaching consistently the upper limits of the prevailing range is increased. It would seem that I’m already physically ready for 200+ dives, but the weak link preventing me to realize that lies between my ears.
  

Overwork , underworkout

Working has required far too much time during the last weeks, and I haven't been able to train practically at all. This week's only training was Tuesday's e-diving training (similar to last week), and I was able to reperform the 100m+ DNF, so not all hope is gone. Yet.

Other than that, the average workday has been well over 12h, so I haven't had any time nor energy left for training after such days. And now I feel so tired that I'll head straight for home although I could leave sufficiently early and I have my training stuff with me. This is FUBAR, and I'll need to do something about it and soon... I have already quit several of my other hobbies because of prolonged working hours, but that road is at it's end. I'll need to find a way to keep the working day lengths from escalating, because if I let go of freediving, that will only postpone dealing with the problems of gradually and sneakily increasing working hours.

Well, perhaps I'll manage to pull myself to training tomorrow morning, so that I can end the over 2-week break from monofin exercises.

Over and out.