So this video came up nice, but caught me completely off guard. We were recording the RV videos, and after we’ve finished – I’ve been told that Aolin sent us a video talking about me. So what you see here is an unstaged, genuine reaction while viewing it for the first time. Hope you’ll enjoy it. Aolin Wang is still (up to date) the deepest man in China. We’ve been working closely for the last four and a half years. And this video is his story about the equalisation journey to -113 meters depth.

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Here is the promised video about, the more advanced, second stage of RV training in freediving.

This video is the first to come after a long silence period. I have recorded it after a week of none diving, and only doing dry training and conditioning at home, and trying to answer your questions. It ended up being a rant, and not practically about Coronavirus, but I hope you’ll enjoy and understand. I definitely will attempt to record a video about training in these days of lockdown.

Piotr Ławrynowicz – a Polish Freediver who was my student back in 2017 talks about his AIDA Freediving Instructors Course

Writing has always been a challenge for me and inevitably gets postpone until it becomes irrelevant. However, two weeks ago Harry Chamas did me the great honour of coming up from Dahab to meet me. I was already predisposed to like Harry, from his writings, and from what Alina told me about him from her visit in Dahab last March. And from what I knew of his history as a Royal Marine, and also from his youtube channel.

We discussed RV versus FRC training at length and found our positions were not all that far apart. The worst of it is there is a dearth of scientific information to support any proposition. It must be, today, an exchange of observations and supported at best by a very few relevant scientific articles. Our discussion began by defining the separate objectives of RV and FRC training – and they are not identical. We talked about how a lot of this training is misunderstood and Continued…

Okay, this is an update from freedivers. This, for me, is an absolutely golden

Continued…

A perfect Wednesday, with a flat sea.

Was trying out my new freediving fins from Alchemy.

Freedivers: Aharon, Alina, Alon, Ori, Offer, Adam.

Music: Tranceless by Blue Dot Sessions

This is an excellent exercise for training FIM (Free Immersion). The one shown, is for very advanced divers. However this can easily be adapted to your specific objectives.

Continued…

This is the video on my thoughts on deep equalisation! Long promised, hope you will enjoy it. It is not the magic bullet, but part of a strategy for depth. It is amazingly simple, but still may not be that simple to learn from a video, in which case the fault is mine and not yours 🙂

It’s been nearly a week since the golden day when all three of my divers did PB’s. The sea was an invitation 25 degrees, beautifull clear visibility no current and very little waves. It began with a 300 meter swim to the point we deployed our buoy. Warm ups were very limited, Walter Chivescu went first with his dive, we had been working on the pacing and tactics – when to begin the glide. Walter was comfortable with an ascent and descent rate of 0.8 mts per second. It turned into a beautifully planned relaxed CNF dive to 43.2 mts.
Jeroen had been consistently been improving his CWT in Bi-Fins, he has a very elegant and effective style, his equalising had been consistently improving with methodically increased depths. He had an excellent dive to 36 mts, with all the pieces in place.
Mikhail was the last to go absolutely no dramas here, a beautifull controlled descent with great style and pacing and completed a PB of 36 mts CNF, Mikhail has much more in the tank.
All the team completed their dives with perfect surface protocols, and no blue lips. Well done all! I take my hat off to all 3 of you.

The 6th day of training for my 2 Giants – Walter Chivescu and Jeroen Van Haudt. We had been doing a lot of empty lung training, to acclimatize to pressure. Learn my advanced technique of equalisation for depth, and get used to the noseclip. Yesterday the sea was perfect, 20mt visibility, no current and the surface like glass. The white line, a thread, an invitation into the deep blue, there were smiles exchanged, I felt a surge of joy and knew it would be a good day. Things began slowly, each wrestling with Continued…

The idea for this video came by way of a chance encounter, it was I admit something that had been rattling around in my head for a long time, but I have a great talent for procrastination. Several people had suggested I tackle the subject. The “Frenzel“, it is a basic technique specific to freediving. It came to my attention, many people fail the AIDA 2 star course that has a depth minimum of 16 mts by failing to cross this hurdle. People were coming to me after courses, having tied themselves in knots worrying about their soft palate their epiglottis and tongue position. All unneccessairy! Get the tongue action right, and the rest follows automatically. This – you can teach yourself with a flash light in front of a mirror with a bit of persistence.
There is so much confusion out there – it sounds like the tower of Babel, this is what at first put me off adding just another opinion to mess.
Then I met Continued…

Lauri Aalto visited us from Finland via Aquaba. He had to finish the water part of the 2 star AIDA course and went on to do the water part of the 3 star course. On the first day it became apparent that there was an equalisation issue. His Frenzel was nearly correct, but the nearly was creating a problem.

There was no movement in the area of the diaphragm, therefore no hybrid of Frenzel and Valsalva. The little pits behind the nostrils were inflating correctly with each equalisation and the muscles under the chin and lower jaw were also contracting correctly, but still each equalisation was too forced and too slow.

His problem was easily noticeable when he equalised with his mouth wide open in front of the mirror. The front of his tongue was pushing forcibly against his bottom teeth. This is a common fault and is usually the result of miss-understanding or in correct teaching, the student believes that in order to raise the back of the tongue he must push the front of the tongue against the bottom teeth. This vastly complicates the issue making the equalisation too slow and bringing in a lot of tension, which means problems at depth!

After the first day Lauri did 3 hours of dry practice and arrived the next day with the problem solved. He could equalise with the mouth wide open and only the back of the tongue was active pushing against the soft palate.

Lauri came with an excellent water sense ,great determination combined with good humour and intelligence, so his progress was astonishing. A small amount of polishing on the duck dive was necessary, after that concentration could be brought to tactics – correct weighting, counting strokes for determining when to go into the glide, and correct technique for the glide.

His partner work was exemplary.

Altogether Lauri was a joy to work with we had very rough seas and 20 knot winds and on the last day one of the worst currents I have seen in recent years. In spite Lauri completed his 30 mt dive with ease. He is to be congratulated on achieving all his objectives, a very creditable performance.

Walter Chivescu came to us on the 23 rd Nov for his second visit during his first visit he had achieved 46mts FIM. He had been plagued by equalisation problems since his first course in freediving .
Walter did our remote coaching program both before his first visit and before this one . He had achieved 6:06 Static and a breath walk of 2;15 after a 1;20 static hold . he had also been doing empty lung statics . So we knew his breath hold would not ever be in question for any realizable depth during this visit .
We spent the first 10 days basically ignoring depth and Continued…

Just to congratulate David Kent on a superb new UK record in Constant No Fins of 70mts. A magnificent dive by a diver with huge potential!
David has been training with me in Eilat and Dahab and also in the UK on my remote training program since last October.
David has done considerably more than 70mts in training.
The competition was planned for 2 days, and our plan was for David to do 70mts on the first day and 74mts on the second, due to organisational difficulties 1 day was cancelled, so David decided to be conservative and go for 70 mts and earned the first white card of this competition; thus improving his own UK record by 8 mts! Well done David!

It is with deep sorrow that we have just heard about the loss of a friend, Carson Bilsland in the Algerian hostage debacle.

Carson who we knew at first as a freedive student, became an avid freediver and competitor attending our first competition in Cabo San Lucas and several times visitor to our camp in Punta Coyote was a true Gentleman and sportsman.

He became a very dear and valued friend. A man of shinning courage and a gentleness and kindness that extended to our then little 8 year old son to whom he told magical stories and sent childrens books.

Carson was funny and wild and loved by our family, he will be sorely missed I can only with humility offer our heartfelt condolences to his family.