On the 30th September David Kent arrived from the UK to spend 9 days with us training equalisation at depth David is the current UK recorder in CNF at 66mts, he had for the previous 2 months been part of our remote coaching program, and so he arrived well prepared both physically and mentally. In the remote coaching program we had worked intensively on flexibility, which is critically important for easy equalisation at extreme depths. He had also been learning our version of the mouthfill in a 4mt deep pool in the UK on empty lungs. This simulates actual descents to 58.4 mts. Our technique bears no resemblance to the “Eric Fattah method“, which is essentially a Frenzel + mouthfill.

This system (the Fattah method) has inherent weaknesses, the main being in air recovery at depth, which often leads to a trachea squeeze. David had come a long way towards learning our technique before he arrived. He had been doing intensive work on stress breath hold and had the capacity to exceed 100 mts CNF from a breath hold point of view. This of course helps in building confidence but there is no substitute for depth training to enable the body to adapt to depth and pressure.

Having said that our objective on this visit was not the acquisition of depth, but refining technique and tactics. David has a good swimming technique and is very mentally strong.

He is also the epitome of the sportsman and a gentleman. He is modest, and one of the nicest people I have been privileged to meet in Freediving.

The training very quickly progressed from initially 30 mts to 40mts and eventually to our 62mt buoy.

David is a joy to train, he absorbs new information extremely quickly and is free from moods and “attitude”. His former incarnation as a Royal Marine Commando certainly helps.

In my opinion David will go a very long way and I look forward to seeing him in competition in 2013.

Apart from the training we really enjoyed having him year and would feel priviledged to call him Friend.