Dynamic training and all the stages of despair Not too long ago I wrote a post about staying in the moment, and I constantly speak about it to my students, but I can tell that the concept doesn’t often go through when it is explained in terms that are too abstract for people to grasp…
New year resolution: What I will change during the next training season. The list is long! 1- Not preparing for a particular event 2- Fixing my equalisation (by fixing my head) 3- Fixing my pre-dive fixations (strictly connected to point n.2) 4- Doing at least 1 “deep” dive per week all throughout the winter 5-…
Which FIM start do you prefer? There are different ways to breathe-up before a dive, which will consequently influence your “starting” technique. The 3 main breathe-ups are: – Through a snorkel (which is not very common for deep diving mainly because it makes packing more difficult to do) – In a vertical position with your…
The importance of building habit. As in the RIGHT HABIT, not any stupid habit (as you will see). During last year world championship in Roatan, I missed a podium for my CNF dive because I missed the line when I surfaced. Here’s the details if you are interested in the technical stuff (and mistakes to…
Preamble: I wrote this quite some time ago and then never posted it, my life unravelled and I had little time and zero energy for anything else than being miserable all day for several months. That is why I stopped distributing my wisdom via this blog and in my Instagram posts; my training did continue…
Preface: Some time ago I announced a Ask Me Anything on Instagram and that I would answer in my stories, but who am I kidding…theres no way I can answer a question in one short sentence. SO I told myself that I’d answer on a regular post, and would you know it, not even 2200…
I have a love-hate relationship with static. 3 years ago when I started training again, I had little access to a proper pool, so coach Bub from hell made me do a truckload of dry statics: co2 tables, max attempts, FRC sets, O2 sets, high HR statics, and all sorts of combinations of the above.…
The importance of having a correct buoyancy is crucial for dynamic. It’s shocking to see how few people get this right; of course I expect beginners and relatively new freedivers to get it wrong, but I see too many competition level freedivers who do max dynamics having the wrong buoyancy. Wrong weighting means that you…
VISUALISATION VS THINKALISATION Every time I talk about visualisation with a student we get trapped into a cycle of misunderstandings. I realised that is because visualisation is totally the wrong word to use for what I’m trying to teach them. The word visualisation involves images above all. But that bears almost no relevance to what…
A couple of days ago I came to the realisation that I have to accept that I am WHERE I AM, which is not necessarily WHERE I SHOULD BE, or WHERE I WOULD LIKE TO BE. In fact I’ve been struggling with training for about 2 months now, due to a combination of factors (some…
How to Mess Up Your Competition Plan Step by Step My biggest revelation of 2024: Having a plan doesn’t help you if you don’t follow it. So I just recently come back from Poland, where I went to take part to the Deepspot Challenge. They should call it “This challenge is a bitch” so that…
I was asked to give a lecture at Deepspot (the deep pool in Poland), about a subject of my choosing and as I was flying there I opened a blank powerpoint file and tried to write down a presentation. I have a deep love for this subject and I taught it several times during my…
Why You Should Keep a Journal (and why you won’t) The most underrated (and invariably ignored) tip (or 3) I give people: 1- keep a training journal, 2- always update it in details and 3- go back to it especially when you feel your performance is plummeting and training feels harder than it should. You…