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- Working on not fucking-up my exits (I already lost 2 World Championship titles because of this)
1- In any sport you want to train in such a way so to “peak” just before an event, but as much as it makes sense from a training point of view it also adds a lot of mental stress and anxiety. I guess some people would be more susceptible to this “pressure stress”, while others need a goal such as a comp to keep motivation up, but it definitively works against me. If I look at 2022 and 2023, every comp I went to was pretty much a last minute decision and I did so much better both mentally and in terms of performance even if I hadn’t prepared specifically for any of them: when the opportunity to sign up for a certain comp came up, I felt excitement while at the same time I hadn’t spent the previous months thinking and stressing about that particular event because I didn’t know I was going to participate. This year it was the opposite: I planned everything in advance and I pretty much bombed every single one, and hated ever single training session along the way.
2- My equalisation is shite when I lack self-confidence and relaxation. And I always end up blaming my narrow left hear canal and my hyperactive mucus factory, which are problems that I do have, but when I’m confident and inspired they dont prevent me from equalising deep. Yes they do make things a bit more difficult, but it became too easy to blame only my imperfect ear anatomy rather than the real problem, which also lies in my head but it’s in between the ears and not inside of them. So when I stress I lose the love for what I’m doing and deep dives become a chore rather than uplifting and introspective experiences. Lying to yourself never works.
3- Due to my imperfect equalisation I developed a number of small rituals that (I believe/d) help me equalise better. Sprays, nose rinses, steam breathing, breathing patterns, avoiding certain foods during the weeks I deep dive, and even my warmup routine is constructed around my EQ. I already started to deconstruct it: the last 6-8 depth sessions I did I went in changing everything around, and doing everything differently just to show myself I can still equalise as efficiently as long as I believe I can do it, and it works! I’m not diving super deep but I’m taking very early mouthfills (you can find more info in my last blog post), and as long as my mind is at peace I almost never lose air/leak/swallow even when my ear canal is not 100% open.
4- Last winter I didn’t and it showed . I thought I don’t need to dive deep as long as I fuck around in the water doing shallow mouthfill practice and some FRC dives because I felt too lazy to do semi deep dives in a 5mm suit and 4 kilos. The previous year I would do at least 1 x 70/75 meters dive per week and then when depth season started it only took me 3 dives to get to 90m, so that is what I am aiming for again.
5- (If you dont know what I’m talking about please read my blog post about the importance of building habit – good ones possibly, I’ll put a link below). This should be the easiest to fix but no, I keep comping up and wanting to take noseclip and goggles off; I even have an alarm at the end of the ascent to turn on “exit mode” so I can prepare to do things right. I did it again today during training and not even my buddy yelling “DONT DO IT!!” at me was enough to prevent my hand going to my noseclip/goggles. It’s like my hand is possessed by some evil entity. Maybe I just need an exorcism.
