This month I’m in Singapore and there is no chance of hitting the water be it a pool, lake or the ocean. Because of my work I’m on call 24 hours a day and its the equivalent of fasting not being able to hit the water.
For that month or however long you are out of the water, it is really important to me to stay in shape so that I don’t miss a beat and can keep up, and swim harder and longer then the guys we enviously watch in the water each week.
I’ve seen a dozen or more workouts for Freediving and they all have their positives and negatives. Freedive specific training has never been something I can get addicted to so I try to mix it up and suit my personal style to make it work for me.
#1 I do not train in the water. I wish I could but I have never been able to get into swimming laps unless I am playing water polo with the chance to punch some Harvard Geek on the next drive or if I am in the bluewater or somewhere I can hunt and swim for the sake of swimming.
#2 I train all day every day. When I walk up the stairs I hold my breath and see how many flights I can do without taking a breath. Pick a point along the route you are walking and try to hold your breath until you get there. It is harder then it looks but each time you do it you will feel your body getting stronger. It teaches you relax to work without oxygen and simulates the stress on your muscles at the end of a deep dive or pulling hard on a fish to get him out of a hole.
#3 Breathing tables… I’m on the fence about this one. I can go months without diving and within two days of being back in the water comfortably hold my breath for 2:00 on a dive to 40′. But at the same time I have always been horrible at holding my breath on land. I’m hoping this helps a little bit: Today I tried to do some Apnea tables online (click here to Download) and started out with 1:30 breath hold and 2:00 rest then another breath hold of 1:35 and rest 1:55.
Here is what I did:
Hold Rest
1:30 2:00
1:35 1:55
1:40 1:50
1:45 1:45
1:50 1:40
1:55 1:35
at this point it started getting pretty tough because of so little rest time so I continued with
2:00 1:45
2:10 1:45
2:15 1:45
2:15 1:45 On the last couple I pushed it a bit further to stress my lungs a bit and try to expand upon my times.
The only thing impressive about this is that my body can recover quickly to hold my breath again.
When I dive I usually dive 1:15 down and then do 2:00 on the surface and keep that up all day long so at the end of the day I almost always have over 100 dives. I have to make a conscious effort stay on the surface longer and this is really important to allow your body to recover and let the CO2 get out of your body. Before the advent of freediving watches I used to dive so hard that I’d get headaches at the end of the day and the first few times I wore on I had upwards of 160 dives averaging 1:20 and 1:20 on the surface. No wonder my body was angry at me!
So back to training. I think the Apnea tables will help and we will check in next week to see if I’ve improved. I can concentrate so much better when I am diving and on land I have the crappiest breathhold and don’t enjoy it. I think my fully inflated lungs put too much pressure on my body and I can’t relax….
I ride the stationary bike for 30 minutes and use the rowing machine 30 minutes, alternating days so each day I do one or the other. When I ride the bike I do an half power for one minute and a full power for 2 minutes interval.
My heart rate stays around 160 bpm on the 2 min sets.
On the minute off I’m breathing through my mouth and holding it for 5 seconds then slowly exhaling for as long as I can (5-10 sec).
45 seconds in my BPM is down to 130 and at the end of the minute when the tempo increases I do a breathhold for as long as I can.
It will make you blue in the face and 20 seconds is a long breath hold but it is a vicious cycle and it makes me feel like my body is working hard to recover and then do a breath hold at the end just makes it even harder and humbles you.
I do a high repetition workout with weights for 45 minutes 6 days a week as well rotating through the different muscle groups.
This workout isn’t for everyone and it has a thousand adaptations. It works for me and keeps me mentally prepared for diving and surfing and is flexible enough that I can change something about it each day to keep it interesting and stick with it.
Any workouts you have that help with spearfishing? Freediving? Share them with me and I’ll try them out and we’ll check the results!
8 Responses to “Spearfishing and freedive conditioning/training”
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- Spearfishing Training/conditioning - Spearfishing Planet - [...] freaks of nature the first day I'm back in the water. Here is what I've been doing this month: ...
Been getting a lot of good feedback from around the world and it seems that the major trend is towards intense landbased workouts that are anaerobic.
Juii Jitsu, Mountain Biking, Jogging 100meters then sprinting 100 meters holding your breath, climbing stairs holding your breath and other sports like Motor Cross and surfing.
Today i did another breathing table and did horribly again.
Started with 1:30 breath hold 2 min rest and then
HOLD REST
1:30 2:00
1:35 1:58
1:40 1:56
1:45 1:54
at this point I had people coming in and out of the office and it threw me off so I had to skip one and then couldn’t get back on track and ended up doing another 10 breath holds
1:45 1:45
At the end of it I was extremely sleepy and in a sitting position I still felt like I could never relax. I imagine that when my lungs were completely full it was just too much pressure out of water. I started blowing out about 1/3 of my air a minute into my breath hold and it made it easier to finish up.
I skipped the weight room today and instead did 6000 yards in 30 minutes on the rowing machine. I had it at maximum resistance and warmed up for three minutes then at the beginning of each minute held my breath for as long as i possibly could.
Here are the results:
Hold Rest
15sec 45 sec
for the first 4 minutes then I bumped it up to
20sec 40 sec
for the next 10 minutes
then
15-18 sec hold and then rest for 5 minutes.
My goal was 6000 meters so at this point I stopped holding my breath and had to go all out for the remaining minutes to push really hard and hit my goal which I did. Final distance was 6018 meters.
Along the last stretch I was maxing out my body and having been holding my breath so much during the previous 20 minutes it felt like my muscles savored the extra air and I was able to go as hard as I could with no limits.
How is your week in Prison Workout going? Any progress? Any new creative ideas on how to keep interested in a workout when we wish we were diving instead?!?!!?
Next time you come to Singapore, hit me up. If you have the time, I’ll pass you on to the local freediving community, and we’ll be more than happy to train with you. You can also play underwater hockey here as well. Cheers, Mark
Cameron,
Great blog and post; Informative and well written as always. I wanted to pick your brain concerning our bodies and the strain on multiple dives per day. I’ve gone out as you have and performed 100-150 dives in a single day. But trying to go back out the next day I regularly seem to have a sinus issue and cannot manage to clear, even after taking Sudafed, or any other remedy. Do you have a secret solution? You happen to dive a fair bit more than most of us manage to do, is it conditioning? Do you take breaks and break up your diving such as going fishing with line and reel one day in between dive days?
Also with regards to breath hold on land, especially static, I find it extremely challenging to relax or stay focused as one would otherwise when actually pursuing game underwater. I think a great deal has to do with my severe A.D.H.D., but perhaps it is because we all push a little harder to dive a little longer, or deeper in pursuit of a trophy fish than we ordinarily will on land when we have nothing to distract our discomfort.
Keep up the amazing writing, many of us live vicariously through you.
Great blog and post, I have one comment that I hope you will take to concern, all the freediving instructors I know personally suggest to rest on the surface double the time you were freediving, that meens if you freedive for 1 min. then 2 min. surface time is ok, but if you freedive for 2 min.then your surface time should be at least 4 minutes.
In the past 2 years 4 freedivers from our community lost their lives , three of them had shalow water black out. the last one of them practised 2minute dive, 4 minute rest the whole day until his last dive, he laid ambush at 18 meters and shot a grouper that fled into a cave, the freediver surfaced for 2 minutes and dived back 18 meters and was found only the next day. the data was taken from his suunto D4 dive watch.
may they all rest in peace.
remember safety is above all.
you got me holding my breathe from the deck to bridge everyday.. stoked on the exercise! ive got to work on the timed part!
Your story had inspired me to do this kind of exercise. It seems fun. As for my experience, I can never try holding my breath within 20 sec. At some point if you can do it so can I. Thanks for the story.
contour+ review