Darkening autumn nights

Finnish seasons are funny. I the middle of June you get almost 24h light. This creates perfect setting for night spearing, where you can see sky turning orange of sunset and mirror-like surface of calm crystal clear lake. During this time and place have no meaning. Few months after, we have only 12hrs of daylight. Evenings are dark. At December, when you wake up it's pitch black and when you come back from work, it's the same. Workload during autumn is quite insane. Combination of this can be depressing for some. Many Finnish people comfort themselves with alcohol during this time. (This can be also fun as we have this thing called "pussikalja"). These days are mostly over for me. Now I turn to more active exercising in autumns. Not much more to do and it keeps your mind clear.

Monday was my off-day. I just spent time with our newborn. She was cranky and keeping her happy (in relative terms) was full time job. Yesterday I felt ill after work and I was pretty sure of hitting a fever the next night. During the evening I felt much better, so I did some FRC dry statics for fun. These have been painfully difficult for me as a beginner. I keep reading of people having 3.00+ mins of FRC static holds. I have hard time sometimes putting things to perspective: I've _known of_ freediving for six months. Most of these people have trained for six+ (!?) years. I do recognize this tendency in myself. I do want everything right now. There has been progress in my FRC holds. I can now struggle +1min with some effort. It would be intresting of getting a oximeter to see where I actually stand SaO2% wise.

Today was run day. I did some short stretching, warm-ups and tried some pranayama before the exercise. I read that for some people (when trained routinely) can enhance their aerobic performance. Well, my yoga training is far from rigid, nor my exercise aerobic. Today I just ran listening some music and doing the pace I felt the best. Hr was really high (163 avg), while last run it was 153. Peak hr was 178 and I was at no point really gassed or out of breath. Either I have good respiratory system or I am just in bad shape. I'd bet on the latter. My Suunto M2 has nice zones for different exercise areas. My today's run included 20mins of zone 3 (80-90% of max) and 10mins of above zone 3 (90%+). Even though this was much higher HR run, my run time was only 2min less than last time.

New PB!

I was late for practice today. Yesterday was UFC 135 headlining Jon Jones vs Rampage Jackson. It was awesome fight and I had to stop watching it at the end of third round. Otherwise I would had been late much more.

I have been thinking about trying longer dive, but I still have so few repetitions with mono so it would not make much sense. As I have done only 50m before with short bi-fins, I wanted to go for 75m. Today we had two lanes and enough people to have safety divers for both lanes. 75m would be big increase, but I should be able to do it. I did few 25m's with mono to get feeling to the water. I did short breath-up by relaxing few mins and three slow and deep breaths. The dive felt really easy, much more comfortable than my 50m's with no breath-up. I was relaxed and felt some lactics on the last 25m. I could had gone further, but I fear it might be too much too soon. I think the best thing would be to increase my max gradually to 100m. Even though I feel I could do much more, it's better motivation for practice to have something to spare for next time.

After this I continued with my normal practice. Mostly I concentrated on doing 25m's with short breaks (2-5 breaths). After a while my feet started to hurt from mono and I switched to short bi-fins. Again back with mono and I did 5x50m. I ended up doing total 70x25m which is quite good amount of repetition. I can do 70-80 laps per week, so my goal of completing 1000x25m should take at least three months. Now I am around 200/1000. So far the progress has been good and I am quite relaxed with mono. I am hoping to establish the basic mono technique to be in muscle memory, so I can concentrate on relaxation and co2 tolerance.

Dreaming of Dahab

I really would like to go to Dahab. This might be possible at the end of the year. There's some cheap flights from Helsinki to Sharm el Sheikh and it shouldn't be too bad to travel from there to Dahab. Now things are different than last year. We have small baby to think about and her priorities come first. With small baby it should be okay to travel and it should be quite easy when she's not yet eating any solids. No risk of getting sick from food. I've looked at some really nice videos about freediving in Dahab and it just looks perfect. Depths are mostly out of my reach (like the arch), but I would like to be in shape to have really relaxed diving in beautiful reefs. Okay, I think I can keep dreaming about it.

I didn't do much yesterday. I had short cardio workout and did few holds after it. Not much though. Today was pool practice and I did my normal warmups, 4x 25m and 3x50m. They felt okay. I can go to sunday practice to have a good workout so it was more like relaxing training today. In order to go longer durations in dynamic, I have to concentrate being relaxed also. If weather is good tomorrow, I could go for open water again. Forecast looks a bit bad today.

I also heard, that Anza did two new NR's at Kalamata. 100m depth in CWT and 70m in CNF. That's really awesome performance. Congratulations!

Breatheology and Niwaki

I made some long awaited purchases from Amazon. I ordered book about Pranayama, Stig Severinsen's Breatheology and Niwaki: Pruning, training and shaping trees the Japanese Way. I actually also ordered some sci-fi books by Iain M. Banks. This order has been long awaiting due to Breatheology is actually quite expensive. But now I will have something to study for the dark Finnish autumn nights.

I woke up 5am today for work. We had day trip by car and soon at afternoon I was really tired. I had short nap and went for a run. I decided not to watch so much my hr and just go how I feel. Pace was much higher than normal but I enjoyed it (until the last 2km). I thought my avg hr had to be around 160, but it was only 156. Peak hr was 183 though. It's been raining all week and it continues rain over the weekend. I don't know if I'll be able to go for open water on saturday.

I am a bit sore from yesterday's yoga. It was a good workout. Tomorrow I plan to do co2 tables or just go for apnea walk training.

Short break

I had two days of rest from training. They were not really a rest days due there were lot's of work to be done. Today I hit back to do yoga. Everything felt good and I really pushed it. On the last asanas my legs gave out (Warrior three and twisting half moon), but they always do if I've done everything correctly. I also included some pranayama after doing the asanas. Tomorrow I have early wake-up to work trip again and I have to be up at 5am. Even though it was my third yoga session, I definitely feel the benefits already. I am more flexible and I have much less shoulder tension and back pains. There's a lot of people with flu at my workplace, but I hope to keep healthy.

I've been also following the AIDA 2011 depth competition at Kalamata, Greece. Finnish team is doing awesome! Already two national records!

I wonder where that fish did go, a fish a fish a fishy oooh

I organized trip to Kuorinka for today. I sent mail for other members in our dive club, but it seems that either the cold weather or autumn hurries keep even freedivers occupied. So I was diving solo. I started the morning with some light yoga and stretches and headed for the lake. I had quite nice dives keeping dive times under a minute. Water was +13c and I started to notice, that even though I did not feel cold, I felt the water temperature as tension. I really had to concentrate to relax and have enjoyable dives, instead looking at dive time from my D3. Again, there were no fish. I started thinking that the whitefish (siika) should come to shallow around this time. Although it comes when water temp drops to +2-5c so it will take some time. This would be perfect place to spear for some whitefish. Tomorrow I will not be training at all, because it's my daughters christening. It's not so much of a religious thing, but celebrated tradition of name giving.

Friday pool

We had friday's practice. The deep pool was occupied with scuba class, but I managed to do some warm-ups in it. I did not feel very comfortable. I am diving much less now that work has started, so maybe development is going a bit backwards. It's only one hour session, but I managed to do 3x50m dynamics and trained turning a bit more. I start to be much more comfortable with mono, so training is going nicely. I just need repetition. If I can do roughly ~100x25m each week, I should have good routine and feeling for dynamics after 10 to 15 weeks. I think after this I can try for my baseline and goal of 100m.

Quick dip

I did not feel like doing yoga today. I was thinking that maybe I could go for spearing, but it was getting late and I did not have any power left in my light. I actually got quite nice diving light from dealextreme and I have been using it mounted to my speargun. I left my speargun and light home and went for quick dip in my local lake. Visibility was really bad as it has been recently and there were some people giving me looks because it's around +10c outside. Water is nice +15c but they don't know it and with my 5mm Elios it does feel like your regular warm pool.

No vis, no fishes, but I got 15 mins of water time. After I got home I did my statics. One set of frc O2 table and one full lung o2 table with seven holds ending up at 3:30 with 2min rest periods. Recently I've been mostly doing co2 tables or just holds until first contraction. Actually this has lowered my contraction tolerance for max holds. I don't know if I should concentrate on o2 tables or just do 50/50 of co2 and o2. Anyway, I would still need to have clear program set for both types of exercise. Otherwise I'll just find a way to convince myself to do something easy...

Freediving for babies

We had a baby girl born just six weeks ago. As a proud dad, it has been very interesting for me to see her daily activities even though she likes to keep her things simple: Sleep, poop, eat and on occasion watch tv or listen some good music (!?). We participated info meeting today about swimming for infant babies. They warm up the pool to 32c once a week every saturday morning and we can go swimming there with our baby when she's more than 3 months old. At the info they had presentation about infants natural reflex not to inhale water when submerged. They also described that during apnea what happens to infants physique: heart rate drops, blood pressure rises, there's vasoconstriction forcing blood to brain etc. I realized: this is freediving for babies! That's so cool.  After basic routines you actually train diving with the baby. Most babies seem to enjoy it immensely. I don't know what disciplines they teach, but they showed lot's of babies doing dnf. So I think that's the most popular one. It is said, that to succeed in any sport, it should be started at young age. I think there's no other sport that can be started this young... Very cool indeed.

Today I was again on a work trip. The day was full and intensive. So again I felt restless and I decided to go for a run. And it was raining. It was quite nice and short run again for 30mins with avg hr of 153. Yesterday it was supposed to be my off-day, but before going to sleep I did some statics until first contractions and also some Anuloma Viloma. This helped to relax and I actually slept quite well for the night.

Too much coffee

I have been really restless whole day. I think I had too much coffee today at work. There was just too much to do. After work I wanted to go to open water today again, but it was too bad weather. Also there would had been pool practice, but no reserved lanes and only for one hour. So I decided to have off-day and spend time with my family.

Yesterday I did some stretching and tried some Pranayama exercises for first time. I really could not get hand of it, except Anuloma Viloma was easier. I think I'll try to do these as part of my yoga practice. I also did series of O2 table afterwards. I tried longer breath-up and actually did not get to contractions part in each hold. During last 3min hold I kinda of felt just shaking and awful but no real contractions. Maybe the breath-up is just too long?

I have also been looking at some pool suits. There's nice offering of Nero 10k suit, which if I understood correctly, is very similar to Nero Comp suit. These swimskins have been banned in official swimming competitions for giving too good of a results. They suit perfectly for dynamic. Oh, well, they don't have my sizes left.

Sunday pool

Today we had 2 hours of pool time. This time there were only 4 people using two lanes, so plenty of space. I concentrated on my mono kick and trying to get comfortable with it. I was surprised pleasantly that the mono fits well and I don't get foot pain so quickly as I did before. Mono moves slightly over the foot during kick, so some toe socks might be useful. I did around 50-60 25m runs with short rest times (1-5 breaths). I read about exercise from SplasOz's blog which I tried but could only get up to 6x25m runs (3 breaths). Well, I am just figuring out basic routines with mono, so I have time to try that later. I also did quite many 50meters runs and tried the turn. My turns definitely need practice on it's own. Also I got nice tips from my more experienced co-divers, which is always nice.

This time afterwards I feel like it was a workout. I am not dead tired but from this I did get some training response.

Relaxing saturday

Yesterday evening I felt like addict who haven't gotten his fix. This morning after waking up and having breakfast I headed for Kuorinka. I left my speargun home because I don't have permits to this lake. It's just 10km away and one of the larger, clear and deep lake around here. In Finland, especially inland there's difficult to get spearfishing permits as it's compared to torching (tuulastus) and usually you need own permit to each lake.

I was happy about the visibility. It was nice 7-8m. There's about 200meter stretch from shore just nice sandy bottom and 1m deep. There's buoy markers marking the drop and the sandy bottom dives down to 10meters quite instantly. Very nice place for relaxing diving. I kept my dives under a minute, because I was alone. But the dives were relaxing and I definitely got what I came for. I found some old junk like huge cast iron kettle on the bottom. There's also large area of reed growing in the shore where I expected to see some pikes. Weirdest thing was that I saw absolutely no fishes (not even the smallest ones, which can be seen everywhere). I guess the fishes are more at the center of the lake (?!) rather than at the shores. Even with no fish, this dive hit the spot.

First pool training

There's one hour slot for freedivers every friday for one hour. We have one lane and today the participation was high (10 ppl). I begun with few relaxing around one minute dives at deep pool (4m) and few frc's. Muscles are sore from this weeks activities and I did not feel really relaxed. I also got tackled by uw rugby player while relaxing at the bottom (!?). Oh, well. No harm done, I used to train MMA few years back.

I did some 25meter warm ups and one 50m. Goal was to get feeling of the mono kick with short stereos. At the end of the hour I did few tries with my mono. This was probably fifth time that I've ever tried mono and it definitely will take time to get used to.

After pool session I dont really feel happy about it. I need much more pool / open water days for each week to progress. After doing diving whole summer almost every day, it almost feels like torture to be able to get 1 hr in the pool for a week. Luckily there's 2 hour training session in sunday at the pool.

I think I definitely need to go to Höytiäinen tomorrow.... Maybe three hours of relaxing spearfishing? I don't care if I can't see squat or it's cold, I just need to go...

Yoga and running

Today I was on a work trip again. I was back home around 8.30pm (I had luxury of flying, instead of sitting in a train for 10hrs in one day). I decided to go for short run. Last time I went running was spring and I was trying to learn better running technique. I have always been heel runner and it has been bad for my legs (got bad shin splints after few weeks of running). I read about POSE running and tried it out. At the first it felt like hell on my calfs but I think it's getting easier. My running posture is far from anything proper, but atleast moving from heel running to more mid-foot should help to shin problems. Today I just ran for 30mins with avg 154 heart rate. My hr is pretty much always quite high even though I dont feel out of breath. Maybe I am always just out of shape aerobic-wise?

Yesterday I also did yoga practice. My routine resembles fast paced Ashtanga and it definetely feels like a workout. It's my normal routine which I havent done for a while. I felt surprisingly flexible and I could do some of the asanas with ease which I haven't been flexible enough in almost a year (I did more yoga year ago). As I haven't done any other exercising or stretching during the summer, I guess that diving a lot has had positive effect also on my flexibility.

Tomorrow I have pool training after work, so I should be ready to start with dynamic training.

Dry static training

Yesterday I did some tables again. I did one with following pattern:

2x 1min30sec hold 1min 30sec rest
2x 2min hold 2min rest
2x 2min30sec hold 2min30sec rest

This was fairly easy. After this I did Co2 table with FRC. 1min holds starting from 45 sec and decreasing rest time by 5sec each time. After this I did holds increasing time until first contraction starting from 2:15->3min. Finishing the routine with max attempt. Normally I dont pack, but for this try I did maybe 10 packs. I felt really uncomfortable and just gave up at 3:38 after 30 contractions. For now I am not used to packing and it actually makes me much more tense and contractions start earlier. I believe I can do much better now.

For now I am not using noseclip in any statics and it creates lots of pressure to throat, which actually hurts after session. I checked price for Trygons clip and it's 59EUR, so maybe I have to put it to the shopping list. I would assume that using nose clip and releasing the pressure from epiglottis to noseclip would help the statics a lot.

Today it's yoga's turn.

Training planning

Yesterday I worked almost all day. My workload after summer vacation and at the beginning of busy autumn is really high. I finished all necessary stuff for today just around 8pm. Before going to sleep I decided to do simple CO2 table, with 90sec hold and decreasing each recovery time 15secs starting from 2min recovery until just 15sec recovery. This is fairly simple table provided by nice Android app called Apnea Tables. I did similar tables in the beginning of summer. This did not feel much of a traning yet.

I figured that I should try to write some kinda of basic excersise sets, which I could fit to my work schedule without need to plan training session each time. Basic apnea table training can be done in such days, that I am not able to do anything else. Duration should be atleast 40mins, unless I do max static try. I could also try to do some longer table sessions to see if there is any difference (like tables for two hours).

I am sitting in a train from Helsinki at the moment. This would be ideal situation to train tables, but I think other passengers would be concerned of my condition.

During this week I intend to write down my basic training excersise and see if I need to alter them. I should try to include following sessions to my weekly training:

• Yoga session once a week
• Pool session training dynamic with mono
• Pool session training mono technique
• Running atleast once a week
• Dry static training doing tables (every day I am not doing any other training)
• Dry max static training

I have possibility to go to pool max three sessions per week. During work days it won't be possible to do it everyweek, but I should atleast try to go twice a week. I'll try to do diving session to open water once a week, until it gets too cold for me (or the lake freezes). 

This should give me enough flexibility to work around my work trips, but give enought training to have measurable development.

About freediving, life and everything

I started freediving last spring. I got inspiration for diving couple years ago while I was travelling in coastal areas of Italy and France. I saw few spearos with their gear and thought that might be intresting. When I was young, I had been very enthusthiast snorkler and enjoyed water. This was 20 years a go. After that for some reason I did not like water very much. You could say I didn't like it at all. Idea of swimming in cold Finnish lakes was limited only for quick dip from sauna in very rare occasions, usually when there was something stronger than man warming up my blood. I did my mandatory military service in the beginning of 2002 and there was swimming test included as part of physical training. Minimum requirement was 25 meters in the pool and I just barely made it...

Last year things changed. Me and my wife were travelling in Thailand and Malaysia. For the first time we could take almost two months off from work and do some real backpacking. Before the trip I was thinking about doing some diving and I looked up information about it. I ended up doing my first dive in Ko Lanta, Thailand in a lagoon of five islands (Ko Ha). This was strange experience. There was first some instructions and next we jumped off the boat to "the deep end of the pool". At least in my measure. At the bottom we did the basic drills and off we went to see all the fishes. And there were lots of them...

This got me completely hooked. There was mixture of adrenaline and calmness of the mind which I had never experienced before. I managed to talk my wife over to do the OWD course in Perhenthians, Malaysia. After one week of diving, she was hooked also. We left Perhenthians with some slight sadness and felt that diving would be part of our traveling in future.

I took almost a year before I had chance to get back to diving. While back home I checked local diving club and did not find it really interesting. They seemed to be doing lots of technical diving and stuff I really did not understand. Also diving in murky, sometimes pitch black waters of Finland did not inspire me.

In spring we had a chance to do a week long trip to Spain with group of our friends. I had previously advertised to everyone how great it is and everybody should have ago. I found a local PADI dive shop and arranged some dive sessions for me, some dive tryouts and snorkeling for the rest. Weather was nice but the water was +13c. I guess there were mixed feelings about the snorkeling as there wasn't much to see and it was cold even in 5mm + 7mm shorty which the company provided. There was also flu circling around our friends and I had to cancel night diving which I had planned. I liked the dives, even though it was not the same thing as previously in the Perhenthians. Visibility, water temp and lack of sea life were quite different. I actually ended up with huge argument with the owner of the club. They billed me for all the dives I planned to do and when I could not do them because of the flu I figured that I was entitled to refund. At the end they dug up contract terms that in case of late cancellation they would not refund anything (anything less than 24hrs would be considered late cancellation). I guess they were right, but I felt like shit because of this.

For this trip, I had loaned the Finnish freediving bible (Vapaasukellus) made by Simo Kurra, Kimmo Lahtinen and Ari Nissinen. Little I knew that this would be my guidebook in AIDA**, which I ended up completing just a week a go. Comparable to Umberto Pelizzari's famous Manual of Freediving (although I haven't read it), the book introduced strange concepts of apnea, equalization, psychology and the sport altogether. At this point things looked way to extreme for me (as I did not even swim very well), but the basic steps to start training seemed quite easy and safe. The diving trip in Spain, the freediving book and some bad experiences about local dive company left me thinking. Upon returning back home I looked up again our local dive club and what you know, they also trained freediving! I sent mail to the instructor there and almost immediately got invited to next days training at the pool. I figured that why not go to see it out, even though I really did not know so much about it.

My local lake, Leinonen

Things led to another and after a while I ordered my first wetsuit from Elios. Delivery time was one month and as impatient as always I also bought a cheap'o (39 eur) 3mm wetsuit from local store. This enabled me to start diving in my local lake, which is just 300m from our home. I found that the lake had good vis, it was deep (in my standards) and local freedivers did weekly trips there. I also bought a Omer speargun. Getting the basics of safety I started diving daily. Sometimes spearfishing, sometimes just for fun to look at the fishes. We visited other local lakes and ponds which also were very clear. We did weekly CWT trainings which at the beginning did not feel easy. Thermocline in the beginning of summer was around 8m and temperature after dropped below +10c quite fast.

Almost for two months I dove daily. I also got my 5mm Elios suit which completely changed how I felt during CWT. I also bought Omer Millenium fins and Specialfins mono used. There was possibility to participate for AIDA** course which was organized for the first time. I immediately signed up. We visited first time in old Hammaslahti copper mine which has been renovated for the use of local dive club. It is amazingly clear quarry providing steep underwater cliffs in the best blue water experience I've seen since Perhenthians. There is a silt layer around 10 meters and clears out below 20m. I did my first 25m dive there also during the trip. I read also about FRC and tried it out. In the following sessions I found relaxation and my dive times improved.

Crayfish caught from Leinonen

As a local resident I also had possibility to get crayfish permits. Crayfish is valuated food and catching them is highly regulated. My nearby lake was rumored to have crayfish and I had found some abandoned pods during my spearing trips. I searched also into that if it would be to catch the crayfish by diving. During days I found it very difficult to catch the crayfish as they hide in their holes in the bottom. After getting proper dive light and making first night dives the game changed and we had our first crayfish party. Also I found that local big lake, Höytiäinen contained good population of freshwater mussels. Unlike the crayfish, the clams are to so delicious straight on, but require some preparation (+ lots of butter and garlic). As a enthusiast foodie, trough freediving, I found myself with some most organic and rare ingredients.

Breath-up at Iso-Polvijärvi with our CWT rig.

We had the open water sessions of AIDA** course at the Hammaslahti quarry. We did basic training of FIM and CWT. Most which I was already familiar with. Also some important rescue training was also part of the course. Oh, and did I mention, we were trained and coached by the top athletes and trainers of Finland's national team. This provided awesome opportunity to talk with them about intrique detail of technique, preparation and training. During the two days of intensive freediving I started think about the next year and how I wanted to progress in the sport. I realize that I don't have any real talent or physical abilities, but I really enjoy any sport where you can evolve, develop yourself, learn new things in your own pace without lots of competitiveness. In any case, I would like to get better. There was passing requirement of 14m in the AIDA 2 and the plate was restricted to 20m. I felt relaxed and could do some nice long dives to 20m with quite ease. I also tried my mono for the first time for CWT.

After the course I decided that I want to train dynamic and static during the winter and when there would be  possibility for open water, I would be ready to do some CWT. I still wanted to get an baseline for CWT. Week after finishing AIDA** course, our instructor was willing to do one more trip to the quarry. With knowing the limits of safety divers, the vis and depth of quarry we set plate to 30m. I had been thinking about the dive for few days, thus knowingly setting some pressure for myself. During the preparation I really felt this. My heart rate was high and had trouble relaxing. I did two warm-up's to 13m and to 22m. After this I decided to give it ago. Temperature outside was +7c and water temp was still around +15c to +16c so I was getting chilly. My duck dive felt good, but depth on my mind,  I went too fast. I concentrated on doing freznel and decided not to try any freefall. I had set my D3's depth alarm to 20m but for some reason I did not hear it. Depth, darkness and pressure was starting to get to me and I peeked for the plate. It was just few meters away. I made a hasty turn just beside the plate and started swimming up. My 5mm socks had compressed that fins felt really loose and this surprised me a lot. Just briefly thought crossed my mind that what would happen if I lost one of my fins at this depth. This gave me additional speed. Around 20m of the ascent I felt lactic burning my legs. I made it to to surface feeling success. The dive was not pretty, but I made it. I was definitely out of my comfort zone and this affected a lot to the relaxation and performing at the best. My dive time was just 0:54 so I definitely sprinted. But I had no problem equalizing or with the depth. After a while I kinda reminded myself that in training for a sport you have to cross your comfort zone in regular basis. Next one will be easier.

My hasty 30m CWT

As part of my training and (hopefully) motivation I intend to write to this blog about training and possibly some other stuff involving freediving. In future I promise to keep my posts a bit shorter, but I wanted to provide some background to keep any possible readers interested. In just a year I've have come a long way. During the summer I did over 50 freediving sessions and now I am completely comfortable in quite cold water. I've done 4mins+ of static apnea (haven't really tried the max yet) and learned the important concepts of freediving safety and training. My first goal was to get 30m in CWT for this year and I achieved it. For the winter I would like to achieve 5mins in static and really concentrate on dynamic training which, for now, I aim to do 100m. I have tried my mono only for few times, so I need to learn the basic technique first.