Training camp

This weekends national team ring training camp is over. It was a fun one. I've been able to really concentrate on the training for the last two weeks because I have been on vacation. Few things have happened: I've increased amount of yoga and as a result many things about mental training have been solidified and clarified. I've introduced also solid gym training regiment tailored towards freediving which emphasizes on the lactic tolerance, buffering and mental training against lactics. I also intented to do some swim training, but this I didn't managed to do, so it came back to haunt me in the camp.

As I don't have any background in any watersports. In fact I have never really enjoyed swimming, so as a result my ability to perform swimming technique is mostly constrained on staying afloat and paddling franticly. I can probably dive further than swim. At the training camp we had basic swimming drills, which work great towards DYN / DNF technique, but I definetely need to find time during summer to train these. I don't resent swim training, because I know that with some training I can get the basics down pretty fast.

Another thing was the max dynamic dive. Goal for saturday at the camp was to do maximum dynamic effort which would work towards to the spot on the national team. I did not have that high hopes though. My goal was to train competition start and preparation. All the preparation went great. There was almost a hour before the dive, when I already had my suit on and relaxed on the side of the pool. I did visualization exercises on the previous day and during hte morning. I felt good and ready to do a long dive before the start. I did realize that unfamiliar pool (shallower than my regular pool) and few weeks with very little pooltime (due to easter) would show in technique and relaxation, still is should be able to do nice, long dive with decent dive time. The dive itself started well, but felt horrible after 100m. I surfaced on 125m with dive time 1m25sec, which is pretty low. I felt very high co2 and for some reason my tolerance was all time low. I just gave up. Start and surface protocol went okay, with slight grab on the surfacing. As a result I figured out that the competition dive will most likely feel much harder than normal training long dive. It should not really matter and that should be trained before in not-so-optimal conditions. I think the training should prepare you on much more difficult performance that it actually will be.

As this was my first competition style start, it was very good overall experience about the preparation, about the dive itself and what I need to do to prepare for the next one.