National Record Archives - Kaizen Freediving

Freediving German National record holder Timothy Oehmigen

26.07.201726.07.2017sergeyvladivostok

Hey Timothy!

Our congratulations for you to become Freediving National Record holder for Germany in CWT on VB-2107! Thank you for finding some time to answer our questions and sharing your love for Freediving!

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself (where you was born and grew up, at what age you started swimming, what hobby you had before start freediving)

I am half German, half American. I grew up in Germany (south west part) close to Stuttgart, studied in Konstanz at Germany’s biggest and deepest lake (256m) and learned freediving there. Swimming I started early at around 5-6 years. I always liked to be in the water, although I didn’t join any swimming club or so. During school and university, my biggest hobby was not sport related but more music related. I was fascinated by going to concerts and music festivals. I also have been working until today in the concert business as a booking manager for part time.

2. Do you remember when and how you tried Freediving for the first time? And why did you like it?

I joined a beginner course in the lake of Konstanz. I could hold my breath 3 minutes and go to 20m and I realized fast how challenging this sport is, which I liked. I had lots of trouble with equalization though and I was not able to dive head first. As soon as I learned how to Frenzel, things got more serious. I had my first competition also in the lake and soon went for more and more competitions.

3. How did you come up with the idea to become a Freediving instructor? How did you manage to arrange your time between teaching and competing on such a high level?

It was basically important for me to become an instructor to learn more about teaching. I found it interesting and I hoped to gain life experience from teaching and responsibility you have as an instructor in the water. At the same time, I realized that through teaching you can also learn a lot since you start reading more about freediving (due to students questions which you fail to answer) and on the other hand building your own teaching style. Of course, teaching and competing at the same time is hard, but it can be also a nice balance. After a few days of teaching, you really like to go deep again. And motivation is so important for deep diving. My best pre training + competition was actually my first national record with 91m free immersion. And exactly during that period, I had lots of courses. I used the day offs for training and each and every dive was nice, clean and a relaxed dive. 80m, 82m, 84m, 86m, 88m and then finally 91m.

4. Once again congratulations with NR for Germany (CWT 93 meters)! Are you looking forward to reaching magic 100 meters mark any soon? 😉 If yes, what it will mean for you?

Of course, 100m is a nice number, but for me, it is also more important to be good in the other disciplines and do nice dives. If I can reach a 100m one time just by having a good run, it will not be worth it. I would like to hit a 100m and claim that I can do it again. But for this, my body and my mind need to be ready enough. At the moment it is not and that is important to know to remain on a healthy road towards success.

5. On VB-2017 you made an attempt of 67 CNF. What happened during this dive? Why did you decide to make an early turn? Are you looking for becoming NR in this discipline as well in the future?

I had argued with board colleagues from AIDA Germany which did not let me dive in peace. At the board, there is somebody who really tries to work against me and such battles are not a good place for a freedivers mind. But yes, I plan to dive deeper in CNF. I personally think that there I have great potentials since hypoxia is no topic for me and my technique looks okay. Actually, I just broke the NR with 67m a few days ago in a competition in Panglao, Philippines.

6. Coming back to training, are you splitting equally your time between different disciplines? Any pool or strength training?

I like to switch between the disciplines. All disciplines have their pros and cons. FIM is relaxed and easy to equalize deep. Descend is the easiest for me. On the other hand, you need good apnea and a strong mind since you are deep and you only have the rope to get up. CWT is fast, you enjoy the speed and the power behind the monofin. On the other side, you need a good technique to not become lactic and to be able to keep the relaxation which is needed for deep equalization. CNF is physically hard and the detail is most important. On the other hand, it is not so deep and the numbers seem to be more double for the mind.

If I am in the water for training, I try to avoid work out. Nevertheless, I see work out also as an important part to remain strong. Especially when you are already getting skinny you can’t effort to lose the power you need for freediving. If I have a few days or weeks off from freediving, I like to train in the gym or at home to build up strength. Pool training is nice for technique and mental training.

7. I saw that you started crowd funding campaign to go to Freediving World Championship 2017. Wish you to reach this goal and hope our readers decide to support you! Can you say a couple of words why this is so important for you? (interview was taken a month ago, so Tim already manages to get enough money to go!!!)

That is easy: Because it is very expensive to go there this year, especially when you are coming from Europe and also if you already attended Vertical Blue in that year. I do not have the money to go or if I would need to work and have no time for training. The announcement that the World Championship will take place in Roatan came quite late this time. So I decided to register for Vertical Blue and see if I can finance Roatan somehow. I saw that other athlete already successfully funded themselves with crowd funding. On one hand I know it might not be so nice to ask for money, but on the other hand, I believe that those who support me really like to do that. I always feel happy to give support if I can and I want.

8. Did freediving become more popular in Germany since you have started practicing it?

I don’t know. I worked for a bit more than a year at the board at AIDA Germany, but the problem is that it is led mainly by bureaucrats who have no idea about freediving. Germany is, for example, the only country who still has lake records and it is also recognizing No Limit records. Media will not distinguish between a 100m No Limit and a 100m Constant Weight or a 130m DNF World Record (in the lake) or a real world record of 244m. What Germany needs is stories and a nice representation of the sport. Many people still believe that it is an extreme sport for adrenaline freaks. Some people take the advantage and sell themselves as such ones and simply misrepresent the sport. But there are also others who are invited into talk shows and give very nice examples for how nice freediving can be. I hope that especially competitive freediving can be more established.

9. Tell us about your personal Freediving plans and how you see freediving in the future in general?

I plan to take part in Honduras at the AIDA World Championship. I hope I can hit new PBs there and I am also looking forward to this competition in general. Freediving becomes more and more popular for sure. With this, the freediving world faces a difficult task, which is making/keeping competitions safe and professional. At the last two World Championships of AIDA, there were huge and embarrassing mistakes happening, which in my personal opinion also happened due to arrogance by the judges and not listening to the athletes. I hope that those mistakes will not happen again and that the administration at AIDA will start working properly again.

Freediving National records’ breaker from Barbados, Alex Davis!

13.06.201713.06.2017sergeyvladivostok

Hey, Alex!

Big congratulations for your outstanding performance on VB-2107! Thank you for finding some time to answer our questions!

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself

Thank you Sergey, I am originally from Cornwall in the UK and moved to Barbados in 2011 with my wife. Growing up in a seaside town (Perranporth) I was always in the sea surfing, swimming, Jr life-saving club or fishing but the water is very cold and murky so I never really got into diving. When I moved to Barbados I found warm (28C) seas with visibility exceeding 30m on some days! I instantly got into spearfishing and the deep started calling me. I wanted to freedive deeper, stay longer, hunt better fish and it just went from there. In 2013 I set up ‘Spearfishing Barbados’ offering guided spearfishing tours around Barbados which have been growing every year. In 2015 I went to train with Vertical Blue (Jonathan Sunnex & Will Trubridge) where I completed my AIDA Instructor course and at the same time setting a PB of 62m with bi-fins. I opened Barbados’ first freediving school at the beginning of 2016 and run AIDA courses weekday and weekend all year round.

2. What about freediving? When and how you try it for the first time? And why did you like it?

I got into spearfishing through a mutual friend who took me out and let me follow and watch. I remember diving down to 30ft and instantly turning and heading back for the surface! However, it was at this time I discovered I could equalize handsfree and spent as much time as possible freediving whenever I could. I really enjoy the peace and quiet you find when freediving and much prefer it to scuba. Being able to just walk down to the end of the road with fins and a mask and go diving for hours was an amazing experience each and every time.

3. How often do you train? What is your normal training routine?

Because of the spearfishing tours and freediving courses, I dive quite a bit already, anywhere from 3-7 days a week I am in the water freediving. In the lead up to VB, I supplemented my work schedule with pool training working on my monofin and no-fins technique as well as CO2 tolerance. Some days I would spearfish for 3 hours then go and do an hour or two at the pool in the evening working on just technique.

Two great sessions I do in the pool are over/under – you swim 25m on the surface, touch the wall and then start 25m DYN, reach the other side and immediately go back to 25m on the surface. Another training session which helped was to perform a STA followed by DYN – 1-minute static then 50m DYN with short rests.

ALWAYS TRAIN WITH A BUDDY!

4. You showed very impressive results on all three depth disciplines! Do you split training time equally between them?

Thank you! In the lead up to VB I had 3 weeks at Deans Blue Hole and would dive FIM, CWT then CNF followed by a day of rest. I had spent a lot of time in the pool training for CWT and CNF so felt very strong diving to depth in those disciplines. 50m CNF was actually a PB for me, I had done 48m in training, about a week before which felt great so decided to round it off to 50m and I surfaced strong with lots of energy left for more. During training, I had progressed very well in CWT and FIM making small improvements every day. After each training session, I would go home, export the dive data from my watch and analyze my profile making sure my descent speed was correct and making notes on what felt good and what could be improved to take into the next session.

5. Why decide to compete in the first place? Are you going to do it again?

After opening my freediving school I wanted to try my hand at a competition and also represent the country which I had made home for the last 6+yrs. There were no National Records for Barbados for men at this point so any white card performance would claim an NR, however I wanted to really give it my best shot and get white cards I would be proud of. Yes, I am scheduled to compete later this year at Blue Element 2017 in Dominica (October 13^th – 21^st) with my old Instructor Trainer Jonny Sunnex! My goals for this comp are to extend my CNF record and hopefully add a few more meters on to my CWT and FIM records.

6. It was your first competition, how you manage the stress? Or it was not stressful at all?

Yes, this was my first ever competition and I would say I was more stressed during training than I was during my official dives. During training you have to co-ordinate with other persons schedule so you will always have to compromise. When training you want to be respectful of everyone’s time so often take it in turns which means your warm ups usually take longer and by the time you do your target dive you may even be too cold.

On competition days I would arrive at the Blue Hole at least 1hr before OT to check in and almost every day my resting heart rate was 100BPM! Haha! Once I got my suit on and clipped my lanyard to the warm up line however I was totally relaxed and actually my warm up dives where better/more relaxed than the ones during training. On the comp line during my countdown I breathed with my snorkel until 1min before OT which helped to tune out noises and other distractions with my eyes closed. I would then finish my breathe up vertically on the line, keeping my eyes closed and just listening to the announcer. On my very first dive of the comp (76m FIM) I was completely relaxed all the way to the bottom plate but once I had that tag in my hand all of the nerves finally caught up with me and my contractions started the moment I turned. The first dive was always going to be my hardest and after this one things got easier and more relaxed with each dive.

7. What do you think about VB? Anything what you think can be improved?

VB, as we all know, is one of [if not THE] top competition each year and the organization is absolutely spot on as well as the safety team being very professional and courteous. During the closing ceremony, Will even mentioned that throughout the entire competition there was not a single delay in the schedule which is a testament to the professionalism and organization of this event. Having not yet experienced any other competition I cannot really say if I think there is anything that can be improved but I think everyone at VB is on point.

8. Tell us about your future plans and how do you see freediving in the future?

My plans moving forward are to continue growing my freediving school here in Barbados and attract more people to the island wanting to learn, both from around the Caribbean and all over the globe. I have already had students come over from nearby islands to train as well as going myself to Grenada earlier this year to teach a group of avid divers and spearos so the sport of Freediving is definitely on the up! I think more people are going to move from scuba to freediving as time goes on as well as people who just really enjoy snorkeling wanting to learn more about freediving and improve their ability and enjoyment underwater. We also actively promote the hunting of Lion fish and regularly give talks in Barbados informing people about this invasive species and why we need more freedivers out there removing them – and eating them!

Follow Alex on his Instagram and Facebook and don’t forget to subscribe to our blog to get more stories from Freedivers about Freediving 😉

Freediving National Record holder for Argentina (CWT/CNF) Julia Mouce Dominguez

25.02.2017sergeyvladivostok

1. Do you remember how and when did you find out about freediving? What made you to start freediving? What were your 1^st steps in this sport?

I found out about freediving on Koh Tao, Thailand 8 years ago. I discovered Apnea Total, I think it was the first freediving school I had ever seen. When I saw videos I immediately signed up for the first two courses…and I wasn’t disappointed. I continued with the master course and even lost all my flights. I was freediving 3 months. When I came back to Spain to normal life I was so depressed of being out of water that when they offered me to come back to do the instructor course and stay for working in Thailand I couldn’t believe my luck. Freediving changed my life!

2. What is your favorite discipline in freediving and which one you don’t like? And could you explain why?

julia7 My favorite discipline is free immersion and CNF. Free Immersion, because it is slow and you can really feel changes of buoyancy when you are pulling yourself up and down. CNF because it is fun, it requires technique and high level of fitness.

3. Tell please few words about your freediving trainings approach: How many times a week do you train? And do you have a fixed schedule or you just wake up in the morning, look into mirror and depending on your mood, body condition or weather decide what to do today?

I like to train 3 days and rest 1. I normally plan my trains, but I think it is necessary to be flexible and adapt to body and mind conditions. I like to mix trains, firstly because I only like nice dives, don’t see any point in suffering. At all trainings I go out of my comfort zone. Trainings are efficient, not more than 6 dives, but they should all count.

4. And how often do you try something new in your freediving trainings?

I do try new things when i feel that they have a meaning. There is a hell amount of bullshit around in internet, everybody knows how to teach equalization and there are many confusing information. We should use information which can be used at our level of freediving. I don’t understand why people who can’t get comfortable to 45 meters are taught mouthful technique. For example I taught myself hands free to be able to understand what my students felt at depths. julia6

5. The next question – what makes you day after day to go to train in a pool/sea? What motivates you to train hard? How do you fight humans’ laziness?

I would never train in pool =) , but going to train in the ocean is easy. I built my school and platform so I could train. I think it is very easy not to be lazy when you have a passion for the sport you practice.

6. Do you believe that some food products could influence the ability to equalize? Like gluten or lactose for example create more mucus which is not good for equalizing? Do you personally follow any diet?

julia3 I’m very blessed for equalization. I’ve never had problems with it, so lactose and other products don’t really affect me. I just eat what anybody would consider as a healthy diet. I consider that tobacco and alcohol are the most harmful. I avoid any kind of sugar and life on Bali doesn’t include a lot of dairy in diet.

7. Let’s talk about money. Do you have any support from sports community of your country or may be some trade brand?

HAHAHAHAHA! I’m Argentinian, if its not football….! I have always supported myself for freediving , I am sponsored with wet suits by Elios.

8. What about your targets in freediving? What would you like to achieve and how deep would you like to get?

I would like to go as deep as I can, no need to fix limits. I believe that only with practice I will get very deep. I am not in a rush and I do it for myself so I don’t like to talk about my PBs.

9. What do you do except freediving? Do you have any hobbies?

Yes, I like many other sports and I work out every day, non related to freediving exercises. Living on Bali I would love to take more time to learn proper surfing. I also practice SUP.

10. What would you advise to people, who just discovered this sport?

To take time to get to love it. To focus on relaxation , rather than numbers. To use what they learn to see marine life and promote awareness of the marine environment.