Time to get started

I've been freediving actively from the beginning of the year 2004. I've been practicing static apnea on and off for about 6 months and made some nice progress. I feel that I have now reached a point, where more or less random breath-holding sessions are not giving me the kind of progress I want and I'm curious to see how far I could push my self with true dedication.

I started this log to keep track of my progress and to share it with others. Maybe someone can benefit from this, maybe not. It also gives me focus and rythm for my effort. I will commit my self to this trial until the next Finnish national pool competition in april/may 2005. I will try to log here each day until then, writing down everything that might have to do with my progress and performance. Apnea sessions, sports excersices, diet, rest, goals, notes and general thoughts.

I think I have quite good potential to be very good at static apnea. I've made a dry pb of 6:45 with about 6 months of "on and off" training, which I think is quite fast. But there must be more I can do. This can't be my limit!

A few months ago I switched my training target form shooting allways for the record to trying to find a time which I could do allways, even the bad days. The idea was to keep hitting that time until comfortable, and then add, say5 or 10 sec. At that time, my "sure" target was around 5:15. For the past couple of weeks I've kept my target at 6:20, and yesterday I comfirmed to myself I can hit that on a (very) bad day. So I'll keep hitting it for a week or so, and then move on to 6:25.

About my diet

I currently have no diet. I eat junk at lunch at work. I don't eat breakfast and for "dinner" usually a couple of sandwhiches. I eat some supplements and vitamins, namely vitamin C (500mg/day) and "fish liver oil" capsules (vitamins A,D,E, Omega-3 acids). This has got to change. I will start eating light breakfast and lighter lunch. I will introduce some basic vegetables and fruits to my diet. Broccoli, tomatoes, Juices for starters and switch todark bread (rye bread, a finnish delicacy). I have found it good to be hungry before statics, but not starving. For now I'll keep my old profile. 4-5 hours fasting before static, except 1 banana 1-2 hours before.

Right now I switched my goal to building co2 tolerance. I know I can hit a good time with a certain warmup routine. But I can't seem to progress past that. Since the limiting factor in my breath-holds is the breathing reflex, the urge to breath, and never samba or blackout, I'm reasoning that I could stretch the very end of the hold by building up tolerance to it. I'm simply doing holds without any warmups or breathups, just inhale and hold, and trying to see where I can get. Currently I get my first contraction at around 1:30 and holding past 3 minutes is quite a struggle. So this is my focus now. Now personal bests, not even good times. I'll get back to that after I can do 4:30 "cold". I will keep trying to hit a good time once a week, just to keep track of where I am.