Not such a good day

I tried to do static after work, but I could not get past 5 minutes. First, I packed too much and had to blow out all air at 4 minutes. I rested a bit and tried again, but I was at 5 and just didn't have the motivation to go on. I decided it was too close to my heavy lunch and that I had better settle down (instead of trying to do to many things at once). After a couple of hours, I tried again. This time I made a decent 6:30 (3:40/50). But it was relly tough.

This would be disapointting, but the fact is, when I tried no-warmup static training seriously the last time, I had trouble reaching 6 minutes, so it's in fact pretty good.

pb in no-warmup dry static

I made a normal no-warmup static today. 5 min of subneutral breathing and go. I felt very strong throughout. I had contractions, but they just didn't seem to bother me.

Eventually I made it to 7:10 (3:40/68).

This is pretty strange considering that I previously have thought that:
a) you need to do statics several days in a row to do good
b) you need warmup to do well.

Seems that neither is true, all you need is practice ;)

Quick one

A quick no-warmup static again today.

6:30 (3:30/65).

That's pretty good. If I can get my times reliably around 6:30 in no-warmup, I'll then start shortening the sub-neutral breathing phase (now 5 minutes)

no warmup

I had some time today, so I did another no-warmup static. I was expecting an increase over yesterday, but not quite so much. I'll have to do a few more to know what my average level will settle at. Let's hope this is it ;)

7:00(3:30/70)

Back from Nice

I had a really good time in Nice. A week of straight diving, every day. Broke my CW record, diving 42m on the last day. What was nice about it, was that it was really easy. I'm now confident I can break 50m this summer.

Anyway, static...When I started this blog, I had the intention of writing it until the Finnish championships, which are now behind us. I'll still keep updating, but the frequency and intensity of my trainig will be much less from now on. I will concentrate on CW for the summer, perhaps getting back to the subject of statics when another competition is nearing.

My plan is to do 2-3 "maintenance statics" every week. This time, no-warmup statics, no excuses. Just one hold, one attempt and that's it. This will of course save a lot of time.

For breathup I do about 5 minutes of "sub neutral breathing". I won't get into the subject of whether or not that is hyperventilation. But that's what I'll do. This way I'll need about 15 minutes to do my whole static training, so I can slip it into the day very easily.

So I started today. Just to set the "baseline", I took it fairly easily and hit 6:00 exact. The last time I seriously did the no-warmup method, I was struggling to reach 6:00, but this time I had room to spare, which is good. However, my goal is not to actively increase the time. I hope to bring it up to about 7:00, and then learn to hit that consistently.

So to mark the new beginning:
6:00 (2:40/56)

Competition

I'm in Nice right now so I haven't updated for a while.

Almost the same thing happened to me during the competition. I was expecting my first contraction around 4:30, but it came at 4:00 and that disturbed my concentration. Little did I know, that it was actually 4:20, but my assistant was just late on the time. I had an announced performance of 6:00, so I pushed to what I thought was 6:00 with pure willpower and the came up and the time was 6:20. This was of course very dissapointing. But I guess you can never have too much experience, competition is just completely different...

I also almost crapped my pants in the end, which disturbed my concentration even more. In fact it became so bad, that I had to decide that either I let it go or I quit. I don't regret quitting in that sense :)

I think a some seconds were also lost because of the fact that warmup was in a different pool than the actual performace. So after getting all ready and relaxed, you had to walk over to the other pool. Personally I think that's not a very good idea and it really showed in the general performance. Also the competition pool was very warm and I made a last minute decision to use my 1.5mm suit. It just didn't work...

Small things and of course most of them just exuses, but they all add up and I ended up with a sub par performance. But hey, there'll be other competitions...