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Click on a day for the events of that particular day.
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David Comments:
 So it's our final day and we wake up at 9:30 and are in the water by 11:00 . We are pretty slow moving here on the island with the heat. Seems like the heat here makes you feel completely lazy. Anyway, let me not complain. Since it was the last day I decided to do two 50m unassisted dives back to back and then one line assisted dive to 50m with a one minute bottom time. That should wear me out sufficiently. The first unassisted dive my descent time was a little slower than normal. Probably because I had a pre-dive over-breathing loss of consciousness. That same feeling you get when you pack and exhale and get all tingly and light headed. Well, this happened at 2m down and wasted a several seconds there until I was conscious enough to realize what had happened and kept on going with the dive. The ascent was 54 seconds at a speed of 0.93m per second. Still want to get it a little faster if I can manage to streamline a little better. The second unassisted dive Rudi wanted me to make a better time so I worked on technique and made sure to get to the breakpoint with a good speed. I was freefalling nicely at approximately 0.85m per second only to be stopped by my head on the tree where the descent line was attached right at the 51 meter mark!!! I had missed the depth alarm on the Suunto D3. The D3 was set to 43m which if it went off when it was supposed to would have been ample time for me to react. However, it wasn't till after I hit my head on the bottom that the alarm went off. So it went something like this "Crack!.........Beeep! beep! Beeeep! Beep!" I shook it off and started the ascent. I completed the dive in 108 seconds. This wasn't the end of the day for me. We decided to do a line assisted dive to 50 to work on technique again and also spend a bit of bottom time there. Rudi thought that one minute at 50m would have been ample. I made the descent in 62 seconds, quite slow for line assisted but I was treading with caution dude to the bump on my head from the previous dive. I got to the bottom and sat on the log and counted 60 seconds and then headed back to the surface for a total dive time of 2:47 . After reviewing the downloads in the Suunto dive manager software it seems I shorted myself 5 seconds on the bottom. I need to learn to count one of these days. This is the last day of the training and I have to say that I have learned a whole lot. Never though I would show up to the ocean and just do 50m unassisted without working my way up to it. Surprisingly it was pretty easy. Probably a 5.5 out of 10 difficulty. I guess all the hours of training in the pool are paying off. Now it's back to Tulsa for pool and gym training again. I am really looking forward to the next record attempt as I know it will be a difficult but rewarding experience.
Yas Comments:
Today we decided to do one unassisted dive to 40 meters and two monofin dives to the bottom. I was too tired again to do the dives but I will have all the time to rest from diving after this anyway, actually too much time to rest, so I decide to make the best of it. I wanted to do the unassisted dive just out of curiosity to see where I am and thought a 40 meter dive would be enough to give us a clear idea. The dive ended up being extremely tiring. I realized that my weight was too little for an unassisted dive so my descent took an amazing 58 seconds and a lot of effort. Airwise I'm doing ok but this shows us that if I ever go for an unassisted record, I need to get stronger for sure. The monofin dives were fun as usual. I worked on improving my dive time while still not overdoing the work load and being relaxed. The first dive was 1:38 which I thought I should be able to improve. In the second dive during the ascent my quads got too tired again and I was disappointed that I was not gonna be able to improve the time on this dive so just made sure my technique was close to perfect. But thinking that I was so slow it ended up being 1:33 which was a great time, right on track.
So this was the end of our diving unfortunately for a while. The training was very useful. Now I know that our training on apnea capacity and technique is where it needs to be, but I certainly need stronger quads. Also getting to dive even this much was very important and appreciated to take care of our "need to dive" as freedivers. Back to Miami now, for more gym/pool workouts as well as the usual work to organize the upcoming record attempts.
Rudi's Comments:
Well, last day came and went, we're done and we accomplished everything we set out to do, I just wish the lagoon was a little deeper, that's all, because these guys were all ready for 70+ meter dives, but we made the best out of this hole, and hey, Jamaica is always a great place to visit, to spend time with Jan (David's mother), eat the food here (if you've never tried jerk pork or roasted bread fruit, you don't know what you're missing) and it was a good relaxing time, something everybody sorely needed. Now for the work part.
David gave me a couple of very polished unassisted dives today, very nice and clean, and I'm really happy with his technique, something that has not always been the case. This guy is so strong, so persistent and so willing to work hard to improve, that he really deserves to be known as one of the world's best freedivers. If that has not been the global consensus, it will surely be when he beats the 80 meter record a couple of months from now, which I believe he will not only do handily, but also in a phenomenal dive time. Why am I so obsessed with dive times might you ask? Well, short dive times mean one thing and one thing only: you have good technique, period! When you talk about 30-45 meters, anybody can push it and make a fast dive and manage to survive even if all they did was burn their energy reserves to the red line. But, when you're talking deeper than that, especially in a category like unassisted, you can't have a fast dive unless your technique is allowing you to glide underwater efficiently, to cover the same distance in less strokes than other people, therefore consuming less energy, maximizing every pull and kick to the max, streamlining your body to absolute perfection during the free fall so that you gain fractions of a second here and there, which when added up amount to a lot. Now, there are people out there doing records and incredible depths, and hey, I dare not take anything from them, but when I look at their dive times and whatever videos are available, I have to personally and respectfully conclude that their technique is way behind their natural talent, and my job as a trainer is to make sure that my divers' technique is on par with their abilities. So, mark my words, if we are fortunate enough for David to break past the 80 meter barrier in unassisted (and the only thing that could stop him would be an equalization problem I think) the most amazing thing won't be the depth he'll reach, but the time in which he'll reach it, which I think will be at least between 30 to 45 seconds faster than the existing record. Good job Dave, now back to those 3 hour long pool sessions dude!
Yas did very well today again, with a couple of monofin dives below 1:40 min, exactly what I wanted. The amazing thing is that, if you look at the underwater video, she was very, very slow, the result of her muscles being overworked from 4 days of intensive diving, and yet she managed to pull off these times. Then again, if you've ever seen Yasemin underwater, I think you would agree with me that she is incredibly smooth, graceful and fluid, a pleasure to watch. The fact that she still managed to keep her times improving after so much heavy work is a good sign, and if we manage to keep her apnea capacity in decent enough shape, then those 80 meter dives should be within her reach, especially since she has no equalization problems at that depth. Her arms-up position definitely made a big difference and I have to admit that, at least in her case, the extra energy expenditure in keeping the arms up is well worth it when compared to her speed and difficulty level of the dives. Best of all, she reported no fatigue on her arms or shoulders, so from now on, we'll stick to the arms-up position and see what happens.
Way to go Olga!!! Well, well, well, our new team member has today reached 51 meters in unassisted, deeper than the official world record, and she did it in a fantastic dive time of only 2:04 minutes. She felt good, very relaxed and comfortable, and now we know that we have a solid foundation to work with her. I would like her to attempt an unassisted record in October together with her line assisted record, and by then, with the strengthening program she will undergo, I am certain her dive time to 51 meters will be below 2:00 minutes, and then we will consider whether she'll try to go deeper. As for her line assisted form, her technique is pretty much there, only a couple of things left to correct, but her speed is still a little off, the way it is now, she would do 75 meters in about 3:00 minutes and that's not an acceptable time for someone with such long arm reach and such fluidity underwater. Again, we just need to pack some more muscle onto those limbs, and then get those muscles stronger.
In conclusion, this has been a successful test period, the months of training we've done before coming here were right on the money, and we now know what everybody needs to work on: David on technique, Yas on apnea capacity and strength and Olga on strength as well. Along with that, we'll work on a few other things we're experimenting with, such as deeper negative pressure dives. I would like to get them to reach 60 meters on a self-propelled negative dive when record time comes, and make some other tests that will allow me to implement new training techniques, some of them quite revolutionary. For now, we have the last cycle of our training ahead of us and it will tough, consuming and demanding, but then again, we wouldn't want it any other way. See you all in October when we'll be reporting from Turkey during our record attempts. Thanks for reading and dive safely.
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