Walter Chivescu came to us on the 23 rd Nov for his second visit during his first visit he had achieved 46mts FIM. He had been plagued by equalisation problems since his first course in freediving .
Walter did our remote coaching program both before his first visit and before this one . He had achieved 6:06 Static and a breath walk of 2;15 after a 1;20 static hold . he had also been doing empty lung statics . So we knew his breath hold would not ever be in question for any realizable depth during this visit .
We spent the first 10 days basically ignoring depth and Continued…

Webinar with Aharon Solomons on “Thoughts as a result of the accident in VB2013”

R.I.P. Nicholas Mevoli

Mateusz Malina
Freediving Poland

An excellent story on Mateusz Malina’s last visit to Dahab.

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Talking about CO2 exercise – Anuloma Viloma

Answering a question from Mark Gaidman

Aharon is returning to Mexico on the 21st October – 18th November, 2013. He will be holding Clinics together with MT Solomons.
Aharon and MT Solomons are both AIDA INSTRUCTOR TRAINERS, we teach all levels of AIDA courses. We have taught over the years many National record and also World record holders. We are one of the very first freediving schools, teaching since 1992.

CLINIC TO BE HELD IN LA PAZ, BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR, MEXICO FROM 28th OCTOBER –2nd NOVEMBER

EQUALIZATION TECHNIQUES AND STRATEGIES FOR THE DEEP DIVER

• Our deep water equalisation technique and all exercises, both dry, pool and sea to acquire it (5 days), (Max 6 students –1 to 3 instructor to student ratio)
• Extra days, up to 5 are available by special arrangement. The Clinic will focus on all aspects of equalization for deep water
• It will cover:
• How to minimalize or totally eliminate the risk of Trachea or lung squeezes .
• Our special stretching routines for increasing neck and thoracic flexibility without the dangerous practice of stretching on a packed lung
• Our pool exercises for the 4mt dive pit as the best winter training for simulating and acclimatizing to depth. This is all empty lung work, with our progressive tables.
• Fitness training for depth , lactic and anaerobic training , dry and in the pool
• Our very special breathold tables especially tailored for the deep diver, these take in account for the first time the different kinds of breath hold required during a very deep dive.
• The open water sea training will be done from our boat , and will be conducted at your level . The boat price is included in the price of the clinic.
• The all important subject of the Mental and relaxation techniques.
• Diet for the deep diver – this includes –what to eat and drink ,what to avoid ,supplements and eating intervals.

We can arrange accommodation for those requiring it in a broad range of prices ,including sharing living quarters.
Please consult us for prices for either a package to include accommodation + Clinic, or Clinic alone.
Full payment is required on booking
All enquires can be addressed to aharon@freedivers.net

FROM 10th NOV – 17th AIDA INSTRUCTORS COURSE
This is available for all applicants that have the AIDA 4 Star Certification

FROM THE 6th –9th NOV. We are teaching an AIDA 4 Star course which is a pre-requisite for all those not currently
possessing the AIDA 4 Star and wishing to do the Instructor course.

For full details please apply to aharon@freedivers.net places are limited so please book asap.

Better understanding of freediving physiology with Aharon Solomons.

Let’s talk about DCS in freediving, and how comes that Pipin Ferreras can dive 5 times in half an hour to 100mts (No limits)

* Very hot argument about this extreme no limits dives series in AIDA group in facebook.

Webinar about stress breath hold and questions with Aharon Solomons from Freedivers.net

Just to congratulate David Kent on a superb new UK record in Constant No Fins of 70mts. A magnificent dive by a diver with huge potential!
David has been training with me in Eilat and Dahab and also in the UK on my remote training program since last October.
David has done considerably more than 70mts in training.
The competition was planned for 2 days, and our plan was for David to do 70mts on the first day and 74mts on the second, due to organisational difficulties 1 day was cancelled, so David decided to be conservative and go for 70 mts and earned the first white card of this competition; thus improving his own UK record by 8 mts! Well done David!

Back from Dahab.

The last month has been devoted to training David Kent. David is the current UK record holder in CNF 62 mts (breast stroking down and back).
David has a current best of 68 mts CNF. He trained with me for 3 weeks in October 2012 and during the winter was following a remote coaching program we put together. This program focused first of all on flexibility. Then on breath hold, both empty and full lung, static and dry dynamic exercises.
Other elements of the winter training were strength exercises with body weight and Continued…

And once again about equalisation 🙂

Talking about the mental training
you can read more about this subject in a two part article :
The mental – part 1
The mental – part 2

It is with deep sorrow that we have just heard about the loss of a friend, Carson Bilsland in the Algerian hostage debacle.

Carson who we knew at first as a freedive student, became an avid freediver and competitor attending our first competition in Cabo San Lucas and several times visitor to our camp in Punta Coyote was a true Gentleman and sportsman.

He became a very dear and valued friend. A man of shinning courage and a gentleness and kindness that extended to our then little 8 year old son to whom he told magical stories and sent childrens books.

Carson was funny and wild and loved by our family, he will be sorely missed I can only with humility offer our heartfelt condolences to his family.

This is a subject that has fascinated me ever since I began to have some understanding of the physiological similarities and differences we share with the diving mammals, particularly the Elephant seals. The latest information on their diving behaviour seems to suggest that they are capable of descents close to the depths achieved by the great diving whales.

The Elephant seal has 1 outstanding difference with us –a much higher proportion of myoglobin versus hemoglobin. We have a large proportion of hemoglobin and a comparatively small proportion of myoglobin. The Elephant seal has Continued…

Erika did pioneering work on spleen reaction in elite freedivers. She carried out ultra sound tests on nearly all the competitors in the international competition in Sharm in 2008. The spleen is a huge reserve of red corpuscles and her experiments demonstrated that after a series of 3 breath holds the spleen started to contract and release its reserve into the blood. This came to be called the “spleen advantage” and changed our understanding of the importance of warm ups before a maximum attempt.

In the 4 intervening years we began to ask the question if this reaction could be trained to react sooner. This was particularly important for CNF divers, who favour thinner suits in order not to incur the penalty of wearing any avoidable weight. Thinner suits and lighter weights have one problem – the athlete can get shivering cold if he has to spend time on a long warm up program and this can severely affect his performance. Today a lot of the top CNF divers and even CWT divers do no warm ups. Their first dive is the maximum dive, without any warm ups!

Erika was aware of this trend and even suggested that visualising the dive, by trained freedivers could instigate the reflex. It was great to hear what I believed possible was a belief shared by the authority on the subject.

In the next posts we will publish conversations from last week with Erika Schagatay, one of the worlds leading physiologists on Freediving.

It was a great pleasure to meet Erika again, the last time we met was at the International Freedive Competition in Sharem in 2008. We met her at the border and kidnapped her and took her to a restaurant where we had a long awaited chance to pick her brains. 🙂

The Sanskrit Sutra quote, and incidentally, the name I gave to my small freedivers boat , “Ishvara Pranidhana” , can be absurdly simplified to, “I surrender all that I am to YOU”, whether that be that your god, the universe, or the elements you perceive to hold that immensity. I feel the sea, the water, the air….

In many forms of Yoga, Ishvara-Pranidhana is considered the “final” step, stage, practice, observance or niyama.[2] … Compare the meditation and mindfulness exercises of Ishvara-Pranidhana with Zen. “Connecting to the Divine Within,” or attentiveness and surrender to the Divine within in Ishvara-Pranidhana, parallels the concept of connecting to the inner Buddha-Nature in Zen. Continued…

Walter Chivescu came out to join us on 28th Sept for 14 days training in FIM. I had met Walter nearly a year ago and was extremely impressed. Walter is the Master (Captain) of a very large tanker. Walter is a man of many facets, an old world Gentleman, an extremely educated man and an extremely nice one.

Walter had been to Eilat on 2 previous occasions for training with another instructor for periods of 10 days. He had not succeeded in mastering the Frenzel technique not withstanding intensive research on the internet and the ineffective efforts of his previous instructor who apparently couldn’t find a solution and actually Continued…