Belief and Freediving competition

By Aharon Solomons

Oct

19

Just a thought that occurred to me while thinking about athletes I trained for the recent International competition in Greece. Belief is an essential element in mental preparation. Belief is distinct from faith.

I remember in one of the first Competitions, in either Sardinia or Nice, an Israeli competitor had a Blackout in a CWT (Constant Weight) dive. When we were analysing together what went wrong, it emerged that during the warm ups before his dive which had been declared at 47mts, he did a warm up to over 40mts. This was an extraordinary lack of belief in himself, he needed to prove to himself NOW that he could do his dive. Two dives with a short interval close to his maximum were not likely to produce a good result!

First, lets distinguish between what I mean by faith and belief. Faith is when

Continued…

THE MENTAL – PART 2

By Aharon Solomons

Feb

11

I want to approach this subject indirectly. I want to walk around it before we get to the center, because I am not sure there is a center. We all know that the ideal attitude, to have before a dive, is relaxed confidence. Without relaxation and confidence little can be achieved.

In order to set up the ideal conditions for these vital prerequisites for a deep dive or competition several things have to be in place, if any of these pieces are not in place the dive is already compromised.

Lets list them , and deal with their Continued…

THE MENTAL – PART 1

By Aharon Solomons

Sep

17

We will be discussing the Mental aspects of freediving, and how it inter-relates with the psychological, and how both together work with the physical.

For the basis of discussion here, let us define the Mental as our doing and not doing with the mind so as to set up the most favourable psychological state for approaching a performance.

For the last 12 years we have had a saying on our web site “We have long since passed that which is achievable by purely physical excellence and are now into the Tierra incognita of our mental potential.” Continued…