Setting the 76m British Record
Posted By Steve Trulgia on 5 June 2002
Since starting in this amazing sport 8 months ago, and with no background in breath holding, I set a goal to reach 100 metres within my first year. As an interim goal I decided to set the first official UK record in the UK. The reason for this was to put British Freediving on the No Limits map and to make my commitment clear to sponsors and potential sponsors.
I have spent a considerable time studying the habits and strategies of people who have become successful in their chosen field, and I strongly believe in setting clear and decisive goals as they offer direction and help to sustain consistent work during the hard times which any sportsperson experiences. Goals also offer a framework for training and give clear feedback information on progress. This allows the athlete to adapt training methods to get the best results. This is particularly important in a sport like freediving where there are so many different approaches to training. Also relevant is the fact that only three people have ever gone beyond 150 metres, so we are still in the pioneering stages of the sport.
With all this in mind I was very privileged to be allowed to train with, and be taught by Loic Leferme, AIDA No Limits World Record Holder, and his mentor Claude Chapuis. The invaluable lessons I learned from these great freedivers have enabled me to lay a solid foundation of physical adaptation and psychological preparation. These two things, I have discovered, are inseperable, particularly in Freediving. Also the philosophy of progression and as Loic says "The way to be in the water" has been an illuminating experience.
Having trained in the warmer waters of Nice for some considerable time this year, the time soon came to be a grown up and organise my own training with my own sled in the kind of water that I'd be doing the record in. With the help and support of my buddies Duncan Chappell and Alun George and help from my diving sponsors Active Scuba and Stuart Tattersall of Dee Sports, I began a series of four day sessions in Dorothea Quarry in North Wales. We invited other freedivers to join us and discovered some great companions who like ourselves want to be in the water as much as possible. Among them were Haydn Welch, UK dynamic record holder and Sam Still who I suspect we'll be hearing a lot about in the future. John Moorcroft, UK team member also had a great training session with us.
The training trips went very well and although the water was a chilly 9 degrees we did some great dives. We were quite literally on the sled every other week for nearly two months. It cost a lot of money and was a huge effort to keep travelling back and forth and setting up equipment but worth it as dives in the 60 metre range started to feel really easy. The training was paying off. Alun, who took so much time off work to help me train and to be in the water has progressed enormously on the sled, reaching some very impressive depths. His equalisation has improved so much that his constant weight and free immersion diving has also taken a considerable leap forward. I thank Duncan for taking time out during very important exams to help with my preparation.
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