Freediving, Yoga, and Monofins in Greece - Part 4
Posted By Emma Farrell on 14 March 2003
The Monofin Course
Monday
Aharon and MT had invited two Russian monofin coaches to take a course in finswimming with particular reference to freediving. The world finswimming championships had just taken place in Patras on the Greek mainland and the Russian men had swept the board, taking several world records with them. Igor Soutchkov is the director of the facility in Tomsk, Siberia, and Alexey Grankine is a senior coach of the Russian national team and master monofin craftsman, hand making amongst other things, the egoiste which is shaving seconds off world records. Alexey's 15 year old daughter had just broken two junior world records and trains twice a day.
Was this going to be an easy course? Yeah right!
The course was lasting ten days with extra days deep diving so that the Russians could observe us in the water and modify the style to suit freediving. Because I had to fly back on the Friday I would just take four and a half days of the course with one morning going down the line. As well as myself taking the course, there was a super chilled South African called Bevan, the British dynamic record holder, Haydn Welch, and Aharon and MT.
Training was split between a pool in the village and the bay, which had perfect conditions for training.
The first morning was spent looking at our monofins and being shown the
other designs available and masks. We were all using Waterway blades, mostly
the soft long distance ones. We were shown the designs for the other blades
with their 'wings' that Alexey crafted according to each individual
athlete's build and style, and discussed how the design would have to be
modified to cope with pressure on the neoprene wings and foot-pockets at
depth. Igor's English was 'interesting' and Alexey's was non existent so we
all tried to talk very slowly and wished we knew some Russian.
We then moved out to the bay where a 50 meter line had been set up on the bottom, with weights measuring out every five meters. It was only a few feet deep. Ideal conditions for training. Igor was in the water with us, and Alexey was standing on a tiny hill by the beach, armed with a stop-watch and a very loud voice. Our first task was to do 50 meters in apnea and to count our strokes, whilst Alexey took the time. Haydn was the first to go and took 32 seconds with about 28 strokes. I went last and it took me 44 seconds with 44 strokes which nearly finished me off. As I surfaced for air, all I could make out was Alexey yelling in Russian and doing huge pelvic thrusts.
Obviously there was something wrong with my style.
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