FIT for Freediving
Posted By Todd Storey on 1 July 2007
We each did this three times. Apparently, there's a skill to it, and I'm convinced I didn't do it right! Now, being a trained singer, I've always thought that I had pretty big lungs, based on the power and volume I can put behind my voice. So I was shocked to find out that my lungs are not all that big- they're average! I was more surprised than disappointed, really, and Martin pointed out that Jacques Mayol had had even smaller lungs than I do . All this time I thought I had such huge lungs, and it turns out that I just have a VERY powerful diaphragm! It just goes to show: it doesn't really matter what SIZE your lungs are, it's all in how you USE them.
DAY THREE: Fumbles Strikes Again!
I suppose that heading requires a bit of a set-up, so here goes: On April 29, I was one of the safeties on Mandy-Rae Cruickshank's World Record Constant Ballast dive to 88m. I was in charge of timing, and manning the clutch release for the counter-balance system. As timer I'd been entrusted with AIDA judge Grant Graves's $80 Morpheus stopwatch. Long story short: the dives were done, I dove down to 10m/33ft. to take a pic of safety scuba diver Luke, who was on a deco stop, and came up without the stopwatch. It was gone. It had slipped off my arm and plummeted into the abyss. Up to this point, my roomies in Cayman had all earned nicknames, but I hadn't. This incident earned me my nickname: Fumbles.
It was time to live up to my nickname on this trip. The day before, Paul had given me a small, yellow dreidel-like doohickery on a ring- a computer, he said, to monitor my depths and times. I'd attached it to my snorkel keeper, just about the only place I could figure to connect it. This day I was the last to get into the water from the boat. I jumped in.....and, mysteriously, my snorkel was GONE. How exactly this happened is still a mystery, as I know it was attached to my mask when I jumped in. Frustrated, I took off my mask...and looked down just in time to see a small yellow missile on it's way to the ocean floor. With visions of the stopwatch running through my mind, I yelled "NO!!", and tried, in vain, to dive after it. But with no mask on my face, and with the rapid rate at which it was sinking, it was a lost cause.
Dejected, I climbed back onto the boat and sat with my head in my hands. I felt just terrible, as this was the second piece of expensive (to me, at least) equipment that I'd been entrusted with, and LOST. What would I say to Paul? It turns out it didn't matter. Being the great guy that he is, Paul was more concerned about me than about some stupid little piece of yellow plastic. He even tried to convince me that it really wasn't a computer, he just TOLD people that as a motivator - nice try.
He helped ease me over the guilt I felt, but now I had to deal with a poor replacement for my lost RIFFE Standard J snorkel: a scuba snorkel that had been left onboard by a scuba diver. Not suited for freediving snorkel placement, it pulled my Sphera out of line on my face, causing it to flood continuously. Paul even tried to switch masks and snorkels with me, and when he had just as much trouble, we realized that perhaps my Sphera was wearing out, too. So I climbed back aboard the boat and retrieved a virgin Samurai mask that my friend Harrison had given me for my birthday. It worked very well, with no leaking, but now I was having to adjust to a mask that required a bit more effort to equalize than the Sphera. This, coupled with my sticky ears, got me to final depths in the 11m/35ft. range this day. Still not the 30m/100ft. I'd been hoping for.
DAY FOUR: Hope For the Future
My video camera got a lot of use today, as it was the last day and I wanted to capture as many memories as possible. The diving went smoothly, with the water calmer than the day before. I also had a better snorkel, one of Martin's, that he'd brought from home for me to use.
My poor ears had decided they'd had all they were going to put up with, and my depths today topped out at 16m/51ft. During my deepest dive, though, I was struck with an odd sensation: I was COMFORTABLE. I wasn't even thinking about how deep I was, or how far up the surface was, or how long I'd been down. I just felt GOOD. At that moment, I realized that depth (or fear of it) was no longer an issue for me. Only my ears were holding me back, and I could continue to work on them by training with negative pressure dives. I now felt a confidence in myself as a freediver that I'd not felt before, and I'd achieved it without even reaching a major depth. That, I realized, is what was truly important.
Lunch, Review, and Goodbye...For Now
We wrapped up the course by breaking for a final lunch (a few of us ate at Coconut's, which is adjacent to ProDive), and then reviewed the video from this day's dives. Martin discussed a few more training tools for us to use to keep expanding our abilities.
Then, it was time to say goodbye. I always hate this part of courses, as I feel like I'm saying goodbye to good friends that I may not see for a while. However, as is par, we're all welcome to come back and go out on the boat to dive on the rig anytime there's a course. And with Paul having extended hospitality to me, it will make it much easier for me to get back down there on my limited retail supervisor's income. So, for now, I'll keep up with my pool training and cardio, push myself through my tolerance tables, dive the local quarries when I can, and keep looking forward to when I can get back down to Florida and dive with my friends again.
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