It's all about the journey...

One of the main reasons I started free diving was simply to enjoy the journey. What you may ask do I mean by that? Well its simple, like most things in life the reality of something we have always wanted or a place we have always wanted to go to almost never meets the picture we have painted for ourselves with our minds eye.

It is more often than not the road taking us to this goal or destination that keeps us talking for many years after we have returned from this destination or goal that we have achieved.

Well, that is simply the ride that has totally captured me, and of course the fact that I can be in the water.

The 31 December 2010 was just one such day...Naturally there has been quite a bit of free diving talk around the house and my 3yr 10 month old son has picked up on the action. So on this day, he arrives back at home from a trip with my wife and tells me he is going free diving now, in the pool and I must get ready to join him.

Mask (or goggles as referred to by my little Mayol) and snorkel and off he goes. Now I need to add at this point that he has never actually had a mask on near a body of water, let alone a snorkel in his mouth, but he is marching to the pool in a similar fashion to the little Enzo Maiorca in the flick " The Big Blue" to dive out the coin which the kids have spotted in the water on the seas edge. 

Determined he puts my mask on and snorkel in, and pops his head in the water. It wasn't until he came up and I looked into his big blue eyes that I realised quite how blown away he was that he could see the bottom of the pool. That was a fantastic moment for me! Absolutely amazing...Even more amazing is how he just keeps on chatting away with his head under the water through the snorkel to me.

Make the journey happen for yourself, no one else is going to make it happen for you! 

Small Steps...

Part of the reason I am keeping this blog, is simply to track my progress. One thing is for sure is that progress is going to be small steps at achieving the various milestones. Today was another day for small steps in the right direction. After a good 2 hour yoga and meditation session to get myself and the others in the right frame of mind, I improved my personal best dry breath hold to 3min 29 sec.

The dive was rather rough with the weather coming in. Not what I would call ideal training weather, but we were there to dive. My best free dive for the day was 13m. I definitely could push to 20m but didn't want to push the envelope yet. As the diving becomes second nature, so I will push the limits.

It was amazing to stop a few meters from a Humpback whale and her calf, and on our return the almost 3 or 4 pods of dolphins. I jumped in but somehow missed them as they were on a feeding mission. So the free dive with dolphins must wait for another day. Maybe the same day I break the 20m mark...(Jacques Mayol smiles...)

Depth 13 meters, time 53sec.

Breath up's...

Naturally a breath up is what happens just before you do a breath hold, and thats where my focus has been since  my first session and static apnea pool sessions. It must be remembered that static apnea in the pool is considerably easier than static apnea being practiced outside of the pool. The reason for this is that the body has a function known as "The mammalian diving reflex". this reflex is activated when the head is submerged under water and the effect is a reduction of up to 50% in the heart rate. This is a natural reaction and all humans posses this.

So because the heart rate is slower when submerged the logical place to practice breath holds would be in the pool. However black-outs occur when pushing the boundaries, and this is best described as when the body "resets" itself and forces you to breath. If you blackout on dry land you will automatically collapse, reset and start breathing. The human body is quite amazing though, if you blackout in water, the body has another reflex that in a way over-rides the blackout. This reflex is called  laryngospasm, and basically this means your larynx closes up to stop water from entering your lungs. As a result, the golden rule of free diving is never dive alone. If you were to blackout under water, your buddy just brings you up and your body does the rest. You will start breathing shortly thereafter and your oxygen saturation should be back to normal within a minute.


Right, so that leaves me doing breath ups and breath holds on dry land. Yes, more difficult but safer and better prep for the pool sessions. I am currently doing 5 min breath ups, followed by breath hold which I repeat 5 times. Here is my last session and you can see the gradual breath hold improvements.  (1)  02:27.4    (2) 02:38.9    (3) 02:33.4    (4) 02:51.4    (5) 02:55.1.


Thursday is the next session in advanced breath holding and I look forward to comfortably get beyond the 3 minute mark soon. Hopefully  the ocean plays along and I can start looking at the 10m dive mark.

For now my personal bests are 6m depth and 3min 10 sec breath hold.

A good day.

Static apnea session

It has been a day of learning with Hanli Prinsloo a professional freediver from Cape Town. 

The day started with a hour and a half of Yoga and breathing exercises. That in itself was an eye opener as it was the first time that I have ever done Yoga. Trust me I can feel it today. The stretching that was achieved was amazing and the results together with the breathing exercises delivered results far above what I ever imagined.

My personal best breath-hold for the morning ended up on 2min 50 sec.

The most interesting aspect of the theory that followed was the manipulation of the body's responses to push the envelope of the breath-hold or apnea and naturally this is key when wanting to freedive to whatever depth you are trying to achieve.

Static apnea was then practiced in the pool and Hanli coached us through the various breath-ups and breath-hold attempts. My first attempt was a 1min 26sec, with the second attempt coming in at 2min 05sec. My dive buddy Dean and I then did a 4-5 min breath-up and my personal best on this day was a 3min 10sec breath hold. With this I must admit I was very pleased and it can only get better from here.

Line set to 15m.

We then hit the sea, or should I say the sea hit me.OK, I did three 5-6m dives, but the actual achievement for the afternoon was not loosing my lungs over the side of the boat. A swell of what looked like 6 foot to me was enough to call 6m the mark for the day. I felt great under the water, but with all the energy wasted trying to keep my lungs in my body I felt drained very quickly.

So that was the day, great bunch of guys Lance, Johan, Dean, Fritzel I mean Fritz and Thomas, not forgetting Hanli that shed some light on my path moving forward.

For me its Yoga and back to gym to get ready for next months advanced breathing course.

I am definitely happy with that 3min 10sec!!!

Starting again...

So it all started in Shanghai in 1927, well ok it started some 18 years ago for me, when I had the chance to see the biopic of the aforementioned birth date of a certain Jacques Mayol, born in 1927. A rivalry in the 50's with Enzo Maiorca seen above with Jacques is what the biopic was based on and the focus and determination of the two men especially Jacques not only captured but has always fascinated me. Although the former  is my namesake, thats about where the similarity ends. Inspired by Mayol, the reality of experiencing freediving and the art of apnea had to wait till 2010. Why 2010? Who knows, but when the times right, it's right!

So the time had come and before there was going to be any breath-ups or freediving I had to get fit.So the training started and the end result of the two months training was a inguinal hernia. Not great, but such is life. A small op and 8 weeks rest and voila......I mean whats another 8 weeks anyway, who's counting...

Welcome to "My Personal Blue"...