Eat, sleep, train

I'm spending most of July in Berlin with Martin, enjoying the city and the summer. Thanks to lucky circumstances (Anna getting sponsored by the gym Elexia and needing a buddy), I get to train alot as well.

Martin does the job as a bossy coach very well, ordering Anna and me around, making us do numerous laps underwater and even train static. The focus has been on technique (especially in DNF), sub-max dives and leg strength. And it has been paying off. I did another 150m DYN in training which felt a lot easier than before.

This weeks schedual looked like this:
Monday - Rest
Tuesday - Swimming, some DYN and DNF medium long dives and technique
Wednesday - STA and DNF technique
Thursday - Rest
Friday - little bike trip with some running
Saturday- DYN: 2x50m, 75m, 2x100m, 85m, 50m
Sunday - STA: two warm-ups and then 5'12, and spinning class later today

Video: 150m DYN

I had a nice training session last sunday, and I even got footage of it!



It was a very good dive which showed me that my training is well on schedual so far and that I'm doing something right when it comes to the preparation and mentally coping with doing longer dives. I was struggeling after 50m and really wanted to come up, but once I got to 100m, I remembered that I did wanna get to the other side of the pool...

The legs were working quite good as well, so the training in the gym lately must be paying off :)

Catching my first fish!

On Sunday I went out to Djursland with Mark from Aarhus Freediving Club to do some spearfishing. I have only tried it once before in the Oslo Fjord where I hardly saw any fish or got to try to shoot any. But this time I had more luck.


Mark was kind enough to borrow me a gun and teach me some tricks. This is a part of freediving where I'm a complete newbie, and I felt a little funny working hard to stay down in 3m depth and wait for any fish to come along. I had too little weight and not the right equipment for that (my beloved monofin is better for CWT...).

I had more luck switching to the more active form of spearfishing, searching the sandy bottom for the flatfish hiding in the sand. There I shot a beautiful "rødspette", or European plaice, as it is called in english. Short after I shot another flatfish of a different species and my day was a success!

The fresh fish made a wonderfull dinner, together with some vegetables in the oven and pasta. It's strange how hungry you get after spending a whole day out by the sea and diving...

First pool PB in a good while

Today I did a very nice 115m DNF, even using some extra energy because of too little weight (I think I need a 3kg neckweight instead of the 2,5kg...). It felt strong and there's several things I can improve on longer dives like this one, the style, the turns or the number of strokes.

The most important thing is that my new warm up rutine is succeding in preparing both my body and my mind that THIS is the dive and there's no quiting early. Of course, it still feels hard and I have the little voice in my head telling me to come up, but it's easier to keep focusing on the dive and finish it now. So today was a great success and made me very happy!

Fingers crossed I'll be able to keep progressing the next two months...

What's up?

It's been a little less freediving lately (exepct for normal training up to the WC) and more reading. June is exam month, which means that poor students like myself are locked up inside with thousands of pages to read while the sun is shining outside...

Well, it't not really that bad and I've already halfway through, but I'm pretty jealous of the guys who's going off to Crete to freedive next week. I would give ALOT for some blue water right now.

Anyways, I'm still training and have had some good progress with a new warm up rutine (thanks Anna!). The main goal is to get my head around doing max dives, while I'm doing some strength training to prepare my body for those long dives. I hope to get some pictures up from the gym soon, to show you some of the exercises I'm doing.

I'm starting to really look forward to the world championship here in Århus this summer. We'll even be a total of 7 (!) Norwegian freedivers competing. That's a new record!

CNF in the cold waters of Hemmoor

Martin organized the 1st Hemmoor No-Fins Only last weekend, which involved exactly that: diving without fins. I did overcome some of my prior sceptism for this disiplin in Dahab, but I soon found out that it's a whole different game doing it in cold waters. With a 5mm suit and a mask, I had a really hard time getting anywhere! It didn't help that my body was feeling weak, my throat was sore and my ears sticky.



After both training days on Thursday and Friday had been pretty bad, I decided against competing on Saturday. We had lovely weather that day though, and I had a good time hanging out, coaching Anna and fun diving in the underwater forest. After all, it was my birthday(!). We finished off with a nice barbeque with fresh fish from the lake.


On Sunday, I was feeling much better and had announced 30m. After some lovely warm-up dives and some calming words from Anna, I went for my dive. All was fine untill 13m, where I took a little stronger arm pull and glided before equalizing my ears. But they were stuck! That was it for the competition in my case, but there were a lot of great performances by the other freedivers. Both PB's and national records were broken. Anna von Boetticher and Jonas Krahn both did new German records in lake with 35m and 53m respectively, and they won a turtle each.

1. place overall

I must confess I'm very very happy with the results and the whole trip! The diving went almost perfect. I was doing the exact depth progression that I had hoped for, my ears were fit and working and I managed to stay pretty healthy. That's a very important part when in Egypt...


The 65m dive was one of my best deep dives ever. I felt the urge to turn around at some point, but managed to turn my mind back to relaxing. The last five meters I was fumbling a little with the equalizations, but reach the bottom without problems. The arch opened up like a big door of light and was so beautiful! I haven't had this much time to look at it before, and I enjoyed it alot. The way back up felt quite long and lactic legs meant I had to take my time, but at the surface I was still completely clear. There's still more meters in me!

I had such a good time with the group of nearly 50 other freedivers, old friends and new. I'm always sad to leave Dahab and the Blue Hole, and I hope it won't be another year before I come back.