Diving in the dark: Wildschütz

Last sunday I finally had the chance to do deep diving again, for the first time since the trip to Dahab in April. Martin, me and two other Berlin freedivers, Mathias and Jonas, drove down to Wildschütz to have a training.


The lake is a flooded old stone break, located not far from Leipzig, with 74m max depth. The temperature on the surface was very nice, but as soon as you get below 5-10m, it get's COLD and dark. Diving in these conditions is much more demanding than those of the Blue Hole, but it made a perfect training for the up-coming competition in Sweeden, Nordic Deep.

We had two dive sessions. On the first one I focused on getting back the right feeling and trying to relax, even with the cold water stinging in my face. I slowly moved from 15m to 30m, adjusting my bouancy and my technique. I kept having problems with water in my mask (I later found out there was a serious leak), but figured I was ready for one last deep dive.

I went to 45m, a bit slow, with some swollowed air and water in my mask. Still I had managed the dive without any real problems or stress, so I was content for the day and confident I'll dive deeper next weekend when we do another trip.

On the second session, we first did a little fun diving down to an air filled dive station on maybe 10m depth. Martin took a few videos, so you can check it out yourself. There is also a track with rings to swim through, like a freediving fun garden. The only problem is to avoid getting stuck with the monofin...

All in all it was a great day. The cold water treated me nicely enough, so I'm already looking forward to coming back and doing some more deep training.

12 weeks training project

For some time I've wanted to have 2-3 months of good and structured training towards a goal, and now I have found some time and inspiration to do exactly that.

The goal I want to reach is to do a new pb in DYN at the Europe Evolution Cup in Italy, 4.-5. October. Of course I have some numbers in mind that I would like to reach, but I leave that for a little later.

I have marked off 12 weeks to get into shape and prepare my body both physically and mentally. I got started last Monday and the first week looked like this:

Monday - rock climbing (60 min)
Tuesday - swimming (1400m )
Wednesday - running (30 min ) and static (CO2 table)
Thursday - rock climbing ( 30 min ) and swimming (1000m)
Friday - static (CO2 table)
Saturday - running (30 min) and strenght training
Sunday - static (only half a training as the pool closed...)

I've also been doing body and lung stretching every morning, which I feel I'm in great need of.

The first 4 weeks I will be focusing more on general fitness than on long dives, then I will gradually change my training more towards spesific apnea training.

I will keep posting about the training and the result, and some pictures and videos will also come soon.

Plans for the summer

The summer is really getting started, and I'm ithcing for the holiday. These days I am busy reading for my last exam in Molecular Biology, but on Tuesday 1st July I'm going to Berlin and will spend a large part of the summer there with Martin.

My plans have changed a bit back and forth, and now it seems like I will be missing out on the Team World Championship. A new rule says that a team has to consist of at least two persons, and because I am the only Norwegian for the team, I can't go. I'm not the only freediver who's affected by this, and I really wonder what the reason behind the rule is. It closes out several of the smaller freediving nations, which I don't think is a good development for the sport.

Instead I might focus on Nordic Deep in Sweeden in August and the Europe Evolution Cup in Italy in October. Nothing further is decided yet, and I only hope to get to do alot of nice freedivning and training, and enjoy the time.

Video of the dive: 161m DYN

Breaking down mental barriers

I don't know exactly how it happened, but some time after the big success in Maribor with the silver medal in the world championship, I seemed to hit the wall. I was not able to do any long dives, coming up around 4min in sta and 75m in dyn in several attempts. My physical shape was going good enough, but my head was certainly not in the right place.

My confidence was one of the problems. I started feeling uncomfortable and uncapable of doing what I wanted to do (which was always more and more). This led me into quiting the dives and feeling the failiure again and again.

After doing some wonderful deep diving at Bizzy Blue Hole, I felt strong and confident in my freediving again, but still afraid it wouldn't work when I got to the pool. In the period after coming home, I started training with a goal of getting comfortable with long dynamic dives again. Working my way from 100m up to 155m in training, I was moving forward step by step.

Yesterday I finally got what I was longing for: a good competition dive in DYN. I did 161m in a mini AIDA competition here in Århus, arranged by Aarhus Freediving Club. Martin took a nice video of the whole dive (which lasted almost 3 min!!!) and it will be up here soon.



The competition, Dolphin One & Two, gathered about 8 competitors, AIDA judges Christian Engelbrecht, Maria Livbjerg Eriksen and Martin Müller, and Stig Severinsen as safety freediver. Thanks for a great day everybody!

ATC: Video and media

Lars Strandridder from Aarhus Freediving Club put together this video from last weekends competition. Hopefully you will get a little glimps of the great athmosphere and maybe come join us next year...



Bjarte and I also made it to the norwegian media with our new national records, and you can read more on Aftenposten (if you are fluent in norwegian!).

Also check out the final results and the pictures from the competition.

ATC 2008: sunny and warm!

Aarhus Triple Challenge was, like the two years before, a warm and friendly competition with alot of happy faces. This year's competition was going on in Silkeborg, just outside of Aarhus, and on both saturday and sunday we were using a beautiful outdoor pool.

This ment a lot of sunshine on pale scandinavian skin (and some sunburns!), fresh air and of course a BBQ by the pool afterwards. Even though I didn't really manage to copy friday's great performance in DNF on either saturday or sunday's DYN, I had a wonderful time.

It was also great to see another norwegian freediver competing. Bjarte Nygaard from Oslo Freediving club is a rather new, but very talented freediver who I hope we will se much more of in the future.

He did a very impressive DNF on friday with 125m and a strong 144m in DYN on saturday. These performances are both national records. In static I was coaching Bjarte, who fought his way to 5.13 without a suit in the 26 degree pool. I'm especially impressed that he managed these three clean, nice dives on his first ever competition!

So, a great weekend is over, but there's already talking about another competition here in Aarhus in three weeks or so. For some reason, it seems like we can't get enough of this sport!