Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1110 Free Diving - Alexander Nilsson

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Ep. 1110 Free Diving - Alexander Nilsson · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: episode eleven hundred ten Alexander Nilsson on free diving this is going to be a fantastic episode but before we dive in I want to make maybe a public service announcement I guess something off my chest announcement
0:23
[SPEAKER_00]: the hosting service that we use inserts advertising from a variety of different advertisers and we can't pre-select what adds we run in which ones we don't run except that we can choose categories I can say no not that category yeah this category is fine and so I've tried to choose categories that I feel like are in good alignment with the adventure sports podcast main purpose and mission here
0:47
[SPEAKER_00]: When we founded the Adventure Sports podcast ten years ago, we agreed that we would try to not talk about things like politics.
0:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And the main reason was because we wanted to focus on Adventure Sports and the benefits that they have for everyone.
1:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And we didn't want this to become a political show.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We just figured there are other formats for that.
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not opposed to it.
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I just know that this show is about Adventure Sports.
1:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So the other day I played back one of the episodes as it had been posted and I was really surprised that there was advertising about THCU, about marijuana, about how to buy marijuana.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that is a political topic.
1:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I have heard arguments on why marijuana can benefit society and individuals and I've heard arguments on how marijuana can cause a lot of harm with other individuals.
1:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not here to promote or not promote it.
1:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing adventure sports, but I believe that marijuana is is really a political topic.
1:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to apologize.
1:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I had worked with the hosting service to try to eliminate any marijuana or a THC type commercials.
2:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You may notice we also don't advertise alcohol and things like that, similar reason.
2:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Thought I had it handled.
2:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's still happening.
2:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to continue to work with a hosting service to try to get those types of ads removed because I don't really feel like they're in alignment with the podcast.
2:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that's something that's seen pretty volatile in your mind, you know, if that's a kind of a hot topic, well, I apologize because that's not what we intend for the Adenture Sports Podcast.
2:40
[SPEAKER_00]: If it continues, if you hear more ads like that in the future, please know I am working with the hosting service to try to eliminate them.
2:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But regretfully, they don't have a category for marijuana.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: So those ads are getting inserted and
2:56
[SPEAKER_00]: They may not even know that it's happening at this point because it's an automated process.
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, I just wanted to mention it because it bothered me when I realized that something that I considered to be very political was being promoted on the Adventure Sports Podcast.
3:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for bearing with me while I get that off my chest.
3:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just going to leave it there, dive into the episode, and this is going to be a fantastic one.
3:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for being a part of the Adventure Sports Podcast family.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey friends, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.
3:39
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a returning guest today who was on the show in twenty twenty two.
3:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It was episode eight sixty and I'm especially excited about this one and the reason is because I've never interviewed anyone on this topic and I used to do it just a little kind of scratch the surface of what this might be about but it's something I used to find so fast and I still do so fascinating.
4:01
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about
4:03
[SPEAKER_00]: free diving, not only like snorkeling and diving without scuba gear, but going to depth and doing depth competitions for free diving.
4:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Today's guest is Alexander Nilsen.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the Swedish free diving record holder.
4:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to let him explain way more about this, because I don't know nearly enough, but Alex, welcome to the program.
4:28
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you, Kurtz, and thank you for having me back.
4:31
[SPEAKER_06]: and having me talking about freediving.
4:33
[SPEAKER_06]: I usually tell my students because I'm teaching freediving a lot and I tell them the thing that I love the most is freediving and the second thing is to talk about freediving.
4:44
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm happy to be here talking about it with you.
4:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm glad we can be part of your second favorite thing.
4:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
4:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I would also like to be a little bit more a part of your first favorite thing.
4:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So rewinding a little bit, I mentioned to you that I do scuba diving and well, I love scuba diving.
5:07
[SPEAKER_00]: The equipment makes it
5:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's the difference between writing a motorcycle and writing a bicycle or running versus writing a bicycle, even.
5:19
[SPEAKER_00]: To be able to do something that's completely under your own human power and to do it without all of the weight and the accoutrements and the gear and the mechanisms, that there's something special about that purity
5:33
[SPEAKER_00]: that speaks to me.
5:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It won't stop me from scuba diving, but I've always enjoyed the idea of snorkeling and diving, you know, fairly deep, maybe thirty or forty feet and hanging out for a while and then going back up and it's always just been so fascinating to me.
5:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So Alexander, will you share with us how you discovered free diving and what it was about it that got you into it?
5:58
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so it also
6:02
[SPEAKER_06]: resonates with me when you were saying that it's something about going on the water without any gear.
6:09
[SPEAKER_06]: That's also partly what got me into it.
6:14
[SPEAKER_06]: When I was a kid, I really loved the big blue, this movie, Legrand Blu.
6:22
[SPEAKER_06]: So I think that put the seed in me when I was a kid.
6:26
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I was backpacking around Asia when I was around twenty one, twenty two.
6:32
[SPEAKER_06]: And I saw this sign in Thailand, I remember, try freediving.
6:37
[SPEAKER_06]: And I didn't know that you could actually do freediving courses and try it for yourself.
6:43
[SPEAKER_06]: I thought it was on the people competing in it.
6:45
[SPEAKER_06]: So then I tried it and I got hooked.
6:50
[SPEAKER_06]: I got hooked and then I just continued doing it.
6:52
[SPEAKER_06]: I had a really good freediving instructor who just told me that
6:58
[SPEAKER_06]: She saw that I had some kind of talent in it like you know, I could go quite deep quite fast.
7:05
[SPEAKER_06]: Then on my first course, I think I went to twenty meters, twenty five meters.
7:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
7:10
[SPEAKER_06]: Off to just two days.
7:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, so that's pretty good.
7:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I I've never attempted to go that deep, but I will I will share this.
7:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a dumb thing, but I ran out of there on my first scuba dive at seventy feet.
7:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I had to at least do a free ascent from that tip.
7:29
[SPEAKER_06]: So dangerous scuba.
7:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a little bit more risk involved when you're when you're trying to get to the surface, you know, with pressurized air versus non pressurized air.
7:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, that's amazing.
7:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So you went really deep right out of the shoot and this was you said in Thailand in Thailand in an island called Colanta.
7:54
[SPEAKER_06]: That's where I was packing back then.
7:57
[SPEAKER_06]: And you know, it's also something about like, when you hear from, from me, it was the instructor who told me that, you know, she saw something.
8:07
[SPEAKER_06]: She saw that I was good in it.
8:09
[SPEAKER_06]: And to hear that from someone and to see that you were actually quite good, you then you continue doing it, right?
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's encouraging.
8:16
[SPEAKER_06]: It's encouraging, like if a teacher tells you that you're good on a subject, you become better at it, usually.
8:23
[SPEAKER_06]: And for me, it was free diving, so she told me that you're good at it, you should continue listening to her and I loved it.
8:34
[SPEAKER_06]: She told me one thing in the end of the course, you should continue doing the next course, because then you will experience something called a free fall.
8:42
[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe I would go in a little bit into that.
8:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Please do.
8:48
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so in free diving, what keeps your float on the surface is your lungs.
8:55
[SPEAKER_06]: It's the air in your lungs.
8:58
[SPEAKER_06]: And the deeper you go, the more compressed air gets.
9:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
9:04
[SPEAKER_06]: So you become heavier in a sense.
9:06
[SPEAKER_06]: Your body becomes heavier.
9:09
[SPEAKER_06]: So the deeper you go, the heavier you become.
9:12
[SPEAKER_06]: So around fifteen meters, you become a mutually buoyant.
9:16
[SPEAKER_06]: So you neither float or you sink.
9:18
[SPEAKER_06]: So you just stay there.
9:20
[SPEAKER_06]: But if you go past fifteen meters, you go to twenty meters.
9:25
[SPEAKER_06]: Around there, you will start sinking like a rock.
9:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
9:30
[SPEAKER_06]: And when you told me about this, this is what got my attention.
9:35
[SPEAKER_06]: And I just wanted to experience this.
9:37
[SPEAKER_06]: And when I experienced this feeling of the free fall, it was the most amazing feeling that I've ever had.
9:46
[SPEAKER_06]: And I just wanted to free fall even deeper, you know, to extend this time on the free fall.
9:53
[SPEAKER_06]: So you free fall faster and faster also for each meter that you go, because your lungs become get smaller and smaller for each meter you get down.
10:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
10:04
[SPEAKER_06]: And so at around twenty meters, your lungs is one third of what they were on the surface.
10:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously our lungs are very flexible.
10:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We can do this without hurting ourselves.
10:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can't imagine I know that their listeners out there who are saying wait a minute.
10:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You're holding your breath from the surface.
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going deep enough.
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You lose all your buoyancy.
10:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you begin to accelerate deeper and deeper and deeper.
10:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Alex, that's a little bit terrifying.
10:37
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds a lot like drowning.
10:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So, explain to us how it's different than drowning or, you know, that sort of thing.
10:49
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you get back up?
10:50
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you have the confidence to go that deep?
10:52
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it feel like?
10:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Those sorts of things.
10:55
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so first of all, it's fair.
10:59
[SPEAKER_06]: Most freedivers are a bit crazy.
11:03
[SPEAKER_06]: There's something about the same thing when you do crazy, like free solo climbing or you do some kind of extreme sport.
11:12
[SPEAKER_06]: It's some kind of personality type that probably goes into it.
11:17
[SPEAKER_06]: I've been drawn to this kind of adventures my entire life.
11:22
[SPEAKER_06]: So I haven't been scared about doing it and that's probably helped being a bit crazy.
11:27
[SPEAKER_06]: I think that's required of being able, especially to compete in this sport, that helps.
11:35
[SPEAKER_06]: But besides that, it's also very calculated.
11:39
[SPEAKER_06]: A lot of people, they think that free divers are adrenaline junkies, and it's actually the opposite.
11:53
[SPEAKER_06]: Because in other extreme sports like downhill skiing and so on, you need adrenaline.
12:00
[SPEAKER_06]: And here is the opposite.
12:02
[SPEAKER_06]: You need to be as calm as possible to do it.
12:06
[SPEAKER_06]: So you have to be able to calm down.
12:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you able to?
12:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you able to adjust your heart rate?
12:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you able to relax your body so that you can go without air longer?
12:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Has it become something where you have a way to speak to your internal organs and make it work?
12:30
[SPEAKER_06]: So that's when the breathing comes in to play.
12:33
[SPEAKER_06]: That's when and that's what you learn also in the freediving course.
12:36
[SPEAKER_06]: How to breathe to adjust your heart rate?
12:39
[SPEAKER_06]: Because you can lower your heart rate
12:41
[SPEAKER_06]: just by breathing in a specific pattern.
12:45
[SPEAKER_06]: And I can just tell you briefly how one can do it.
12:49
[SPEAKER_06]: Someone who's listening to the show now, you extend the exhale.
12:57
[SPEAKER_06]: That's one trick you can do.
12:59
[SPEAKER_06]: So for me, it's usually like, I inhale for five seconds, very slowly, and then exhale for ten seconds.
13:08
[SPEAKER_06]: And just by doing that, my heart rate will slow down.
13:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And by slowing down your heart rate does that mean that your body is using less oxygen?
13:18
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
13:19
[SPEAKER_06]: So we want to have as low heart rate as possible.
13:23
[SPEAKER_06]: That's number one.
13:24
[SPEAKER_06]: To be able to come down to get heart rate really low.
13:28
[SPEAKER_06]: And then even though you don't get the low hearted before the dive, our body will react by being in the water.
13:40
[SPEAKER_06]: We have something in our body that is called
13:43
[SPEAKER_06]: mammalian diver response, mammalian diver effects, I don't know.
13:47
[SPEAKER_06]: Not that many people heard about this.
13:49
[SPEAKER_06]: As soon as we put their face in the water, our heart rate will slow down.
13:55
[SPEAKER_06]: And this is called the Brody Cardia.
13:57
[SPEAKER_06]: So you probably seen in the movies that people splash water in their face.
14:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
14:03
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, before they go into important meeting or something like this.
14:07
[SPEAKER_06]: And this actually works because when we put cold water on our face, we have sensors around our nose and our eyes here that detects when we get water on the face.
14:18
[SPEAKER_06]: And as soon as we get water on the face, we're hot with will slow down.
14:23
[SPEAKER_06]: And this happens automatically on everyone.
14:27
[SPEAKER_06]: And this is something that we share with other sea living mammals, like dolphins,
14:32
[SPEAKER_06]: seals all the seed dwelling animals.
14:36
[SPEAKER_06]: They have it to a greater extent, of course.
14:39
[SPEAKER_06]: But we have it with all humans have it.
14:42
[SPEAKER_06]: Everyone who's listing now, your heart rate will slow down when you put your face in the water.
14:48
[SPEAKER_06]: You have this inbuilt mechanism that will make your body able to free dive actually.
14:56
[SPEAKER_06]: People, we don't really know yet why we have this kind of a mystery.
15:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like a good survival mechanism.
15:05
[SPEAKER_06]: It sounds like a good survival mechanism.
15:08
[SPEAKER_06]: Some people think that it was, but when we were, because we lived very close to the coastline back in the days when we were hundreds of gatherers, and that might be, thanks to that.
15:22
[SPEAKER_06]: But I can feel that when I put my face in the water, I calm down.
15:28
[SPEAKER_06]: And I tried it on myself.
15:30
[SPEAKER_06]: I put my face in the water.
15:31
[SPEAKER_06]: I had a pulse oxymilion and I was measuring my heart rate.
15:36
[SPEAKER_06]: I put my face in the water.
15:37
[SPEAKER_06]: It went from around eighty beats per minutes to around thirty seven in one minute.
15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
15:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's so less than half.
15:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you said slow down, I was thinking, OK, it's going to slow down some maybe twenty five percent.
15:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're talking about fifty percent slower.
15:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
15:58
[SPEAKER_06]: And of course, the more you do it, the more you train this and it's called mammal and die of response.
16:06
[SPEAKER_06]: And the more you do it, the more
16:11
[SPEAKER_06]: It will kick in, the stronger it will kick in.
16:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I like to do the public service announcements or public safety announcements with all of these topics because I've been your sports done correctly, are wonderful and beneficial and can be very, very safe.
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But when people start doing them the wrong way, people can get hurt and freediving is certainly one of those where I think people could get hurt.
16:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Matter of fact, I recently interviewed a guest who
16:40
[SPEAKER_00]: He had shallow water, hipoxia.
16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was in a swimming pool.
16:43
[SPEAKER_00]: He was holding his breath.
16:44
[SPEAKER_00]: He was only in about four feet of water, but he blacked out and no one knew it.
16:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he did drown.
16:52
[SPEAKER_00]: They had to resuscitate him.
16:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And he survived, obviously, to tell the story.
16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But this can happen.
17:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to go deep to get into trouble.
17:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Alex, will you share with us what are some of the safety mechanisms we need to be aware of?
17:10
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that's good that you're mentioning that this is one of the main things that I'm teaching, what I'm teaching, of course.
17:18
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm saying, I'm telling people like, if you don't remember anything, remember one thing, that is to never free-dive alone.
17:23
[SPEAKER_06]: And when we say, don't free-dive alone, it's like, it doesn't matter if you go out, free-diving with your mother or your spouse or anything, you have to be free-diving with someone who knows how to react if something happens, if you faint on the water.
17:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
17:38
[SPEAKER_06]: It has to be someone that knows how to react and how to wake someone up from a blackout.
17:46
[SPEAKER_06]: It's simpler than most people think actually.
17:49
[SPEAKER_06]: The first thing you have to do is to take the airways above the surface.
17:54
[SPEAKER_06]: You usually take one hand above under the chin here and one hand here.
17:58
[SPEAKER_06]: Take them above the water and then take off the facial equipment like the mask usually.
18:05
[SPEAKER_06]: And then, after you've done that, we do something which is called blow-tap talks.
18:09
[SPEAKER_06]: A blow-tap talk.
18:11
[SPEAKER_06]: These three things you have to remember.
18:13
[SPEAKER_06]: Blow on the cheeks.
18:14
[SPEAKER_06]: A blow like you just blow air on the cheeks.
18:18
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
18:18
[SPEAKER_06]: And then you tap here on the cheeks.
18:22
[SPEAKER_06]: Like I was mentioning before, you have the sensors here.
18:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
18:26
[SPEAKER_06]: And then, the last thing, blow-tap talks, you say the person's name and you tell them to breathe.
18:33
[SPEAKER_06]: Those three things is sufficient to wake someone up.
18:39
[SPEAKER_06]: Because when someone has blacked out, they still have plenty of oxygen in their system.
18:45
[SPEAKER_06]: But the brain has shut down to save this oxygen that they have.
18:50
[SPEAKER_06]: Because the body recognizes that they're still on the water, that it's not safe.
18:55
[SPEAKER_06]: And then you faint pretty much on the water.
18:58
[SPEAKER_06]: And then you just have to bring them up and to remind
19:02
[SPEAKER_06]: the system that is safe to breathe again.
19:04
[SPEAKER_00]: That's interesting again, but it makes sense.
19:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you have someone there to help, I mean, that's a difference between life and death.
19:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that simple.
19:15
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so just knowing this for all the listeners, blow tap talk, getting the person above the surface and do this is enough.
19:25
[SPEAKER_06]: We're not talking cardiac arrest here.
19:26
[SPEAKER_06]: We're not talking
19:28
[SPEAKER_06]: CPR or anything, because the heart still beating, everything is still working.
19:32
[SPEAKER_06]: The brain is just shut down to save the oxygen is still there.
19:36
[SPEAKER_06]: You just have to remind the system to start breathing again.
19:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
19:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So Alexander, the only time that I experienced anything remotely similar was that the Eisenhower tunnel in Colorado is a very long tunnel under the continental divide.
19:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And we used to play a game where we would try to hold our breath through the tunnel.
19:54
[SPEAKER_00]: now it takes a minute and a half sometimes two minutes to get through the tunnel and you're at well I'm gonna say about eleven thousand feet maybe eleven thousand five hundred feet so the oxygen levels pretty thin to start with and I remember once I made it through the tunnel but I almost blacked out I lost half of my vision and felt fuzzy headed and I and I was like whoa that was that was too much have you experienced that doing free diving yeah I've been experiencing one
20:24
[SPEAKER_06]: episode of like a close-to-black out, where I was on my first freedom in competition, and I was going down to seventy meters, and then I was a bit, because it was the first freedom in competition I went to, I was a bit nervous, and I think that's also caused me to hyperventilates, I was hyperventilating a little bit.
20:51
[SPEAKER_06]: And you shouldn't do that in freediving.
20:53
[SPEAKER_06]: You should just breathe normally.
20:55
[SPEAKER_06]: We're going to the breathing pattern later.
20:58
[SPEAKER_06]: But here I was breathing too much.
21:01
[SPEAKER_06]: And on the way up when I came up to the surface, I had a short episode of just my head fell backwards.
21:12
[SPEAKER_06]: And I blacked out for a few seconds.
21:15
[SPEAKER_06]: I came back by myself.
21:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
21:18
[SPEAKER_06]: So he was nothing too dramatic, but that was a closest one.
21:20
[SPEAKER_06]: And I've been free diving for around ten years now, and I've never experienced a blackout since then.
21:28
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, so we were just talking about shallow water hip-oxia and how it can happen.
21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you mentioned hyperventilating.
21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's go ahead and address that while around the topic.
21:38
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so hyperventilation is a lot of people, they confuse it with a crazy breathing.
21:48
[SPEAKER_06]: breathing very loudly and heavily and so on.
21:52
[SPEAKER_06]: But hyperventilation is also everything that you, when you, when you breathe more than you have to.
22:00
[SPEAKER_06]: So when we're sitting like this and we're just talking, our body is relaxed and our body knows how it has, like how much it needs to breathe.
22:11
[SPEAKER_06]: So if I take one big inhale in an exhale, that's hyperventilation.
22:17
[SPEAKER_06]: I breathe more than I have to.
22:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
22:20
[SPEAKER_06]: It's just over breathing.
22:23
[SPEAKER_06]: So that's enough for hyperventilation.
22:25
[SPEAKER_06]: And when we freed out, we want to breathe as normal as possible.
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Because interesting.
22:34
[SPEAKER_06]: We want to have something called carbon dioxide, because when we breathe, we have different gases in our body.
22:41
[SPEAKER_06]: Carbon dioxide is one.
22:43
[SPEAKER_06]: And when someone starts holding their breath,
22:48
[SPEAKER_06]: They will not stop holding their breath because they are no one oxygen.
22:52
[SPEAKER_06]: They will stop holding their breath because they have high levels of CO-II carbon dioxide.
22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So the hyperventilating, how does that impact the carbon dioxide?
23:03
[SPEAKER_06]: Hyperventilating is then you flush out the carbon dioxide.
23:08
[SPEAKER_06]: So the more you breathe, the lower amount of carbon dioxide you will have.
23:14
[SPEAKER_06]: So if you breathe very heavily,
23:16
[SPEAKER_06]: your carbon dioxide levels will drop.
23:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
23:20
[SPEAKER_06]: And that will also make you have a easier breath on you.
23:26
[SPEAKER_06]: You will not get the urge to breathe because urge to breathe comes from carbon dioxide.
23:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that might feel more comfortable, but it sounds to me like now your body is not doing what it's supposed to naturally do.
23:38
[SPEAKER_06]: Exactly.
23:39
[SPEAKER_06]: Exactly.
23:40
[SPEAKER_06]: So it makes the breath hold easier, but you also
23:44
[SPEAKER_06]: For once you don't get the alarm bell that you need to be like, okay, now it's time to go up and start breathing again.
23:52
[SPEAKER_06]: Because you feel so good down there and you think that you can hold your breath forever.
23:57
[SPEAKER_06]: So that's the first thing.
23:58
[SPEAKER_06]: But the second thing is also your body is not efficient with oxygen if you don't have carbon dioxide.
24:06
[SPEAKER_06]: You need carbon dioxide to release the oxygen in your body.
24:12
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's one of the most important things when we start freediving is to get used to this high levels of carbon dioxide.
24:21
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
24:21
[SPEAKER_06]: OK with it.
24:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So let me recap on that just a little bit.
24:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, don't do heavy breathing before a dive.
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's the number one.
24:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's pretty straightforward.
24:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I think kids have always done this in the swimming pool.
24:35
[SPEAKER_00]: They think, oh, if I breathe a lot more, I can hold my breath longer.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: What you're saying is that's dangerous because you're messing up your blood oxygen and your blood carbon dioxide levels, your body gets confused and that can cause you to black out.
24:51
[SPEAKER_06]: Exactly.
24:53
[SPEAKER_06]: You think that you will be able to hold a breath much longer than you actually can.
24:57
[SPEAKER_06]: There will be no warning before you black out.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: okay that's so don't do that so it's a matter of breathing normally you know you already gave the example but i can imagine knowing you're getting ready to do a really deep dive being excited about that and breathing a little bit faster than maybe you should and you already mentioned that how can people avoid it i mean this okay you mentioned before we started here that mindfulness is a big part of the sport
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess that's where I'm headed with this.
25:29
[SPEAKER_00]: To breathe properly, the self-awareness, to be able to manage that, we even talked about dropping one's heart rate.
25:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like that's a big part of what the sport is.
25:41
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, freedoming is, as a nine, ten percent mental.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
25:47
[SPEAKER_06]: And ten percent body.
25:51
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's so much mind.
25:54
[SPEAKER_06]: You don't have to be in great physical shape to be able to dive to really deep depths.
26:02
[SPEAKER_06]: You need to be able to control your mind and to also be able to relax even though it's kind of like a stressful situation.
26:10
[SPEAKER_06]: You have to be able to calm down.
26:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
26:13
[SPEAKER_06]: So that's the main thing in free diving.
26:15
[SPEAKER_06]: Where are you?
26:17
[SPEAKER_06]: When you have high levels of carbon dioxide, you really want to breathe.
26:20
[SPEAKER_06]: You have to be able to control that, control your nervous system, and to calm down.
26:25
[SPEAKER_06]: And when it comes to breathing that we do before, and the breathing that I do before, I say that I will do like a eight to five meter dive.
26:35
[SPEAKER_06]: I would breathe normally, and I will shift my focus to breathing only with my stomach.
26:42
[SPEAKER_06]: And just focus on the breathing.
26:45
[SPEAKER_06]: And that gets me into a very calm state.
26:51
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I also then I have normal levels of carbon dioxide, and I have you always, and the thing is also people get confused about, there's some people that, I don't know if you've heard of Wim Hof method and so on, where you say that, if you breathe more, you oxygenate the body.
27:12
[SPEAKER_06]: And there's a really hot topic.
27:15
[SPEAKER_06]: You and me, right now we have hundred percent oxygen between ninety eight to one hundred percent oxygen.
27:22
[SPEAKER_06]: We have it all the time.
27:25
[SPEAKER_06]: We cannot really have more than hundred percent of oxygen.
27:28
[SPEAKER_06]: We can really ourselves into more oxygen than we have now.
27:34
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's not about breathing more, but breathing calmly and to relax our mind and our body before we dive.
27:43
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that extend to other areas of your life?
27:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Learning that calmness and that self-awareness and that self-control?
27:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's hard not to take a breath when your body is screaming for air.
27:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So how is that impacted things that you do besides diving?
28:01
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it impacted everything.
28:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
28:04
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, you know, I was a week ago, I was on a diving trip to Turkey.
28:10
[SPEAKER_06]: I was doing deep dives for two weeks there and just on and on every day.
28:15
[SPEAKER_06]: And then when we freed, it's one of our primal instincts that we have is to breathe, right?
28:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
28:27
[SPEAKER_06]: And to be okay with not breathing,
28:37
[SPEAKER_06]: translates to other parts of our lives as well.
28:40
[SPEAKER_06]: So after all these dives in Turkey that I did, I'm going on to the airport in Antalya and you know, there are
28:51
[SPEAKER_06]: bunch of people and the standing in line, you know, and the flight was delayed and people are behind me and in front of me screaming and you're like, I want to go home.
29:04
[SPEAKER_06]: And there it's quite, especially in airports.
29:07
[SPEAKER_06]: I feel like then it becomes very, very clear to me like what it can do because you know, I'm
29:16
[SPEAKER_06]: A few days ago, I've been down sixty-plus meters and just have been having a really enjoyable day after having this urge to breathe and saying no to it.
29:27
[SPEAKER_06]: And now I'm in this situation where a flight is delayed.
29:32
[SPEAKER_06]: And in comparison to where I've been a few days ago, it's nothing.
29:37
[SPEAKER_06]: Like it really cares.
29:40
[SPEAKER_06]: It's the most things become quite small compared to it.
29:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
29:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So stressful situations are more manageable.
29:51
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, for sure.
29:52
[SPEAKER_06]: And you find ways to control yourself.
29:56
[SPEAKER_06]: Even though I've become, if I feel that stress is coming up, I can use the same methods that I used in freedom and competitions.
30:04
[SPEAKER_06]: I can focus on my breathing instead of focus outwardly on the world.
30:11
[SPEAKER_06]: But someone is misbehaving or someone is stressful around me.
30:16
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I can focus attention in words instead of focus it outwards and going to my own breathing to focus on myself.
30:25
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's also been a really big part of this journey.
30:30
[SPEAKER_06]: And you know, it's an ongoing practice, of course.
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounds very much like a meditation.
30:38
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
30:39
[SPEAKER_06]: Free diving is meditation.
30:42
[SPEAKER_06]: Like it's...
30:45
[SPEAKER_06]: It's all meditation pretty much.
30:47
[SPEAKER_06]: We call the breathing that we do before I die.
30:49
[SPEAKER_06]: We don't call it meditation.
30:50
[SPEAKER_06]: We call it a breath up.
30:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
30:53
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think when I was twenty three, twenty four, you know, I don't know if I would do it in the same extent if the people said, okay, you have to meditate before you die.
31:02
[SPEAKER_06]: But you call it, you say that, okay, you have to do a breath up before you go into deep diving.
31:07
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's I think that helps.
31:08
[SPEAKER_06]: And then, then of course, later in life I started to meditate, besides this.
31:14
[SPEAKER_06]: free diving is about meditation, because meditation is especially when you do mindfulness meditation.
31:22
[SPEAKER_06]: It's about shifting your focus on one particular thing.
31:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
31:28
[SPEAKER_06]: So here I'm focusing first on the breathing and then when I'm starting to dive, I'm focusing on different parts of the dive.
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So Alex is one of the reasons that I used to do a lot of rock climbing.
31:42
[SPEAKER_00]: is because I would get into that focused hyper focused state.
31:46
[SPEAKER_00]: People call it the flow state or being in the zone, right?
31:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But there were days when I would be trying to climb and I was my thoughts were scattered.
31:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't present in the moment.
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And those are the days where I would find you say, why am I here?
32:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not worth it today.
32:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not working, you know, because that's when I make mistakes.
32:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'd just like, hey, if you're not in a zone, don't do the thing, right?
32:14
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't have the mindfulness that you need, then maybe consider revisiting the attempt, the challenge another day is the way that I feel about it.
32:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you had days when you were planning to free dive that you're, you're just too scattered?
32:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And you say, you know what?
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not smart.
32:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think today's the day.
32:33
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, for sure.
32:34
[SPEAKER_06]: There are those days where you just don't feel a hundred percent.
32:38
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's also part of the whole journey where you have to be so self aware that you were when you were climbing, that you know that, okay, this is not the day that I'm going to do a personal best dive.
32:53
[SPEAKER_06]: I can still go out and just enjoy the water and do shallow dives.
32:58
[SPEAKER_06]: But it will be crazy of me to do my deepest dive ever, one of those days.
33:05
[SPEAKER_06]: Because all days are different.
33:07
[SPEAKER_06]: And you can be in a different mind state some days.
33:10
[SPEAKER_06]: And because pre-diving is so mental, you have to be so self-aware.
33:15
[SPEAKER_06]: And also, if you haven't slept enough, and your body's not working, that's another thing.
33:22
[SPEAKER_06]: Then you're consuming more oxygen.
33:24
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's also a higher risk of having a black out, having an injury.
33:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we've not done this yet and we need to do this.
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We've just kind of dived into the topics, you know, but will you take us through a free dive?
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell us everything you do and end what you experience in the water, what the lights doing, what the temperatures are doing, what your body is doing, can you just describe what it's like?
33:52
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so the first thing, I will start, usually it's in the morning, you start preparing in the morning, you go out around seven, usually don't have any breakfast because if you want to hold your breath longer, you want to be fast at staying.
34:09
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, okay.
34:10
[SPEAKER_06]: No food.
34:13
[SPEAKER_06]: your belly is using up oxygen when you want to be faster.
34:20
[SPEAKER_06]: That's one thing.
34:21
[SPEAKER_06]: No food before you go out.
34:25
[SPEAKER_06]: You swim out with some friends.
34:29
[SPEAKER_06]: You have two or three safeties that you dive with.
34:33
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I sit on a really, really a boy, a rotation device.
34:38
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I just sit there for five minutes.
34:41
[SPEAKER_06]: And I do this what I was talking about earlier, just breathing from the stomach very relaxed, just normal breathing.
34:49
[SPEAKER_06]: Sometimes I do a little bit longer exhale to relax even more, getting the heart rate lower.
34:55
[SPEAKER_06]: And then off the five minutes, I feel relaxed.
34:57
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I feel up my lungs, starting from the belly, working my way up.
35:05
[SPEAKER_06]: and then I put my face in the water and I usually close my eyes mine during the entire dive.
35:12
[SPEAKER_06]: So I have my eyes closed.
35:14
[SPEAKER_06]: I see just darkness and I feel the rope I will go through what we call a free immersion dive.
35:23
[SPEAKER_06]: It's when we pull ourselves down and up on the line.
35:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
35:27
[SPEAKER_06]: So we have a line going straight down and I pull myself down.
35:32
[SPEAKER_06]: I just feel the fabric of the line going down
35:36
[SPEAKER_06]: While I do this, I also have to equalize my ears because of the pressure.
35:42
[SPEAKER_06]: So I equalize my ears every single meter.
35:45
[SPEAKER_06]: I have to pop my ears.
35:48
[SPEAKER_06]: I go deeper and deeper and the deeper I go when I pass around twenty meters, I start to feel
35:56
[SPEAKER_06]: heavier and I feel that the gravity is taking over so I can start the free fall so I do the last pull around twenty five or thirty meters I do my last pull and I put my arms on my side and I usually have something called a nose clip which makes me able to equalize without having to pinch my nose like this so I just put my hands on my side and then I start free falling and I still keep my eyes closed
36:25
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's also for the reason that I don't get an official input.
36:30
[SPEAKER_06]: So I'm also conserving more oxygen.
36:32
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not seeing anything.
36:35
[SPEAKER_06]: So now I'm just free falling.
36:37
[SPEAKER_06]: And I start to feel that it's getting colder and colder.
36:42
[SPEAKER_06]: So for each metre it's getting colder and colder.
36:46
[SPEAKER_06]: And go it's going faster and faster.
36:48
[SPEAKER_06]: I have a wet suit on me.
36:51
[SPEAKER_06]: But I still feel the water on my hands and my feet and on my face.
36:57
[SPEAKER_06]: And during this free fall, I'm just thinking about equalizing the ears.
37:03
[SPEAKER_06]: So I'm shifting my focus just on equalization.
37:06
[SPEAKER_06]: Feeling the ears would have pain in my ears now, okay, I can continue.
37:10
[SPEAKER_06]: I just continue equalizing, focusing on that.
37:15
[SPEAKER_06]: And the deeper I go, the more relaxed I get, usually.
37:17
[SPEAKER_06]: And just becoming more and more relaxed, the harder it is going, going slower and slower for each meter,
37:26
[SPEAKER_06]: The mammalian dive response is stronger and stronger for each meter than I had come down.
37:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
37:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
37:33
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I have an alarm on my watch that tells me where I'm around five meters from where I set the target on it.
37:42
[SPEAKER_06]: I say that I'm going to set the target at eight to five.
37:45
[SPEAKER_06]: I hear the alarm all of a sudden at eight.
37:48
[SPEAKER_06]: The best dives or the those dives where I'm getting surprised and I'm already there.
37:52
[SPEAKER_06]: Wow.
37:54
[SPEAKER_06]: You were talking about the flow state and that's the flow state.
37:56
[SPEAKER_06]: When you time and space works differently.
38:02
[SPEAKER_06]: So you get surprised about already being already there and I'm feeling the bottom plate.
38:10
[SPEAKER_06]: It's usually a plate where we have the set target and I'm there and now I have to start going up again.
38:17
[SPEAKER_06]: And I still keep my eyes closed because I don't want to get excited about being down there or anything.
38:22
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm just being very present in the here and all, like being very present.
38:26
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, I'm here and now I have to go up.
38:29
[SPEAKER_06]: And on the way up, I usually count to keep my focus on something.
38:33
[SPEAKER_06]: Because during the entire dive, I cannot start thinking about I want to be up there.
38:39
[SPEAKER_06]: I want to be breathing because if I'm down at eight to five meters, it's going to take me at least one and a half minutes to go back up there.
38:49
[SPEAKER_06]: Even if I'm being really fast and it's a long time.
38:53
[SPEAKER_06]: The worst thing that I can do down there is to want to be up there.
38:59
[SPEAKER_06]: I really have to be okay being down there because I know it's going to take one and a half minutes around to go up there.
39:06
[SPEAKER_06]: So I'm counting my pools when I'm going up and also thanks to being like very narrowed focus on the pools.
39:18
[SPEAKER_06]: I can stay in the present and the first pulls feels a bit heavy because I'm had free ride down there.
39:27
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a free ride when you have the free pull and now I have to pay for that on the way up.
39:33
[SPEAKER_06]: So I'll come up and there again the best types are when I'm surprised that I'm already close to the surface.
39:41
[SPEAKER_06]: And at one point I feel that the buoyancy starts changing and I start feeling that I can float a little bit.
39:49
[SPEAKER_06]: That's usually where I'm opening my eyes sometimes and I see my safety diver.
39:54
[SPEAKER_06]: And I can see they usually meet me at around twenty five thirty meters to see that everything is okay.
40:01
[SPEAKER_06]: Open my eyes and then I know I'm a hundred percent safe now.
40:06
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I can just let the buoyancy take me the last ten meters up.
40:13
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I come up, take my recovery breaths.
40:17
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I've been doing a great dive.
40:22
[SPEAKER_06]: It's usually goes faster than it feels like.
40:25
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a five meter dive like that.
40:27
[SPEAKER_06]: It usually takes around two and a half or three minutes.
40:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you describe it and I'm like, what?
40:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a trip almost.
40:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's a different life experience.
40:40
[SPEAKER_00]: People don't have that life experience in everyday life.
40:45
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
40:47
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a very, it's an experience that it's hard to describe with words because it doesn't really make it justice.
40:57
[SPEAKER_06]: Because it's also you moving around in a three-day environment.
41:03
[SPEAKER_06]: You're going from positively-born to neutral to negatively-born to free-falling.
41:12
[SPEAKER_06]: You're in such a different environment than we're used to.
41:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
41:18
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's a very strange experience that is hard to convey with words.
41:28
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a trip like you said.
41:29
[SPEAKER_06]: It's the best way to go away.
41:32
[SPEAKER_06]: described it.
41:33
[SPEAKER_00]: The only thing remotely similar that I've ever experienced would have been in a swimming pool and I would hold my legs and be in a ball and float with my back bobbing on the surface and then I would blow out all of my air and that way I could start to drop because a pretty lean guy I start to drop and I accelerate because my lungs are completely empty.
41:59
[SPEAKER_00]: and that you feel that acceleration until you bump into the bottom, which is, you know, just a few seconds.
42:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And then spring back up to the top.
42:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can't imagine the idea.
42:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I felt that acceleration.
42:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I get what you're talking about there, but I can't imagine what it would be like to be doing that at eighty meters.
42:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, so eighty meters is like two hundred and what?
42:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Two sixty two in feet.
42:22
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, something around there, right?
42:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, it's like a football field.
42:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we're talking about.
42:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost a football field.
42:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Deep.
42:31
[SPEAKER_04]: That's... Wow.
42:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something else.
42:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So... Why?
42:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Gotta ask the big why.
42:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I do it?
42:47
[SPEAKER_06]: Why do it?
42:49
[SPEAKER_06]: The... The straight answer is because it's so much fun.
42:53
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's so enjoyable.
42:56
[SPEAKER_06]: And I was talking about the free fall, the free fall is the reason why I do it.
43:02
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's the most enjoyable part.
43:07
[SPEAKER_06]: The free fall and having this experience of being whitelist and just also connecting to myself in a way that it's hard to do
43:22
[SPEAKER_06]: in different activities.
43:27
[SPEAKER_06]: Because when you meditate and you do different other activities, you can be in that state for a few seconds, maybe at the most.
43:35
[SPEAKER_06]: But here, like the dive that I described, you can be there for like three minutes.
43:41
[SPEAKER_06]: But three minutes feels, can feel longer as well.
43:44
[SPEAKER_06]: It feels short, but in the other way, it feels longer.
43:47
[SPEAKER_06]: It's hard to describe it.
43:48
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not like, because it's a trip.
43:52
[SPEAKER_06]: Hey, you're somewhere else.
43:57
[SPEAKER_06]: That's where to wise, because it's so enjoyable for me.
44:04
[SPEAKER_06]: And the activity that I feel takes me to this place of being in the present for the longest period of time as well.
44:16
[SPEAKER_06]: I think people, all the people that do other extreme sports, they feel similar experiences when they
44:23
[SPEAKER_06]: when they fly with a wing suit and so on.
44:27
[SPEAKER_06]: And here I just tap into that to the free diving.
44:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I have friends who are skydivers, and I've only done that once, but I used to give them a hard time, Alex, because they would say, yeah, man, I was flying for like, sixty seconds.
44:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't be in a scuba diver, I'd say, yeah, and I was flying for forty-five minutes.
44:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the beauty of being underwater, I think, to experience that.
44:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt in love with it as a kid, you know, and it sounds like it's something that... So, what is it about being underwater?
45:08
[SPEAKER_06]: The weightlessness, for me, that's a biggest part being weightless, being able to move in a three-day environment, however you want.
45:21
[SPEAKER_06]: you're not pushed down by gravity like we are now when we're just sitting like this when we're standing up gravity pushing down our shoulders and our feet to the ground here we're free to move however we want you can probably relate to when you school but I've you feel free in a very special way yes you can do so many different things that you cannot do on land and
45:51
[SPEAKER_06]: Being able to just fly, it's a very, I think, it's one of the closest way you can get to flying, and a lot of people's dream is to fly, being able to fly, right?
46:03
[SPEAKER_06]: Sure.
46:04
[SPEAKER_06]: And it is for me as well, and underwater I can do it.
46:11
[SPEAKER_06]: That's the closest I get to that feeling of flying, and that's also why I enjoy the free fall so much.
46:17
[SPEAKER_06]: It feels like flying.
46:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You get the sense of acceleration and soaring, I guess.
46:23
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, exactly.
46:24
[SPEAKER_06]: And also, freediving is a sport where it's like, the more you want to go down, the harder it will get to go down.
46:37
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's a sport where there's not a lot of big egos, thankfully.
46:43
[SPEAKER_06]: If you really want to free dive and to go into the sport with to break records or you want to beat other people, you will have quite a hard time because it's kind of like the ocean will not let you.
46:55
[SPEAKER_06]: The ocean will not let you go down there because to be able to go down you have to be able to let go of this.
47:04
[SPEAKER_06]: This urge of breaking records or the urge to prove something for someone else.
47:12
[SPEAKER_06]: If you do it for that reason, you will hurt yourself and you will not be able to dive that deep.
47:16
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a really silly analogy, but it's like Thor's hammer.
47:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't pick it up unless you have a pure heart.
47:22
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
47:24
[SPEAKER_06]: That's on point actually because I've seen a lot of freedives trying to get into the sport because they want to prove for someone else that they can do it or they want to only take a record or something.
47:37
[SPEAKER_06]: For me, it was never
47:40
[SPEAKER_06]: For that, I've always wanted to freedom for the reason that I said to extend this feeling of the free fall.
47:50
[SPEAKER_06]: And I never had on my mind that I would take a national record and a free diving Swedish record or anything.
47:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But you did end up competing and doing quite well at it.
48:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So what led you into free diving competitions?
48:04
[SPEAKER_06]: I was in a freediving place where there was a lot of competitive freedivers.
48:10
[SPEAKER_06]: I ended up freediving in the Philippines in Panglao, a small island close to Cebu, Bohol Island.
48:19
[SPEAKER_06]: And in that area there was a lot of competitive freedivers.
48:26
[SPEAKER_06]: they had some competitions and actually the funny thing is how I got into competition I just came to my mind was I was training in the pool and then there are pool competitions as well in free diving and this pool competition was she was she put to go into the pool competition to then to pay for training in the pool oh that's like okay I can be
48:55
[SPEAKER_06]: And you know, I was a backpack, you know, I was backpacking around Asia and I didn't have a lot of money.
49:02
[SPEAKER_06]: And so I was just trying to find the cheapest way to train.
49:06
[SPEAKER_06]: And I was like, OK, I'll just try this competition in the pool.
49:10
[SPEAKER_06]: And I did.
49:11
[SPEAKER_06]: I didn't really care so much about the results.
49:13
[SPEAKER_06]: And then that's how I got into the competition.
49:17
[SPEAKER_06]: And I enjoyed the whole scene around it because in the competitions you meet a lot of other freedivers and
49:23
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
49:24
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not so much about setting records or anything.
49:29
[SPEAKER_06]: Like it's more about enjoying each other's company, at least in that kind of competitions where it was not so much.
49:40
[SPEAKER_06]: It was not quite a small competition, luckily that I went into in the beginning.
49:46
[SPEAKER_06]: So that's how I got into it was because it was cheaper than the training.
49:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and you've been quite successful at it.
49:56
[SPEAKER_00]: There are different types of competitions and I jot it down some notes because I don't know what these are and I was hoping you could inform me and the rest of the audience here.
50:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Your records.
50:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see.
50:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's free immersion called FIM.
50:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And you did that to eighty meters, two hundred and sixty two feet.
50:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the only reason I knew what eighty meters was because I jotted that down.
50:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is free immersion?
50:23
[SPEAKER_06]: So free immersion is when you pull yourself down on the line.
50:28
[SPEAKER_03]: OK.
50:28
[SPEAKER_06]: You have a rope.
50:29
[SPEAKER_06]: In all the disciplines, you have a rope being attached on the surface on a floating device where a platform and this line goes straight down and it's attached to the bottom weight.
50:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, do you wear fins?
50:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a mask?
50:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a wet suit?
50:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, all those things.
50:48
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, in free immersion.
50:50
[SPEAKER_06]: And in all this, you usually have a, you have a wet suit.
50:53
[SPEAKER_06]: And you can have a mask if you want.
50:55
[SPEAKER_06]: Most competitive free divers.
50:57
[SPEAKER_06]: They only wear something called a nose clip.
50:59
[SPEAKER_06]: So you just have a device that's closing your nose.
51:04
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's it pretty much.
51:06
[SPEAKER_06]: And then in free immersion, you don't have any fins.
51:10
[SPEAKER_06]: So you're free on your feet.
51:13
[SPEAKER_06]: And you use the rope to pull yourself down and up on the line.
51:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's free immersion.
51:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
51:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's constant weight, CWT.
51:25
[SPEAKER_00]: What is this?
51:26
[SPEAKER_06]: The constant weight means that
51:31
[SPEAKER_06]: Why it's also called constant weight is that the weight that you bring down you have to bring up as well.
51:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
51:38
[SPEAKER_06]: So you swim down either with a monophine.
51:42
[SPEAKER_06]: It looks like a big dolphin fin.
51:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
51:46
[SPEAKER_06]: So you swim down.
51:47
[SPEAKER_06]: It's the deepest discipline and you swim with that and you go down to target depth and then you swim up and the weight that you bring down you have to bring up.
51:59
[SPEAKER_00]: goodness.
52:00
[SPEAKER_06]: That's what's called constant weights.
52:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So you use a little bit of weight to overcome the buoyancy of your wet suit or something.
52:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you use too much weight to accelerate your descent, you have to carry it back up again.
52:11
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so that is exactly.
52:13
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's a bit of like a personal preference.
52:15
[SPEAKER_06]: What people like if they want to have an EC ride down or if they want to struggle more on the way up, you know, I don't like the idea of struggling on the way up.
52:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And your record is eighty five meters.
52:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That's amazing.
52:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So is it quite different when you have the weight and you have the you set a monofin?
52:35
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, so when you have the monofin that's the fastest discipline and the dive that I went through when we when I was explaining how the dive went that's that was an example of free immersion.
52:45
[SPEAKER_06]: So with the monofin you go really fast.
52:48
[SPEAKER_06]: It's around one meter per second.
52:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
52:52
[SPEAKER_06]: so it's quite easy to calculate how long the diet will take and when you turn around from the bottom you can go quite fast up you know like if you don't feel like it down there you can sprint up so that discipline is less mentally demanding I would say than other disciplines okay because the free immersion discipline where you have to pull yourself up right
53:14
[SPEAKER_06]: That's quite slow, you know, you can only pull yourself that fast.
53:18
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
53:19
[SPEAKER_06]: But with the monophane, you can kind of sprint your upper and your breath, the breath hole will not be that long.
53:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but you're also using your muscles.
53:29
[SPEAKER_06]: You're using more muscles.
53:31
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, and you need to have quite a good technique as well.
53:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
53:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
53:36
[SPEAKER_00]: There are two more here.
53:38
[SPEAKER_00]: There is CNF with no fins.
53:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that constant weight as well or what is that?
53:46
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
53:46
[SPEAKER_06]: That's also constant weight.
53:47
[SPEAKER_06]: So all these disciplines that we compete in is in constant weight.
53:51
[SPEAKER_06]: So the weight that you bring down, you have to also bring up.
53:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
53:55
[SPEAKER_06]: And CNF stands for constant weight no fins.
53:59
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's another word for breast swimming breast stroke the way down and the way up.
54:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're using your arms now instead of the fin to propel yourself.
54:10
[SPEAKER_06]: So you do like a breaststroke technique and with that you will, and that's the shallowest discipline.
54:20
[SPEAKER_06]: The world record there is around, it's now a hundred and three meters.
54:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
54:25
[SPEAKER_06]: Wow.
54:26
[SPEAKER_06]: It's really deep and that discipline is the most physically and mentally demanding I would say as well.
54:35
[SPEAKER_06]: It's really, you need to have such a good technique to be able to do that deep.
54:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's C, W, T, B. That's constant weight with bifins is what?
54:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so explain that one.
54:48
[SPEAKER_06]: So that would be, like, the concept of weight with one of them, but you just put on bifins instead.
54:55
[SPEAKER_06]: So it will put on, you know, like, stalker infants, but usually in free diving we have longer fins.
55:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
55:04
[SPEAKER_06]: So we, the free diving fins are longer and you do stats to propel yourself down.
55:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And so your deepest depth was with the constant weight monofin at eighty-five meters, right?
55:20
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
55:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the no fins constant weight is your shallower depth, which ones your favorite?
55:31
[SPEAKER_06]: My favorite is free immersion.
55:34
[SPEAKER_06]: Free immersion.
55:34
[SPEAKER_06]: Just also pulling myself down and up on the line.
55:37
[SPEAKER_06]: That would be my favorite.
55:39
[SPEAKER_06]: Just because I really enjoy being able to close my eyes and go and inward more.
55:47
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
55:47
[SPEAKER_06]: That's what I enjoy most now and to have these really long dives.
55:52
[SPEAKER_06]: And with the monophane, it's more technique and you need your eyes open to be able to see where you're at the line and so on.
55:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
56:00
[SPEAKER_06]: you have to swim so with free immersion it's more for me it's more fun in the world journey now towards journey okay there's there's a quite a cheesy saying in freediving as scuba divers dive mostly to look around in freedives dive to look within I don't know if you heard that now that's good though I get that yes yeah so for me it's it's a lot about
56:27
[SPEAKER_06]: closing my eyes and turning in the words when I freedive.
56:31
[SPEAKER_06]: And with free immersion, I'm more allowed to do that.
56:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, what a sport.
56:37
[SPEAKER_00]: If people would like to take lessons from you and like you do courses in coaching and workshops and you reach out to people in a lot of ways, what's the best way that they can reach you?
56:47
[SPEAKER_06]: There will be through the websites and I'll send a freediver.com.
56:52
[SPEAKER_06]: Or my email, Alexander Friediver at gmail.com.
56:57
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
56:58
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I have an Instagram Alexander Friediver there as well.
57:02
[SPEAKER_06]: So one of those three.
57:04
[SPEAKER_06]: Now right now I'm based in the end of the Stockholm and Sweden where I'm teaching some courses in the quarry.
57:10
[SPEAKER_06]: Wow.
57:12
[SPEAKER_06]: But I'm doing online courses as well.
57:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's interesting.
57:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was going to ask you that too.
57:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean the water around Sweden is cold.
57:39
[SPEAKER_06]: here in the summer we go usually to a quarry where we can get around like four to meters and the visibility is around you can see your hand pretty much that's wow okay so you might as well keep your eyes closed you know that's maybe why I like keeping my eyes closed I'm so used to it right and in the winter
58:00
[SPEAKER_06]: Here's we don't guess really cold and the water is around two or three degrees plus Celsius and we do ice diving then actually so we make two holes in the day and ice and then we swim from one hole to another so we swim under the ice instead.
58:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a line or something to make sure you don't get lost?
58:26
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we have a line.
58:27
[SPEAKER_06]: We usually make this hole around a, uh, twenty meters apart from each hole and then we have a line we can follow.
58:36
[SPEAKER_06]: And we have a line yard, we have a line that we attach to the line.
58:40
[SPEAKER_06]: So someone can bring us up if something happens.
58:42
[SPEAKER_06]: But it's most dangerous thing that you can do in freediving, of course.
58:49
[SPEAKER_06]: So I would really not encourage anyone doing it if you're not taking care of the safety precautions.
58:57
[SPEAKER_06]: Before I can tell you a brief story, what happened to a friend of mine, just so people know how careful they should be.
59:06
[SPEAKER_06]: so this was a few years back here in Sweden in one of these quarries and I was not with him he's also an instructor he went there with his brother had done like the beginner freediving course so they went to this quarry they made two holes and he told his brother that he would swim from one hole to another and he would do breaststroke so he wouldn't have any fins on okay and
59:35
[SPEAKER_06]: And they didn't have a line going from one hole to another.
59:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Yikes.
59:40
[SPEAKER_06]: And so instead they attached a rope on his waist.
59:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
59:48
[SPEAKER_06]: So they put a rope on his waist and then he started to do the dive.
59:53
[SPEAKER_06]: Took his breath and he started to go.
59:56
[SPEAKER_06]: And just two meters away from the other hole.
1:00:01
[SPEAKER_06]: He realized that the rope was too short.
1:00:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh no!
1:00:06
[SPEAKER_06]: So he realized that he couldn't come any further and he was talking on the line to tell his brother to release the role right and after a few turns his brother didn't release the role so he started to swim back but at this point his brother actually released the role
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_06]: he didn't have any good points to go back to so he he started to swim back and he ran out of air and then he had a blackout under the ice sheets oh no what happened so there he blacked out and his brother was super stressed and he was walking around on the ice and he looked down and luckily he saw the rope and he grabbed the rope that he saw on the dice and he pulled him back up
1:00:57
[SPEAKER_00]: goodness.
1:00:57
[SPEAKER_06]: And at this point, he had been under the eyes for a minute or two and they tried to waking up.
1:01:08
[SPEAKER_06]: And they did what I was saying in the beginning.
1:01:10
[SPEAKER_06]: They put off his facial equipment.
1:01:13
[SPEAKER_06]: They blow tap-talk, tap on his cheeks and blow it and set his name.
1:01:18
[SPEAKER_06]: He didn't wake up.
1:01:20
[SPEAKER_06]: They were from school but I was on the lake doing school diving excursions.
1:01:27
[SPEAKER_06]: and they ran to the site and they started to do CPR on him.
1:01:33
[SPEAKER_06]: So they were doing CPR for a few minutes, they called the ambulance.
1:01:38
[SPEAKER_06]: and just by the time the ambulance arrived he started to coughing oh wow and he came he came by after they said it was around seven minutes he came wow it's the longest blackout that I've ever heard about usually you don't survive that's terrifying it's a word to the wise don't do this unless you really know what you're doing wow
1:02:05
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
1:02:06
[SPEAKER_06]: And be really careful if even if you think that you know what you're doing.
1:02:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Goodness.
1:02:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:02:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we used to try to see if we could swim the length of an Olympic pool both ways underwater.
1:02:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tell you by the time you get back to where you started, you know, it's very active.
1:02:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not so meditative like you're talking about because you're swimming with a breaststroke and trying to do your best.
1:02:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And man, it is so hard.
1:02:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Those those last ten meters.
1:02:34
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
1:02:35
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I know.
1:02:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Or even five meters.
1:02:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you finally get to take a breath.
1:02:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But being under the eyes.
1:02:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:02:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I can't imagine.
1:02:45
[SPEAKER_06]: Under the eyes.
1:02:47
[SPEAKER_06]: But for me, it's a good mental training.
1:02:50
[SPEAKER_06]: Because if you're under the eyes, even how badly you want to breathe, you can't breathe.
1:02:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
1:02:56
[SPEAKER_06]: You have to be okay with wherever you are.
1:03:00
[SPEAKER_06]: You have to be okay with being on the
1:03:03
[SPEAKER_06]: And the more you're okay with being there, the easier we'll get as well.
1:03:07
[SPEAKER_00]: The easier it gets, there's a real mental attribute to this.
1:03:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:03:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why.
1:03:14
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that is also something that I will, because you asked earlier, how this also translates to all the parts of life.
1:03:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_06]: The alcanus with everything like what I said with being in the airport and the flight is delayed and everything.
1:03:34
[SPEAKER_06]: When you're okay with when stuff happens?
1:03:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
1:03:38
[SPEAKER_06]: this rest goes away.
1:03:39
[SPEAKER_06]: So for anyone listening, if to take something away from this interview or this chat with her, I think a good thing is to be okay with stuff, even like saying okay to different life situations, that will help me a lot.
1:04:00
[SPEAKER_06]: And that is really helping me
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_06]: being able to calm down even in stressful situations.
1:04:10
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a beautiful place to wrap up.
1:04:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
1:04:13
[SPEAKER_00]: What a good summary of the whole thing.
1:04:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also love what you're saying.
1:04:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can make a little mantra out of that.
1:04:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Just be okay.
1:04:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Be okay with it.
1:04:21
[SPEAKER_06]: It's okay.
1:04:22
[SPEAKER_06]: It will be okay.
1:04:24
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not the end of the world.
1:04:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's beautiful.
1:04:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Alex, thank you so much for sharing your sport with us.
1:04:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and once again, the website is Alexander FreeDiver.com.
1:04:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why that's a tongue twister, but for me, it is.
1:04:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And also Instagram, all the rest, I don't remember what's your handle on Instagram.
1:04:44
[SPEAKER_06]: Alexander FreeDiver is Alexander FreeDiver everywhere.
1:04:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, then we've got it.
1:04:49
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
1:04:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Alex, thank you so much again for taking the time today to share your sport with us.
1:04:54
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
1:04:54
[SPEAKER_06]: Thanks, Kirk.
1:04:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And for all of those out there, the breath work, the mindfulness, being in the flow state.
1:05:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if all these things are appealing to you, maybe explore this.
1:05:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like an extreme sport when you can't breathe while doing your sport.
1:05:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, I totally get it.
1:05:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And until the next show, please do get out there and have some fun.
1:05:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Be safe.