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As we progress throughout our freediving journey, it becomes quite important to keep a dive log as it offers a great insight into tracking progress, especially for those of us with a freediving brain. Here's what Simona Auteri keeps track of.
My journey in freediving started in the cold lakes of England, armed with a 5mm spearo suit and 4 kgs on my belt to fight the icy waters. That’s the same equipment I have been using when I first moved to Dahab to train last winter, and throughout my first two competitions in Egypt. With that setup, I managed to dive to 73m with bifins and set two Italian National Records in CTWB (AIDA). However, my deeper dives were affected by hypoxia or light sambas.
Once back in Europe I entirely changed my set-up, starting with my new Alchemy V3-30 fins, 1.4kg Alchemy neck weight (i was one of the lucky freedivers to sample it, as it is not commercially available yet), 0.5 kg on the belt, and a super smooth 1.5mm competition wetsuit. The results have been pretty astonishing, as I gained 10 seconds in speed on my deepest dives, I progressed to 76m depth, and, most of all, I haven’t been struggling with any hypoxia with perfectly clean exits.
I have recently moved my journaling of dive logs from scattered pieces of papers to a more organized excel sheet, and that gives me a great advantage when looking back at a particular performance, when increasing depth, or working on a technique, to have a reference on dive time.
What to log is personal, and I have compared my own log with those of other professional freedivers, but generally, I like to keep track of:
- Date
- Location
- Water temperature and thermocline
- Wetsuit thickness
- How many weights
- Number of dives in a day
- Depth
- Dive time, touchdown time, and ascent time
- Competition or training dive
- How was my exit and feelings about the dive
Most dive computers allow you to transfer dive information from the computer to an electronic log, and the amount of data available in some models can be astonishing, as some of them now include GPS and compass functions, thermocline information, and heart rate at depth.