Keeping Up With Technological Advances

17/01/2022

You might have noticed that there are a lot of new brands of bifins, a lot of new models, and even if you looked at some competitions in Dive Eye, you might have seen some differences in the techniques, compared to what was taught a few years ago. This big evolution came with new equipment but also since bifins became an official discipline, we can really see a boom. We have better materials designed, better blades, open heels, new footpockets, and that means there is a necessity also to adapt your technique to these new materials.

To adapt your technique to these new materials, my advice would be to forget about the 100% straight leg with the movement coming only from the hips. We tend now to use the whole legs, not only the quads but also the calves and the ankles. And we go for smaller amplitude with higher frequency.

The smaller amplitude just makes you more hydrodynamic, you create less drag, because, obviously, your legs are less wide open, so there is less drag on your way down and on your way up. Also, you use not only the quads but the whole set of muscles of your legs, so, the lactic is not concentrating only in one part of your body and it makes you more resistant to it.

Moreover, we tend to go faster, because if you are too slow at great depths, you have too much narcosis, and for any depth, it extends your dive time. That can lead to more urge to breathe, more hypoxia, so definitely people tend to go a bit faster now, like one meter per second.

If I wanted to talk about this change of technique that I can completely relate to, when I did my -110 meters, I went very old school and with stiff fins. And I still made it but I used to be an ultra runner! I had the legs, but even with these, I felt like "to go deeper, it's going to be really tough on my legs". So, what can I do? And I talked with other top athletes, and checked a bit the new materials, and going to much softer fins is also one of the new trends. Most deep divers in bifins use very soft fins, this way you can really use tiny amplitude high frequency and use a lot of your calves and ankles in addition to the rest of your legs. That's what I'm working on at the moment. To work on this, don't go right away on your deep dives. There is no point, we never work on techniques close to our PB, take it easy. Do a lot of shallow dives, repetition, even swimming pool, and a very good tool is of course to have a buddy make a video of you so that after you can analyze a little bit and watch your technique. The difference between what you feel and what you are actually doing can be sometimes a bit wide even if you have good body awareness. I hope this video will help you a little bit adapt your technique and choose your materials for your bifin performances.