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They say that if you want to get better at something, you need to surround yourself with people who are better than you. I had the amazing opportunity to implement this idea while I was in Cyprus and Turkey during the AIDA and CMAS World Championships this year, where I met over 200 freedivers at various stages in their freediving careers. I trained with them, picked their brains, and generally had an amazing time talking about freediving all day, every day with them. As a result, I picked up a lot of amazing tips and tricks which have greatly improved my understanding of freediving and my ability to be a better and safer diver, which I am excited to share with you all.
After I did the commentary for the two world championships, I traveled to Dahab, Egypt where I spent a month training, fun diving and generally having an awesome time. I would start my day by going to train in the morning at the Blue Hole, then have a lovely breakfast at Aquamarina, and head back to town where I would take a nap and spend the rest of the day either working or hanging out with friends. Since Dahab is full of amazing people who are always diving, I found myself always either going to the Blue Hole pretty much every day or going fun diving, and sometimes doing both on the same day!
I was having the time of my life: diving with some of my favorite people in the world, pushing depth, training with some of the best names in freediving, and enjoying perfect dive conditions with amazing wildlife. After the first week few weeks of this routine, I started to notice the progress that I was making starting to decrease. I began to feel myself getting burnt out, losing motivation, and not feeling as comfortable as I did at the beginning of my training.
After chatting with a few friends, they reminded me that resting is an important part of training, to which I said “yeah, of course, I know that!” And yet I had still fallen into the overtraining trap. I was there for a few weeks with essentially as much depth as I could ever want with the best conditions I had ever seen and was determined to make the most out of it. As a result of diving and training hard, pretty much every day, and not giving my body a chance to rest and heal, I burnt out very quickly and that set me back time in my training. Once I incorporated rest days into my schedule, training got easier, it became fun once more and I continued to progress again!
I share this whole story to illustrate the point that, even though someone might know that rest is important to incorporate into a training routine, it's still very easy to ignore that fact. So, I suggest implementing a rule like two days on, one day off for training and, on that off day, doing something out of the water. It could be something like going for a hike with friends, going for a drive and exploring, or something else. Alternatively, if you need to make sure you stay out of the water, use your off days to deep clean your equipment so you can’t take it anywhere!