Don't Just Hope That Everything's Gonna Go Perfect

08/03/2022

Freediving is not the simplest of sports. You are submerged underwater and you cannot breathe, how comfortable can that be? We train though, and we become better, safer, and deeper freedivers, learning new stuff every step of the way. But how do we deal with problems that may come up? And, yes, if something happens at -30m, then we'll take care of it pretty easily I suppose, but what happens if an issue arises at -110m? How do you train for such a scenario? In E1 of our freediving podcast, Harry Chamas shared his views on the subject.

From Parasympathetic To Sympathetic

"It's genetically in or it's like evolution, that we switch from parasympathetic to sympathetic in just a moment, right? If you imagine, in prehistoric times, you are in the cave, you are eating your woolly mammoth or whatever, then all of a sudden, some dangerous animal pack attacks. You can't slowly switch into this fight or flight mode, that needs to happen in an instant. And the same thing can happen in a dive. You could have done the best breathe up ever, rest, perfect, even to fairly perfect, then something might happen, and then boom. But why did that happen? Why did you lose your relaxation? Why did you go from parasympathetic to sympathetic"?

Experience And Training

"Well, because you had this feeling that you couldn't handle the situation you were in, you were faced with something that you didn't know how to deal with, and then boom, you lose it. But if you are asking yourself to do something that, you know, you can do, anything that could happen, you've already mentally prepared yourself for, then there's nothing that can like make you lose your relaxation, that can wake you up out of this flow state. And this comes with like experience and training and being very wholesome with how you approach your diving in the first place. Not just train to always do everything perfectly. But train to also handle problems that come up. Prepare yourself for the worst and then nothing can surprise you. Nothing is that bad if you've already imagined the worst possible situations happening and know that you can still deal with them. Then anything, anything that pops up it's already in your realms of control. You can't just hope that everything's gonna go perfect and not prepare for it if it doesn't, you know. Because if everything goes to s**t, and you're at 140 meters, you're dead. People die on the sled, you know"?

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