My Breath Holding Technics

Check your 6! .. That means your back right? An ole Kenpo stuff (clock wise positioning)

Great blog, and very useful techinques, thank you for sharing..

I think larger slow kicks are more efficient coming up from depth since you are negative. When your fin is bending, you are moving. Where short kicks back and forth are not efficient because of less bend in blade.

my 2 cents

What makes me think.. Please go to the forum´s main page and get a close look at the spearfishing vid of the month in which Jaco´s Bilgnaut´s depicted recovering a huge mussel cracker at almost 100 feet. Damn this guy could be both a spearfishing legend and a champion but his strokes are to fast and too many, he never falls or planes through the water column, instead he keeeps kickin´and kickin´like there was not tomorrow . If i did the same thing, i could hardly hit the 50 feet mark and a bottom time of 20 seconds tops.

Could you please explain the proper technique, do you mean sculling?

good point monster. i dont know how that guy in that video doesnt blackout. he kicks like he is running from a shark.

I can tell you right now that deep freedivers don't use only their calf muscles to surface from deep dives. Just one example would be Martin Stepanek. He uses a lot more than his calf muscles, and I guarantee his finning is pretty efficient.

Quote from av001

good point monster. i dont know how that guy in that video doesnt blackout. he kicks like he is running from a shark.

guys, I'm thinking 2 reasons: 1-) he is wearing very little weight so he'd have to kick to at least 60-70'. 2-) he may have been diving with a strong current and in order to drop on the same spot, he'd have to kick constantly to correct his drop

good point oto:thumbsup2:

el tipo es un cohonudo. where is the smiley with big cohones?

Pipin Ferreras also has a strong unorthodox fin stroke. He's also unusually muscular for a successful freediver. I like the idea of maintaining a strong stroke throughout the dive. I've put too much emphasis in the past on doing everything with minimal effort. It doesn't lead anywhere good, maybe falling asleep and blacking out.

My take on that video is this: For starters, the guy is great. If you look at the video(first part with timer) you'll see it seems he's chasing something somewhat into a bit of current. As soon as he gets to the hole(shoots I guess) you can see him backing out quickly and the part ends. I am guessing he shot and got the hell outta there in a hurry. Second, the next drop is much more controled and is from the other side of the hole(with the current).
I am saying this because he was chasing something(head forward gun pointed), that isn't his usual drop. Also, he's wearing what seems to be little weight.

Don`t know, maybe so.. But the safety parameters in this sport are so tight, that even a spearfishing legend should look for safer feats .. He`s pitting his skills against strong current and deep water .. Recovering glory at the gates of disaster so to speak .. Never forget, holding your breath and cheatin`death ..

To him it is only 92 ft. I'm certain to him that's like a 30ft dive to us.

I had the opportunity to dive with Derek LeVault and he was filming some video. He would outdive the person he was filming and as soon as they got up he would follow the next person down a couple seconds later and do the same. He dove 120ft deep in 10ft vis and followed a hogfish around down there like it was nothing.

Quote from Spearo_fla

Look I'm only posting what works with me, if it's not what you want to do don't do it, you may have a better way. I'm basing my post on my experience and over 10 years of freediving spearfishing.

And it is greatly appreciated!! Could you please elaborate a bit more about ascent kicking technique? Thank you in advance

Like there are different fighting styles in MMA, I believe there are different diving styles. Someone with a similar diving style will recognizes the advantages of certain information presented, others will stick to what they've been doing for years. I came to believe in the benefits of being lightly weighed, that was a change for me.

Freediving videography IMO is the best way to improve breath hold. If you don't know why try it. You have to do the whole dive of the person you're filming and more. The fact that you're watching them gives you focus and at the same time gets rid of the psychological barrier, because you're seeing them do it so there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to. This is of course if you don't start with filming Jaco Blignaut I plan to do more videography but the viz is an obstacle to filming here.