Shark Freediving

Last weekend was time for the first Apnea Academy conference about freediving training. Kirk Krack wrote a small report about the weekend. Lidija Lijic provided some pictures to add to the story.

The conference has ended and the day of talks were interesting. Umberto presented a proposal of general training programs, Carlos a training program for constant ballast and Herbert his record video and slides of his 214m No-Limit record.

You get the impression from the majority of attendees comments at the wrap-up that there is Italian athletes and then the rest of the world and they were provided a glimpse as to how the world has progressed. Most Italian athletes are forbidden to compete in AIDA competitions especially if they are involved competitively in FIPSAS.

It was summed up how the Phd’s referred to some of our presentations from the ‘foreigners’ as the Italian professors referred to us and that they weren’t recommending some of our techniques because they haven’t been studied by them yet. Mostly this comment was directed at my presentation of ‘Pressure Adaptation; Theory and Exercises’ and the uses of negative diaphragm stretches, negative pressure dives, reverse packing and FRC dives. All of which are used by the top record holders in attendance.

The vast majority of the talks focused on training cycles, lactact thresh-hold training, aerobic vs anaerobic, 3 X 100m this and that and there was a presentation on the history of training as started by Enzo Maiorca and the differences between him and Jacques Mayol. Bob Croft was also mentioned during this and another presentation in reference to the history and development of packing or GI.

One talk by Prof Constantino Blanda, DAN and DAN Apnea Research Scietific Director, was on the use of 100% Oxygen to help enhance naturally occuring EPO within the brain. Doing this 24hrs prior to an event will increase potential ‘protective’ EPO in the brain, but the use of Oxygen this much before shouldn’t have a performance enhancing advantage. This however drew a lot of doping questions and comments.

Other than the presentations it was good to have social time with Bill Stromberg, Herbert, Carlos, Martin, Natalia and the rest of this crew. Always great insights, opinions and future plans/dreams around a dinner with a few glasses of wine in a person.

Now we’re on the train to Florence to see some of this beautiful country for the next 5 days and thank-you to Lucio for putting us up in Florence at his apartment while we’re there. We look forward to touring the family vinyard.

We left Craig Gentry behind at the conference hotel as he leaves tommorrow back to the Bahamas, but a big thanks to Craig who is the man with all the Intel and a great translator.

Hope you found these breifs I provided interesting and informative. Will try my best to answer any questions.

Ciao,

Kirk Krack
Performance Freediving