Day 3 - Feel the Edge BEFORE: I did a lot at my workday, and ended up very nervous and anxious about its results. I work in sales, and you see, I'm working on my future monofin, so if I want to start training it somewhere in 2026, I gotta work hard😁 (I'm sure you see the principle why I don't like what I do and why sometimes all the stress and pressure translates into freediving...) I did day 3 right before the strength training, seeing it as a easy warm-up. X-PAND: I did some light stretching. X-HALE: triangle breathing felt good. I noticed that 4-4-8 might be a little bit fast for me normally, but considering how stressful I was today it was probably fitting... Didn't calm down though. X-HOLD: I did some 30+ seconds on full exhale with 1.30 intervals. I measured my BOLT score last summer and there it was 90, so I didn't consider such short exhale holds a big deal, so I tried to shorten resting intervals. They felt like I was breathing, I sat still, and saw no inordinary body signals at all. Last time was 60 seconds instead of 30, I was just curious if CO2 will show up (it finally did at 0'58''😁) X-PRESS: I jogged outside for 5 minutes (despite it was snowy) breathing through my nose, it felt good and as a good warm-up right before my strength training session. Maybe if I breathed through whatever feels right (either nose or mouth) it would feel more natural, but it was enough air for me for breathing through my nose. X-FACTOR: Here is the difficult part. I don't care about the usual high-CO2 'urge to breathe' when it comes, as well as about contractions. So mantras are either not nessessary for me, or - they don't help when the very reason I exit my long dives shows up. So, for the relaxation purpose, I want to learn to return to that 'dreamy' state when i either daydream about my future or the 'observant' state when I'm actuall in that future, but seeing everything with my own eyes. And for competitions and scoring good results, I want to withstand whatever my body throws at me to get good numbers, so I want to be all fiery and fighty, and never ever surrender to anything.

Day 2 - Calm in the Chaos ----------------------------------------- BEFORE: It was early in the morning, right after sleeping. I remembered my old CO2 tables when I did them (right after my base freediving training), and I was feeling curious how it would feel now. Also, I knew it should be a DNF leg-day pool session in the evening, so I decided to go more easy on myself. X-PAND: I did some light stretching right before starting the CO2 table. X-HALE: I did purge breaths (still, my purge breaths told me right from the beginning that I'm hyperventilating because I felt dizzy and tingly in my fingers, and heavy on my head), so I took my time with deep belly breathing to reset. I also enabled a beautiful ambient on my YouTube to see if it helps (from my previous experience, it didn't help but I gave it a try). X-HOLD: I wrote a CO2 table in Apnea Freediving Trainer for myself so it wouldn't conflict with YouTube song playing in the background. The times were fixed but quite good: I set them as 2'40'' (allowing myself to hold less if I need to - I still remember day 1, there was a sub-max, so should be careful). Well, everything was easy. I thought in a moment I could do this table with 3 or even 3'15-3'20'' times, so it would be some time for comfort, some time for urge to breathe, and some contractions time. There were no contractions, just a slight urge to breathe in the end. No matter how short was the interval, I felt the same while holding, it was easy. X-PRESS: I did all the exercises as it was intended, and quite honestly, I felt like I could do a breath once a round, but I still took 1 breath between each exercise as it was intended. X-FACTOR: calming ambiend music was actually good, not sure if it helped, but, I was feeling good. I hoped that it would change my mindsed into the dreamy one when I will daydream about my future freediving when I'm exploring the reef or relaxing in my own coral garden underwater, staying really long there together with my family and friends... Still, I just 'functioned through' - no difference with me existing when breathing, no some unordinary reaction. The time felt the same.

Hey, I decided to do the program in the classroom, so I want to provide some feedback. Hope you'll see and provide some thoughts about that. I also hope that for some people who hesitate to do it, I'll provide an example that it's both useful, full, informative, entertaining and fun!😁 There will be 5 parts. Sadly I didn't have time to post 3 parts that are already here on according days, so I'm doing it now, and parts 4 and 5 will follow tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Day 0 - background ------------------------------- I guess everyone will get entirely different results from this program (or not get the obvious progress - as I see clearly from myself and my coach's experience, freediving progress can sometimes be hard to spot, and building a solid base might feel like a plateau!), but I will provide some context and try to be as precise as possible. I do freediving for 3 years. 99% of the time I train dynamic apnea in a pool, individually with my coach (3 pool sessions and 2 strength sessions per week), my focus is competitive freediving mid-term, and long-term changing my lifestyle from on-land job-family-money typical life to the living in the Pacific 100% off-grid with my own coral garden on an island, embracing both the wilderness and the tenderness of the Big Blue.🧜‍♂️ I haven't done any serious STA attempts for 1.5 years until this program, and I never did consistent STA to improve it (sadly, I don't have time for that, maybe if I hadn't had to work I'd do it...) 1.5 years ago I have set my PB 5'15" for which I fought for about 3 minutes with my CO2 discomfort :) So if my DYN skills are probably good (at least my coach tells me so), I feel like I'm falling behind with STA-related skills such as relaxation and the ability to win mind games with my urge to breathe, and the overall mindset is another point of my concern... Day 1 - Awaken the Breath ----------------------------------------- BEFORE: I was quite anxious of this one. This is a sub-max STA, and I didn't do any STA in 1.5 years, and didn't score good in it anyway! So even if I do it for myself, I'm honestly scared. I chase numbers along with freediving joy, and yes, I know what ego is, but numbers are really important to me (if you're interested why check my 1st post somewhere below👇) I finally agreed with myself that I won't push, and I will consider my NON-PUSHING result not as a max/PB attempt. I felt like if I'm gonna end up with a bad result I lose self-respect, and this haunted me until I tried it out.

To all the fish (72 Members) in this group: check out the calendar here! This is the date and time when Renee is running a new freediving training session! I can tell from experience - her knowledge and skills are amazing - she helped the members of the 2 groups of last year quite a bit - for me it was more than doubling the time of breathhold! :) If you have time - come on and join! The more the merrier! Just because Renee doesn't charge doesn't mean it has no value! What else could one possibly do on a saturday??? ;) PS - talking about the more - if everybody sends out one invite to their diving buddies we could become a really great community - sharing tips and locations of cool diving spots in the respective home country (just a thought).

Hey y'all, for the upcoming training - if it is taking place - I might come in about 30 to 40 minutes late... In the meantime I did some consistent repetitions of using the lumbar stretch device and breathing slowly in and out for 10 minutes - so far my result is 14 breaths. Anyone taking up the challenge? If you don't have a lumbar stretch device you can also use a yoga block ;) What type of training are you doing now? hope we get some activities going up again... cheers Martin PS - by the way - we are over 70 members now! I know the time zones might not work for everybody - but hey maybe we can have some fun on saturday!?