I am aspiring to be a better free diver. I love the sport.

But the truth is, like so many philosophies and religions, aspiring to and doing, often look very different.

Freediving isn’t about the depths a human can reach or the time a person can hold their breath underwater.

It’s about learning to be incredibly relaxed and at the same time developing impeccable form to move through the water with the least amount of resistance.

By mastering both of these disciplines, a person will, by default go deeper and for longer.

Another way of saying that to a newbies like me is the continual – ‘Head in, don’t look around, relax your legs, activate your core and numerous other instructions that I’m currently violating.

Much of the time I’ll be descending under water like some sort of rigid neoprene aquatic banana as my coach dives down after me trying to manipulate my bow shaped torso and inquisitive head that just won’t quit looking around rather than tucked in and stream line, or he will be jabbing my stiff legs that, unbeknown to me, clearly are not ‘zen relaxed’ enough.

And then there’s the safety etiquette of – do what you say you are going to do and no more. If you say ‘I’m going to go 10 metres, go 10 metres and come back.

Simple.

Well yes and no. It’s simple for a newbie like me until……until you realise ‘ohhh I massively underestimated this, I think I’m actually good to reach the bottom, how cool will that be?! Weeeeeeee!’.

Well it turns out, with the exception of how I feel, it’s not cool at all and it’s actually bad form and unsafe for my safety diver – ‘Bad sea banana’.

I’m lucky in the club I’m in.

I’m in good hands and have quality coaching. When I fuck up there’s always been someone clocking it. When I’ve thought to myself, ‘I’ve fucked that up a bit, but I think I got away with it’…I haven’t – someone’s always clocked me and ready to feed it back. When I’ve done well its been noted and when I need exercising, they stick me out with the big boys and girls to kick my ass up and down the pool.

I’d be less lucky if I was in some of the clubs we’ve watched this weekend whose attention to detail and safety was severely lacking. Basically they all looked and behaved like me….and that was just the instructors. So a recipe for disaster all round.

Its human nature to want to be doing to the cool stuff. The slick stuff that attracts us initially to so many things that interest us. Freediving is no exception.

The problem is with anything in life, we enjoy instant gratification.

We want to do the exciting stuff that we see people doing. We want to do this week at the latest, what we seem to forget (or don’t want to recognise), has actually taken someone years of hard work and dedication to achieve.

And when we are new we are like kids in a candy store. It’s the famous ‘marsh mellow test’ all over again! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment)

I love having a look around when I swimming about. Not only do I like seeing where I’m going, I also hate tucking my head in as it feels like I’m missing the ride.  It can appear like the difference between racing or walking a scenic coastline. When you are racing, you hardly notice the scenery. Its head down until the end. But when you walk the same route, you experience so much more of the surroundings.

Also learning good form is time consuming and repetitive. Its like being kept in for detention doing lines while your mates are kicking the ball outside the classroom window.

I can only speak for myself, but as a Newbie diver, I want to be down the deep end where the fun is.

It’s just a grown up version of choosing whether you want to spend your school swimming lessons diving for the brick back or doing lengths. It’s got to be the brick!

But it’s not a sustainable mind set for progression in freediving or, in many cases, life in general.

We can only go so far with a kamikaze attitude. Sooner or later we will crash and burn.

So what can we do to change this?

One idea is to create ‘association’.

Association to something better than we currently have or away from something more painful than we currently feel.

To use the same example. I like seeing where I’m going. I like looking around at what’s going on under the water. Not only is it less likely that ill knocked into something or someone, but it’s just more interesting.

But it’s also holding me back. I’m in the marshmallow trap.

So I need to marry these two opposing ideas – looking around vs getting better –  if I want to progress.

Something one of my coaches said this weekend that amalgamated these two opposing needs is very much like setting any goal and works as a nice metaphor external to freediving.

He said you have to get clear about what you want to see and where it is location wise before you get on the rope.

Once you’ve decided, until that destination point, you’ve got to ignore anything else around you. The only thing you should be paying attention to is how you feel internally and what you form is like.
The time for looking around – the only time –  is when you arrive at the destination – whether that’s the bottom of the pool or sea, a wreck, or any other interesting point you’ve agreed to get to.

All the way down that rope there’s going to be distractions – the instant gratifications of this world.

There’s going to be lots of things to disrupt my concentration and my form.

But in order to get to where the really cool stuff is – (whatever that is for each of us) –  I must spend the time learning to be more zen like, totally zoned out and only concentrating on how I feel internally on the decent rather than ‘hey look at that fish….. and that one…..oh and that one…..am I there yet?……oh fuck I’m out of air!’

The bottom line is, form needs to be worked on because it’s going to get us to the fun stuff. It will even make the boring stuff seem cool because it will just become easier the more we do.

It may be dull in and of itself, just practicing leg strokes up and down the pool, but it will be perceived differently and easier to sustain the training when there’s the idea of say-  ‘do this and you will be able to dive and stay down with a Whale one day’ waiting for us at the end for us.

Our ability to achieve things isn’t about will power, it’s about incentive. It’s about incentives that connect to our values and our beliefs.

If we align these properly, will power is very rarely required, but if it is, it’s only needed to light the spark of motivation rather than to fuel the entire objective, which will power can never sustain.

It’s also remembering neither way is wrong or right. It’s simply about what we want and more importantly ‘why’.

If I’m happy where I am, I need to acknowledge that and say, ‘that’s cool’.

Sometimes we are striving for things we already have, but are so focused on what we think we are missing, we actually miss what we already have that really makes us happy.

That being said, if we do want to achieve something different, we can’t stay where we are.

I’m probably at the limit of progression in my diving if I don’t work on the areas I’m critiqued on.

Again, who cares if I look like an inquisitive banana in the water if I’m having fun? I for one don’t.

Crack on and enjoy yourself.

If you can recognise it you’ll be miles ahead of a lot of people who are striving but never finding.

But what I do care about and what I want, is what comes with getting better. I’m not bothered about being a sea banana, but I am bothered where the limits of being an aquatic banana tethers me to.

I’m under no illusion. I’m going to be world class, if for no other reason than because I don’t put either the time or dedication in that’s needed.

That’s never been my objective. I just want to stay under water for longer and see fish and explore wrecks that are predominately fairly deep underwater……and dive with a maaa-hu-sive whale one day.

Goals are about knowing ‘why’ and ‘what’ we want and using that as our incentive.

But once we have our beacon of ‘why’, where we need to get busy at is, is at the process point. The ‘how to’. The ‘Everything along the rope’

If we get the work needed on the rope right – the process – The pre dive prep, the technique and form needed for smooth decent, the relaxation required to preserve oxygen levels and all the other stuff I’ve probably missed – the destination will be a bi product of those efforts.

But that’s all Dandy. It’s true but it’s also a lot of theory.

By knowing this will I be a model student? Will I be laser guided every session? Will my form suddenly become flawless and never to be corrected again through this freediving evolution? Will I never again thug my way past where I’m comfortable just to reach the marshmallow, – aka the bottom or the end of the pool? Will I be more pissed than Zen when it’s not going as I want or being told what to do rather than what I’d rather do?

Of course not. I’ll do all those things. But hopefully not as much. And it’s not just about being new at something. It’s simply about growing. And if we are growing not even the pros are immune to this stuff. They just getting better at acknowledging and resolving it.

Each time we get a new perspective we can never think the same way again.

Each time our values are attached to an objective it’s much harder to violate the process.

When we are aligned to something we intrinsically believe in, we find it much easier to resist instant gratification.

When we have no direction, we seek distraction. When we have an innate mission, we shun distraction.

Success is not about who we are. It’s about where we are.

Because where we are dictates what we see, what we hear and what we feel.

For us to make changes, we don’t have to change who we are, we just have to metaphorically change the position we stand in. By doing this we won’t have biologically changed, but the way we perceive things and how we respond will be totally different.