We are happy to announce that our ambassador, Mateusz Malina has set another world record, during the 2019 CMAS Freediving Indoor European Championship that was held in Istanbul, Turkey. In the competition dynamics in the fins (DYN), the Pole reached a distance of 316 meters.

Mateusz Malina is one of the most decorated DYN divers in the world. After three days of the tournament, he won three medals in all colors. On the first day in the competition without fins - DNF, he won silver. He expected it to be a winning distance, but during the last competition, Frenchman Guillaume Bourdil set a new world record and won the gold medal with a fantastic performance. On the second day of the championships, he won a bronze medal in statics (STA). On the last day of the tournament, it was time for the DYN category, which gave Matt a gold medal and a new world record.

As he says about his record in DYN:

“I couldn’t dream about this result many years ago but hard work, dedication, countless sacrifices, constantly digging into and questioning current methods of training, lots and lots of patience, infinite curiousness of discovering human body limits made this dream become a reality. This is not the end of the road. This is just the beginning of new era in pool freediving. Dive safe and enjoy the blue. Now the depth season starts for me!”

And if you've ever wondered what a diver thinks during a dive, you can find out by watching the video below:

Matt Malina surprises us with each and every tournament he takes part in. At the end of June the Individual AIDA Pool World Championships took place in Belgrade, Serbia.

Matt defended his DNF World Champion title and won a medal in each discipline he took part in – as the only competitor!

In his best discipline, the DNF (no-fin dynamics) he placed 1st and defended his World Title, diving 226m on June 28th, 2018 which is unofficial World Record in an Olympic pool (50 m long). It’s worth mentioning that this was his 3rd time in a row winning this discipline!

In DYN (dynamics with a monofin) Matt says he “got lucky” and won a bronze medal diving 203m. The last start of the tournament was the STA (static holding breath underwater) discipline, where Matt also won the bronze medal AND a National Record of 8 minutes 46 seconds!

The tournament lasted 6 days day-after-day, without a break, which really took a toll on the participant’s bodies. Matt says:

It was a tiresome time, but now that it’s over I can say I’m very proud of myself. In the general classification (all points) I lost after a tough fight with Goran Colak by 0,8 point (which is 4 seconds). It’s not the goal, but the road to it that counts. These kind of tournaments have their own dynamics, their ups and downs and I got to experience the full spectrum! :)
During those 6 days I had one hard day, when the tiredness caught up with me as well as the pressure, which resulted in me giving up on my dive too early – during the DYN finals after turning at 200m I was feeling like 250m during training – I couldn’t fight it, my body wouldn’t listen.

What’s important, every tournament start is a lesson for future dives, there are no failures. After all, you can’t win everything.

As usual a huge support was Matt’s wife Aleksandra, who he claims to be responsible for half of his successes! :)

This time, the tournament was joined by Matt’s training partners Karol Karcz and Michał Dąbrowski, and the support of the “Limitless Team” was visible throughout the whole tournament.

Matt would like to thank everyone who supported him during his preparations as well as during the tournament and is proud to be able to represent his home country Poland on the international level with many great athletes!

The Individual AIDA Pool World Championships took place at the end of June 2018 and Magdalena Solich-Talanda was killing it! The strongest current female freediver proved herself again!

Magda defended her DNF (no fins dynamics) World Title with a dive of 178m on June 28th, 2018 and won gold in DYN (dynamics with monofin) with a 243m dive, while establishing a new World Record on June 29th, 2018. The previous record was set by the late Natalia Molchanova, the best freediver of the current times, which really sets in perspective Magda’s achievement!

Magda is true to the saying that dreams are MADE true and she says:

Some of my dreams I have already made true, some are still a work-in-progress. But behind every success are people and companies, without whom all of this wouldn’t be possible.”

She then proceeded to thank her sponsors, trainers, training partners and the fans.

Stay tuned for the future!

The Story

I am a teacher of physical education by profession and passion, specializing in the correction of postural defects in children. I am a swimming trainer and I’m teaching children how to swim and improve their swimming techniques.
Since childhood, I was active in sports and my older brothers instilled in me the love for volleyball. In high school swimming classes gave me so much joy that soon I became a lifeguard. I knew it was too late for me to start a swimming career, but why not become a pro freediver?

How it all began

In all honesty, I met freediving much later in life then high school. During my last year of studies I worked at one of the swimming pools in Katowice, where I met a girl doing freediving. She was training for the Polish Championships and I told her, "If you become the Polish Champion, then I must also start training." It happened and I kept my promise!

First steps

One year later (2015) I competed in the Pool World Championships in Belgrade and placed 3^rd in DNF (146m). Next season I worked hard with two of my coaches: Ryszard Szwajcer from the Edensport Diving Center and Mateusz Talada (privately my  husband) and the results exceeded all expectations! TWO World Champion titles, five national records, including one new world record.

What’s next?

Someone might ask what is more to wish for? My answers are: becoming better each day, learning perseverance, overcoming your own weaknesses, proving to people and, above all, to myself that there are no limits.

A passion in sports creates beautiful memories, lots of endorphins, but at the same time also teaches you how to stay humble, how to deal with losses and how to get up afterwards.

I'm going to the top and I'm not surprised that the road is going uphill.

Season 2018

I have been preparing for the last two years for the highest-ranking swimming freediving competition: the Individual AIDA World Championships. This year they will take place at the end of June in Belgrade, Serbia.

During the last few months I participated in two local competitions in Poland as a test run. During one of the starts I dived 200 meters without fins (DNF) and this is better than the current world record by 9m!

In Belgrade I will participate in two competitions: Dynamic apnea with fins (DYN) and Dynamic apnea without fins (DNF).

20 more days to go! Keep your fingers crossed!

The freediving season is slowly starting and the best freedivers in the world are warming up for the upcoming world championship competition.

Matt Malina, Grena® sponsored athlete started out strong with breaking yet another of his records!

Fazza Championships 2018 in Dubai

An early spring competition is the Fazza Championships, which is being held annually in Dubai, UAE to commemorate the country’s ancestors. This year it took place on 23 – 24 March, 2018.

2015 was Matt’s first attempt at the competition  and fromt here he slowly started to adjust his training to suit the rules of the to the competition – very different than the AIDA. To put it simply, it’s a competition in static breath-hold, holding on to a rope without any equipment.

When asked, what motivates him in his journey as a freediver and athlete, Matt always says it’s to surpass his own limits. During this competition, he proved himself right and surpassed his limits with a dive of 10 min and 4 seconds and taking 2nd place in the competition.

First place took the amazing Goran Colak, with incredible 11 minutes 6 seconds and 3rd to Veljano Zanki with 9 min 21 seconds. There was also a 4th person in a party, Branko Petrovic with ~10 minutes 10 seconds but was disqualified due to blackout.

Preparing for Fazza involved a lot of fasting and caloric restriction. Matt started at the Fazza competition weighting 72 kg, which is 14kg (!) less then when he was in his top dynamics shape while setting world records in world championships in 2016. That is a huge change in the body and how it works under water.

About the dive, Matt says:

“The attempt was enjoyable and kind of easy compared to my last year performance. I was pretty surprised. I did my maximum for that day, so I can’t complain about the end result. However I’ve made some mistakes during training phase. I’m already looking forward for next year training.”

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the amazing support of Matt’s wife – Ola, who supported him during the preparations, often sacrificing a lot of time to help Matt train. Not without an importance was the help of Matt’s training partners Karol Karcz and Michal Dabrowski!

Matt also adds:

“I would like to thank my official sponsor Grena LTD for their continuous support!”

We are happy to support you, Matt! And wish you great success in the coming season!

Next stop:

Matt’s next competition will be on home turf in Jaworzno, Poland on May 12th and in the Czech Republic the following week. The next Championship competition will be in less than 3 months at the AIDA Individual Pool World Championships. The event will be held from June 23 to July 1, 2018 in Belgrade, Serbia.

Bonus: Matt talks at an TEDx event

Matt will talk at a local TEDxWSB event in Wroclaw, Poland on Tuesday, pril 24th at 10:20 AM about Freediving and how to manage your emotions. The talk will be in Polish, but let’s hope for some English subtitles coming soon!
You can watch the stream here: https://www.facebook.com/WSBwroclaw/

In September 2016, at the Brno MiniComp in Czech, Matt Malina attempted to break the current record in Bi-Fin dynamics. 

First of all, some background info. Matt usually competes in competitions defined by AIDA rules - one of the biggest freediving organizations. 

The bi-fin dynamics discipline is not officially recognized by AIDA, but it is by CMAS and Pure Apnea (other organizations and other conditions). The competition (Brno Minicomp 2016) was organized on AIDA/Pure Apnea standards, thus this record is official by Pure Apnea standards and unofficial (not recognized) by CMAS. 

There are 3 different techniques for swimming with bi-find, and Matt went with the one which proved to be the most effective for him, the "hands above the head and dolphin kick".

With having 4 (yes, four!) training sessions with bi-fins behind him, Matt attempted to break the current World Record, which was at 226,5 m, done by Andrea Vitturini (ITA) during CMAS 9th Indoor World Championships. 

As Matt says about the results:

"I came up crystal clean at 231 meters and got 2 meters off my performance because of turning below the step. I knew it will happen but decided to not care about it during the dive. Relaxation is the key and I was focusing on that. I think with flat pool, fully optimized and pushing to my maximum, 250 + should be very well possible, but lets keep something for the future."

We will definitely look forward to this kind of future!

You can read Matt's full relation here.

Matt participated in the AIDA Individual Pool World Championships 2016 and surprised everyone with breaking record after record!

The competition took place on 25th June - 3rd July 2016 in Turku, Finland.

Matt broke three world records during this competition - one during the eliminations and two in the finals.

The current official record stands as follows:

DYN 300m WR 3rd of July 2016, Turku, Finland, AIDA Individual Pool World Championships 2016 - current World Record

DNF 244m WR 2nd of July 2016, Turku, Finland, AIDA Individual Pool World Championships 2016 - current World Record

DNF 232m WR 28th of June 2016, Turku, Finland, AIDA Individual Pool World Championships 2016

Below you can read Matt's thoughts in an emotional post made right after the competition on July 4th, 2016:

My dream came true, I've become double World Champion (DNF&DYN) with World Records set in the same swims :)

You may not believe but literally after yesterday’s 300 [m] I was in constant movement and only now after getting back home I have a couple of minutes to write few words about World Championships in Turku. There is a lot to write about which I will do at some point. I'm full of emotions but this picture of Daan Verhoeven describes it all.

I AM EXTREMELY HAPPY.

I have broken 3 World Records in 2 disciplines, 232m in DNF qualifications, improving it in finals by another 12m up to 244m. To me it is a history, it’s a record that lasted 6 years and no-one thought it will be beaten any time soon, at least not until last month :) It means to me so much more than that 300m but it’s less admirable by people because it’s not a round number :) I still can’t believe that I have improved it by 12m and there was much more in tank.

I’ve calculated a few months ago that I should be capable of doing 252m on a perfect day, based on my speed, stroke count etc. but even that number is wrong. Numbers are wrong, it’s all wrong because it’s Limitless. Numbers are in our heads and on this championship I’ve focused on making good dives with good feelings, keeping thinking about numbers just for last part of dives as a motivational tool. I must say it worked wonders for me! I came to Turku to defend my DNF title, DYN was the 2nd priority because I knew there will be no rest after DNF finals and there are athletes strictly focusing on DNF or DYN only during this championships. On the other hand, I knew that if I can do around 250 DNF, 300m DYN shouldn’t be a problem even without rest so let’s try to swim and see how it goes. I did it, I have swum 300m and became World Champion in DYN, splitting the record with Georgios Panagiotakis but I got the gold because my announcement was higher (it was closer to actually reached distance by 1m). 

You can read an in-depth interview with the World Champ here: https://www.deeperblue.com/interview-mateusz-matt-malina/

[The record-breaking 300m dive on YouTube]

Matt also started writing his blog in Polish, so if you're a Polish-speaking fan, we encourage you to read his blog here: http://mattmalina.com/

You can find some English posts there, too.

Stay tuned for more info from the Champ!

Photo courtesy of: Daan Verhoeven

Today I have finally some time to write-up about the events that took place over the last weekend!

[VIDEO OF A WORLD RECORD SWIM IS BELOW]

Polish pool championships was a triple win for me. I have improved the AIDA World Record in dynamic with fins by 4m up to 285m, I have become the Polish Champion and I have achieved the highest ever combined score of 327,5 points with world record dynamic, 8:00 static and 178 no fins dive in less than 24h.

Organizing the dive and finding a certified AIDA judge

Four weeks ago when I’ve swam 258m dynamics with fin in a short pool, I’ve decided that it’s possible to achieve world record even before Worlds in Turku. I thought it would be a shame if I do it and there is no judge to ratify it. I’ve contacted very friendly organizer, Lucyna Kicińska (she is an angel of Polish freediving organization!) and she said they will try their best to bring one, few days later I got confirmation that Petar Bojovic is coming. That’s the moment when things got serious because there was no way back :) Soon I realized that I actually haven’t swam dynamic in a 50m pool since Belgrade 2015. 

Looking for a 50m pool to train before the dive

Over the next two weekends after my decision to try for a record, I’ve travelled to Jaworzno which has a 50 m pool. Being used to train and perform in the morning, I found out that in the afternoon I have a harder time to perform good. The pool had uncomfortable steps at the bottom, it was very hot (32-34 air temperature) and high humidity. I was sweating just by sitting in a wetsuit and my heartbeat was high. Actually it was much harder to achieve same results as in the 25m pool I usually train at.

Test dives in the championships pool in Lublin

So my morale wasn’t high and I was giving myself 25-30% chances to succeed. I was afraid of the pool in Lublin because it has a step in the middle where the bottom starts to gradually fall from 2,5m to 3,9m. However, when I first tried to swim in there on Wednesday evening, all the fear went away. I was feeling such freedom underwater like I have never felt during dynamic with fins swim.

The pool is huge, air temperature inside is just perfect and there is not too much humidity. It’s just perfect to set records in there. Now when I think about the other 50m pool I realize that I was just feeling claustrophobic in there with hitting the bottom constantly with my knees every time I’ve encountered a step at the bottom.

The DYN World Record Dive

Below You can all watch video of my World Record performance. From 225m my legs start failing, but it didn’t stop me from swimming another 60m with hybrid DYN/DNF technique. After all I’m a no fins guy who tries to find his place in the monofin division :) It’s weird though because normally I don’t get to a point of total leg-muscle failure.

Remember to always make an emotional connection with Your goal and let nothing stop You! Well at least if You perform pool disciplines, because that philosophy doesn’t work at all in depth ones!

Thank you for your support!

Last but not least I would like to thank everyone for their support! Especially to my beloved Ola, she is always there for me, supporting me, coaching me, none of this success would be possible without her, we are a true dream team :) Thanks to my official sponsor, Grena LTD who supported me in a hard moment of my career two years ago, thanks to the organizers of the Polish Pool Championships, especially Lucyna Kicińska, to Samo Jeranko, who helped me with choosing the right fin #zolotov #goldfin, to Karol Karcz, Michał Dąbrowski and Marcin Pałkus for training with me, my parents who always support me and many, many others!

285m Dynamic with Fins World Record Mateusz Malina

The Polish Pool Championships took place from May 27-29th, 2016 in Lublin, Poland at the Olympic-sized 50m Aqua Lublin pool.

You can view the overall standings here: MEN and WOMEN (courtesy of: Stowarzyszenie Freediving Polska Facebook page) 

We chose some of the most interesting pictures for our website gallery, please visit it here.

You can also view more than 300 pictures by Patrycja Radiowska-Polak from the whole event on Facebook here. 

The speed skating 2015/16 season is already over and even though I was not writing much on my blog, I was training hard and from my point of view the season ended on a good note.

You can read about my changing teams in my last blog post: The road to new opportunities

2015/16 World Cup races

I was able to train with the best athletes in the Czech National Team and got to better my avarage time compared to last year by 15 seconds!

At the end of January 2016 I was put to competition in Norway in the World Cup in two races: 1500m and 5000m.

I'm especially proud of my achievement on the second competition day when I was competing in the 5000m race and finished with my season's best time 6:31:48 and placed 6th in the B group, which was 19th in the World Cup qualifications.

I also had a chance to start against my former teammates and I'm glad to see my improvement as I finished ahead of 4 of them. It means for me that I made the right choice to pursue my athletic career in a different team! In Norway I had to start twice alone in the first pair, because this was my first start of the season and I couldn't be paired up with anyone. I think this had a bit of an impact on my time result, because the starting position always influences how fast you race.

Overall this was a good experience for me, I proved my abilities to my new team and trainer and have gathered enough points to compete in next season's World Cup! 

I'm eagerly looking forward to it, maybe I'll even make the Olympic Team in 2018?

Training preparations

My training does not consist of only training at the ice-rink and ice-skating. :)

As a speed skater you need to work hard to keep in shape off-season and it demands a bit of flexibility in how to use the available facilities. Everyone involved in winter-specific sports is aware of the hardships of training off-season and preparing for the winter season without really being able to train their own winter disciplines.

This year during some snowy days I went out into the mountains to do some ski mountaineering, which I tried out last year and have enjoyed ever since! 

Another great activity to shape your skills off-season is to ride a bike. I usually travel to the southern European countries, where the winter is not as cold as in Poland.

In my 114 active days in 2015 I rode a total of 248 hours and 7,112 km! It wouldn't be possible without my sponsor Grena providing me with a top-notch bike to do all these kilometers! I enjoy the bike training a lot, so that's where my main focus will be in preparation for the next season in 2016!

Just a few days I participated in the official Polish cycling season opening - the "Ślęzański Mnich" race. You can read more about the race here. I won my starting category of amateurs and finished the 54 km race with a time of 01:19:43!

On the beginning of March I flew down to Dubai, UAE to take part in the Fazza Championships.

This was my second time competing in these Championships.

The rules are a bit different than the usual AIDA rules, so last year I tried taking part to test myself in this new environment. You can read about my last years’ attempt here.

The competition took place on March 3 - 5th, 2016 in Dubai, UAE. The Fazza Freediving Championships are meant to remember the ancestors of the Persian Gulf inhabitants, who were diving to collect pearls.

This year around 200 freedivers arrived and the athletes competed in a deep pool, where you should go underwater and hold your breath. This kind of static is totally different than the one usually performed in AIDA competitions, because you still need to surface from a few meters after you hold your breath for the maximum amount of time.

This year I knew what expect, so I was definitely better prepared than last year, which was visible in my result: I set a new personal best record and finished the dive with an official result of 08:29 minutes.

A real success for me is knowing that I did what I was prepared for. It's nice to get a medal, but in my athletic development it's most important to surpass my own limits. The result I got in March proves that I'm on the right path to have some more victories over myself.

Last weekend I participated in the 6th Silesian Freediving Cup. The competitions' main goal is to promote the team spirit among freedivers as well as encourage women to freedive - so only teams of 3 could take part in it and at least one of the trio should be a female.

I teamed up with Robert Cetler and Julia Kozerska and we won the team classification.

The competition started for me on Friday December 11th at 6 a.m. when I woke up and went to work. After work at 2 p.m. I went to Rybnik (a 1,5h drive) to register and be one of the first competitors that day. I swam a solid 200 m without fins (DNF). On the next morning I have accomplished 8:00 minutes in discipline of static apnea (STA). After that on the same day I competed in the dynamic discipline with fins (DYN) and I swam only 178 m , which secured first place for my team and fulfilled my declared result. 

I won the overall individual classification as well. However, it is worth noticing that a Czech competitor Martin Valenta was very close to win individually, unfortunately he ended up with red card in DNF. 

You can read about last years' Silesia Freediving Cup 2014in my previous blog post.

Photos by Patrycja Radiowska-Polak

A bit than a month ago on October 24th, 2015 I participated in the Zlin Cup 2015 - a freediving competition focused on two pool disciplines: the STA and DNF. I have been attending this competition for years, except last year when I went to compete in the Vertical Blue '14. This year I could go back to my tradition and participate in the Zlin Cup 2015. I won the Cup, but unexpectedly this competition brought me a lot of satisfaction. 

After a failed static (7:31) I was loosing 40 seconds to Martin Valenta (CZK) who pulled off 8:11, breaking by 5 seconds Czech national record of Martin Stepanek, which wasn't broken for 14 years and was a World Record established in 2001. 

I was watching his start while trying to relax in the water. Less than 5 minutes before my OT I saw Martin coming up on 175m. He did a very solid performance after a big static result. His good result meant I had to swim 192m to win the whole competition. At this moment I thought “it’s gonna be tough”. Normally, this distance is easy for me, but let’s not forget that we did the static beforehand, and a 2nd swim during one day can’t be as good as the 1st one.

It turned out to be one of the best dives in DNF I have ever done. Great control, great feelings and when I turned at 175m I knew it’s “mine”. I swam until I saw the “T” mark, because I knew it’s already more than enough. This way I made 197m when I surfaced very clean. If I’m not mistaken it’s the longest DNF in the world done after a STA during the same day. I only hope to have the same state of mind one day when I will try to break the world record in DNF again, because this execution was perfect despite all the anxiety beforehand!

You can check the results and details on the Zlin Cup 2015 website or if you understand Polish, you can read more about the competition on Apnea Sports.pl.

On Saturday, November 7th, 2015 I was a guest in a Polish morning show "Pytanie na Śniadanie", shown in the Polish TV station.

The topic we were talking about was unusual passions and I got to explain in a few words what freediving is and what my achievements are.

Here you can watch the few-minutes-short episode (Polish only).

After that I visited Polskie Radio 24, a information-centered Polish Radio Station, where I talked about freediving a bit more.

You can listen the recorded podcast here (Polish only).

I also visited the Polskie Radio 4th Programme, the audition was broadcast in the evening.

Here you can listen to the audition (Polish only).

Let me know if you got to watch or hear me!

The AIDA Individual Depth World Championships have just finished on Sunday. Since September 5th, 2015 until September 20th, 2015, the best freedivers in the world trained and competed in the Mediterranean Sea in three depth disciplines: CNF (Constant weight apnea without fins), CWF (Constant weight apnea), FIM (Free immersion) in Limassol, Cyprus.

The weather and water conditions during this championships were a bit tricky and have definitely had an impact on the performances of most of the athletes. 

The first days until September 11th was the time when we could get used to the conditions in this location and train. An September 11th was the official opening of the World Championships.

The competition days were as followed:

September 14th – CNF competition

September 16th – CWT competition

September 19th – FIM competition and award ceremony.

Two medals

I have brought home two medals: Silver and Bronze.

The silver one in the CNF discipline with a dive of -76m (Constant weight apnea without fins) and the second one, Bronze in FIM with a dive of – 103m (Free Immersion). Both of these results were actually far away from my National Records and capabilities.

The preparations

Before going to Cyprus I was telling myself that one medal, doesn’t matter which color will make me happy. 

I was preparing for two months for this competition, mainly developing chest flexibility and equalization technique in my local quarry. In the last two years I prepared in the same way and everything went just as planned then. However, the Mediterranean Sea turns out to be completely different than the locations I have previously competed: the Red Sea or the best place in the World, Dean’s Blue Hole. 

Comparison of my dive profiles from Cyprus and Dean's Blue Hole

A look at the dive profiles comparison shows that my opinion is not unfounded. The shallower dive you see on the profile is the one from Cyprus this year and the deeper one is from Dean’s Blue hole in November 2014. 

I used the following setup for both dives:

Same number of packs in both scenarios, in Cyprus I wear 0,75kg (total of 2,15kg) of lead more and a suit that's only ~200g more buoyant. 

Simply said, I had to wear more weights to have the same freefall speed and use a thicker suit to not freeze completely due to thermoclines. (A thermocline is a thin but layer in the water in which temperature changes more rapidly with depth than it does in the layers above or below.) On top of that because of thermoclines my body was tensing up and I was losing my mouthfill bit by bit while descending. (Mouthfill is a technique of deep equalization. Air is taken from lungs to mouth before they are compressed. That air is used all the way down to equalize ears and sinuses. If air is lost once lungs are collapsed it can't be recovered and I have to start ascent, otherwise if I would keep descending, increasing pressure would create pain in my ears and eventually it would rupture my ear drum.) The way up was significantly slower because of all that extra weight. Additionaly, an extra slow down on last ~25m is due to my new safety precaution regarding DCS (decompression sickness).

Diving in the Red Sea would be better only in term of equalization, because there is no big thermoclines there, however, the buoyancy problem would be the same. 

Training in the Mediterranean Sea before the competition

When I arrived at Cyprus in the beginning of September, I was stuck at 70 - 90m for almost 2 weeks and I felt just like 6 years ago when conquering those depths was a challenge in term of equalization. Luckily because of all my experience and knowledge now I managed to reteach myself how to do it and I didn’t need another 6 years :) I simply got used to the conditions while trying out all sorts of weird techniques. 

I’m extremely happy with my last 103m dive that brought me a bronze medal. I have equalized right before target depth which would result in at least 110 - 112m. I never thought that I will leave Cyprus reaching that point again. 

A big part of my success is the fact that during summer I was anticipating early morning starts and I trained my maximum dives in similar conditions time-wise. Some of the divers were not prepared for it and their capabilities were reduced.

I’m extremely thankful to my life partner Ola, for being the best coach ever and Grena LTD for their support!

Right now it’s time to rest.

In the remaining part of the year I will focus on pool competitions.

Biggest goal for this year achieved. I am now the World Champion and World Record holder in DNF!

Now it’s time to beat the World Record at World Championships :)

8 months ago when I broke the WR in DNF I thought nothing is going to stop me from winning in Belgrade. I remember how disappointed I was in 2013 when I have failed.

However, due to some personal issues my training this yearwas not going as planned. After a 4,5 month break from DNF I’ve started practicing it in the middle of March with 125-150m swims which felt pretty bad. I was still struggling and thought that there is not enough time. However, I did my best and everything clicked in the middle of May. I was full of optimistic thoughts. I got one spike down in my last week of training, cause I quit few dives at 125m. After these ups and downs I went to Belgrade, and didn’t really know what to expect. I knew my body was in a best shape it ever was, but my mind liked to play tricks on me. 

After my DNF heats during the final eliminations in Belgrade I knew everything was right and I was calm.

In the A - Final I have executed my dive perfectly and I’m really happy about it. At the time I thought World Championships are about winning medals not breaking records. So I took the conservative approach and decided to come up after I saw middle of the pool at 212,5m. Final distance was 214m (1m was reduced for turning below steps again:) ) I was frequently asked If I would make it to the wall. To be honest I can’t be sure, cause hypoxia is an unknown queen that beat really experienced freediver Natalia Molchanova in the DNF finals, resulting in her discqualification due to black-out... 

Frankly speaking the dive felt much cleaner than the one in Brno. In Brno when I set a new WR, while turning at 200m I thought in a rush "I go for next wall no matter what like a kamikaze". I still came up clean.

However in Belgrade at 200m I was cleaner in my head and I thought "Ok, let’s play it safe, swim past the mark in the middle of the pool and take at least silver medal". It was enough for gold luckily.

I don’t regret that decision cause I believe it was a right one. After my WR in Brno I jumped with my PB pretty heavily and it was psychologically hard to repeat that kind of dive. Now I have achieved few of those ~215m dives pretty clean and calm, something clicked in me and I feel 225m dives will become much easier mentally in the future.

If this had been a normal competition, next to the wall (coming up on ropes is a bit more stressful), I would probably have gone in kamikaze-mode for that New Zealand NR and I think I would have made it! But then again it would build a mental barrier in me due to big jumps in my personal records. In the end I prefer to take things slow, with constant progress and one day this record will fall. I only hope for enough training motivation :)

I look forward for the AIDA Depth World Championships now.

Thanks to Ola, my family, my friends, my general sponsor Grena LTD, 35WOG for providing me training facility and all supporters, who crossed their fingers for me!

You can view more pictures in the Gallery.

Hello everybody!

Last weekend I've taken part in the Polish Freediving Pool Championships held in Morawica near Kielce. 

They were organised by the Freediving Club Kielecki Klub Freedivingu „DNF” at the Koral swimming pool.

I have won first place overall with achieving the following results: 203m DNF, 6:59 STA and last but not least 186m DYN. This way I have defended the title of Polish champion in all of the pool disciplines. 

It was my last competition before the Freediving Pool World Championships that are taking place in Belgrade next month. Based on my results it's easy to see that I was primarly focused on DNF this part of year. I'm a bit dissapointed about my static, because I've already achieved 8+ min in training a few days earlier but let's see if I can pull that off next time in competition!

Right now I have less than a month left before Belgrade. I feel my DNF is in a good place and I just need some fine tunning. After that I will try to focus a bit more on my monofin swims. We are heading to the World Championships with a strong Polish team and I hope everyone will do their personal bests. I'm especially looking forward to the performance of the guys from Cracow which I used to train with for a long time, Karol Karcz and Michał Dąbrowski.

Enjoy the blue and dive safe!

Matt

For the last few months I haven't been able to take part in any of the World Cup Series competitions, but luckily it was not because of an injury. :)

After ending the year 2014 with a good vibe after winning some races during the World University Championship in Almaty, Kazachstan as well as winning 2nd place in the Warsaw Single Distances Championship, I was ready and in good shape to take on new races during the World Cup Competition.

During this time top speed skater and champion Martina Sáblíková and her trainer Peter Nowak reached out to me and invited me to their training camp alongside the Czech speed skating representatives. So this is where I spent the rest of the season, training with Martina and the Czech team. And belive me, it was an intense 3 months!! 

January 2015: Collalbo, Italy (training camp); Hamar, Norway (World Cup 5)

The Czech have their Speed Skating training base in Collalbo, Italy and have come here to train for many years already. The training was very hard for me, but the hardships one endure to get better results...;) After that was Hamar and the next World Cup competition...unfortunately without my participation, even though I felt really good and ready for the race.

February: Inzell, Germany (training camp); Heerenveen, Netherlands (World Cup 6)

Once the competition in Hamar was over we went directly to Inzell, Germany to prepare for the next one.  The training I did was focused on competition races, so I am going to be prepared for the next season. Again, it was very hard training which resulted in two gold medals...not mine of course as I was not to compete.Sáblíková won both the 3 km and 5 km race and became world champion of the female division!

March: Calgary, Canada (2015 World Allround Speed Skating Championships); Erfurt, Germany (World Cup Finale 2014/15)

At the beginning of March, the extreme training continued in Calgary and Sáblíková won the title of World Allround Champion. Next was the Finale of the World Cup 2014/15 season in Erfurt, Germany. Martina Sáblíková won her 9th in a row World Cup in the 3 km and 5 km races.

After the season has ended everyone went home to get some rest and restart the engine for the next season preparations. The time spent with the Czech representatives was a great experience for me. I'm proud to have been able to help out a little bit with tha training of such a talented athlete like Martina.

Even though I couldn't take part in the competiton during these last 3 months I'm happy with how the season turned out and I'm really optimistic about the future!

Now I'm using my time to get a bit in shape before the real season preparations start. I'm swinning a lot and doing some skitouring in the Tatra mountains. I admit the latter has became a great passion of mine recently. I've already registered for the Malinowski Memorial on April 18th and I'm also planning to compete in some bike and roller blades competitions.

I’m back from Dubai with a bag full of experience :)

As I expected beforehand the Fazza diving competition was a challenge on a whole different level. It has its own set of rules that differ from the AIDA rules most freedivers know and follow. The uniqueness of the rules require adequate preparations throughout the year. This year I went to compete there, but mostly to learn. I won't lie to you, static is my weakest discipline and least liked by me, but lately this feeling has slowly began to change. You can read about the rules and my preparations for this competition in my previous blog post.

Apart from this, I’ve noticed some positive emotions while training for the competition. To be honest, the Fazza static discipline suits me more than "normal" static and I will definitely try to improve on it, because I see the challenge here and I like challenges.

As for results I did 6:15 which got me qualified into finals, but in the finals I have given up the attempt somewhere past 4 minutes. Both results are quite a bit less than I did during training, but Rome was not build in one day :) and I still have felt like an amateur taking part in this competition.

Now it is time to go back to training for my usual disciplines, because the AIDA Pool World Championships are coming soon. I look forward to it!

Hello fellow Freedivers and supporters,

Recently I have decided to take part in the Fazza 3 Championships which will take place from 5 - 7 March 2015 in Dubai, UAE.

I was preparing one month for this competition, which is a very short time frame considering that the discipline over there is completely different from what we are used to.

The basic rules for the competition are simple:

No equipment whatsoever is allowed and an athlete has to stay as long as he can underwater while holding the rope. Time is counted as soon as the last part of the body immerses and stops as soon as any part of the body emerges. It’s prohibited to tie yourself to the rope anyhow and competitor has to hold it voluntary. Obviously the athlete has no idea about the time during the hold.

I’m looking forward to this competition as it will obviously be a good lesson for me. I have a lot of experience to gain in this new field and I hope that after this year I will keep coming back to Dubai every year.

I’m heading to Dubai on Saturday for two weeks. During the first week I will take part in Fazza 3 Championships and  during the second week for the first time in my life I will conduct the Freedivng Clinic together with Static Champion Branko Petrovic, who won the Fazza 3 Championships two times in a row!

Thank you Grena Ltd. for providing me with accomodation in Dubai and all-round support!

Last week, AIDA International published a list of "Wild Card" bids for the World Championships in 2015 - separated into depth and pool disciplines. The ten best athletes of every discipline in the world were granted a place on this list.

My name was also among the athletes granted a "wild card" in two of the pool disciplines: the DNF (dynamic apnea without fins) , DYN (dynamic apnea with fins) and one depth discipline, th FIM (free immersion). This means I don't have to go through qualifications for the World Championship events, which leaves more time for training. The funny part is, I got a worse result in DYN with the monofin than without it! I need to work on it! :) You can download the whole list from the AIDA International Facebook group as a .pdf file. 

A short while ago, I was interviewed by Camilla from freedivinguae.com and we spoke about the attitude towards training, setting goals, persistence and the freediving lifestyle. The audio quality is not the best, but there is also a short text included about the main topics of the interview. You can listen to the interview on the freedivinguae.com website.

The picture you see at the top of this post was taken by Daan Verhoeven, a great photographer and my dear friend. During my stay in Bahamas at the Vertical Blue championships we dived together and he took these amazing underwater pictures. I encourage you to make a short break, sit back and take a look at his creations - you can find the pictures in the exclusive Gallery here.