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!

Last modified on Tuesday, 05 April 2016

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

 

Last modified on Wednesday, 16 December 2015

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.

 

Last modified on Tuesday, 08 December 2015

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.

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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.

Last modified on Tuesday, 22 September 2015

On July 11th, 2015 I took part in a very interesting amateur Road Race Competition in the highest mountains of Poland - the Tatra. The professional organization by athletes who have been in the biking cirlce for years and are still competing in top-class competitions made the Race one of the most difficult you can face in this area.

I competed on the shorter distance of 42km, and won 1st place in my own age category, as well as oll-over male open category with a time of 01:11:15.560! I'm really happy for this achievement as this would not be possible without the help of Grena Ltd. providing me with a fantastic bike which allowed me to train hard all year long!

Last modified on Wednesday, 15 July 2015

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.

 

Last modified on Tuesday, 30 June 2015

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

Last modified on Tuesday, 26 May 2015

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!

Last modified on Tuesday, 17 March 2015

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 modified on Thursday, 26 February 2015

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. 

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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.

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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. 

Last modified on Wednesday, 25 February 2015