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

 

Last modified on Thursday, 10 November 2016

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

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

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