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. 

 

Last modified on Tuesday, 31 May 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

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

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

Last week I was invited to speak at the Polish Diving Conference in Zakrzówek, Cracow on September 27th, 2014.

I really appreciated the invitation and prepared a half-hour long presentation about the training of body and mind in freediving.

As an introduction I arranged a screening of the documentary movie " On the other side of the mirror" by Michał Braum and the ImagePro studio. This documentary features my adventure with freediving and if you haven't seen it yet, here's a link to see it. 

As a side note, the movie was chosen for the Seattle Polish Film Festival, that is being held in October 10 - 19th, 2014 in Seattle, USA. The movie will be shown on October 15th, 2014.

It warms my heart to hear such news and to see that our hard work - mine at training, and Michał's at filmmaking - is recognized globally. I hope people will learn more about freediving and won't be as scared or prejudiced against this sport as it often happens now.

Coming back to the Congress. It was great to meet my friends and fellow Polish divers to share experiences and plans for the future. The event at the Zakrzówek Diving Base was also a great feast for all diving fans with stalls of diving equipment sellers. They provided everything for adults as well as kids!

If you were present at my speech, I hope you've learned something new or at least confirmed your already existing knowledge.

That's all for today, thanks for reading and don't be shy to visit my Facebook profile and to comment! You'll be hearing from me soon!

Last modified on Tuesday, 14 October 2014