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

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

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