Lubomir Stefanoff | freediving and UW photography

Now that I finished the basic preparation, I won’t spend much time training out of the water (running and cardio in the gym). I don’t think I’ll have the chance to go freediving again this month, so my training will be mostly in the pool (3 times a week) +some  dry CO2 tables. Here is how my typical work out in the pool look like:

10 x 50 m with the monofin, 1:30 rest

10 x 25 m sprints underwater, 1:00 rest

500 m monofin swimming – 25m underatwer/25 m on the surface (active recovery)

After that I usually spend 15-20 minutes doing some monofin drills – swimming on the sides and back, focusing on the knees (as I saw from a recent video footage I bend them too much).

After today’s session I thought for a while about the benefits of this kind of training. To be honest, I think I’m not training hard enough. I can swim easily 50 meters DYN with the monofin with those 1:30 rest and I don’t feel tired at the end of the workout. It’s high time to start doing either more meters or decrease the rest intrevals (I’ll try 1 minute rest on Thursday to see how I feel). After all, the body needs to get stressed to achive a good training effect. I haven’t done long dynamic apneas recently and last time I tried to pass 75 m I just didn’t want to suffer the contractions and came out early exactly at 75 m. Staying in the comfort zone won’t yield good results. Doing longer distances regularly (including max attempts) will help me get used to contractions and finally make the 100 m swim (I’m sure I can do that, just need some time to prepare mentally). From now on I’ll do one max attempt every week both in static and in dynamic…hope to see results in the near future. I haven’t done much wet staics either cause I usually  wear a 2.5 mm shorty wetsuit and get cold pretty soon, so maybe going to the pool with full suit on Saturdays is a good idea – I won’t be the only one with a spearfishing suit in the water – probably Mitko and Vov will be there too…