Despite the popular perception of freedivers as adventurers who push too far to discover extreme human capabilities, or some magical freedom in unnatural places for humans through this highly dangerous sport, the freediver’s lifestyle should not be considered bohemian because it does not contradict any social norms of healthy living.
Just like all other top athletes and they are faced with some practical things. But their way of life could be attributed more to an effective and purposeful minimalist style. Freedivers are compelled to simplify all other aspects of life in order to free up as much time as possible for the highly intense training they do. However, this does not necessarily mean sacrificing the standard of living, quality of social life, or low performance at work. On the contrary, a correct minimalist approach that implies good organization and simplification of all aspects of life reduces confusion and opens the focus to the essentials. Later, this reflects faster and more conscious decision-making, resulting in increased efficiency and time savings. In fact, only by meaningful (re) organization and arrangement of all components of life and training process do a concrete change in the lifestyle of freedivers.
What does it mean to organize and arrange life?
These two terms do not necessarily have the same meaning. A person can act functionally, harmoniously, and organized, and still not have an orderly life. A well-organized living is more than just that, and that cannot be its core. In order to have a purpose, a person must have a certain goal that he or she wants to achieve. To organize yourself means to set priorities that lead to the realization of your desires. On the other hand, a person whose life is arranged in terms of purposeful design may at the same time be poorly organized in terms of non-economic action. A person’s life, on the other hand, may be well-structured in terms of economic action but badly structured in other ways. In short, all the essential factors of the life and training process of free divers should be clearly determined by the desired outcomes.
The core of freedivers lifestyle is a healthy lifestyle
It implies an orderly social and emotional life. Healthy and adapted diet, the optimal regime of changes in sports training loads and rest. As well as avoiding various vices such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, gambling, and similar destructive behavior. To avoid devoting too much time to this subject, we will just state that a well-balanced, mostly alkaline diet combined with adequate rest helps to swiftly restore homeostasis and anabolic recovery following severe exercise. Causing the neurological system to be overworked, disrupts the acid-base balance, and produces dangerous free radicals.
Plan on how to prepare and consume healthful foods.
No one can say that there is no time to implement a healthy diet. t’s just a matter of planning and organization, and here are a few arguments and practical tips in that regard. Take your time once and write a large list of different healthy foods that you like or are acceptable to eat. Separate special dishes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. This way, you’ll save a lot of time practically every day that you’d otherwise waste thinking about what to make for dinner. It’s even better to make whole menus for individual days of the week. If you put them together in two or three weeks and include diverse major meals, you’ve already satisfied an incredibly important guideline of a healthy diet’s diversity. Once you’ve created a list of meals and ready-made menus for each day, you’ll need to make a list of the ingredients you’ll need to prepare them. It is enough to go once or twice a week to procure the necessary fresh food items. Shopping will be quick because you know exactly what you need. Furthermore, the argument that there isn’t enough time to create nutritious, home-cooked meals is a weak excuse. Many cooked dishes can freeze. Re-thawing will not significantly change the taste, nor lose quality, even after a few months. It is enough to prepare a larger amount of meals every time you cook. And store the excess in the freezer. So after seven days of preparing various meals, you’ll have enough prepared food to last a month. To be able to consume a range of prepared items on a weekly basis, you will need to cook every third or fourth day.
Training process of freedivers
The training approach for freedivers follows a similar logic in terms of teaching the essential planning, editing, and organizing. The rules of physiological, kinesiological, and psychological changes are determined by sophisticated approach and techniques. A training plan must be made to the last detail, which is called programming. The goals and bigger time units in which they may be realistically reached are determined through apnea preparatory planning. As well as all of the required conditions and logistics for its fulfillment. The substance of training is established in detail by programming for shorter time periods and individual training. Work methods, personnel, and material circumstances, dosage, and weight distribution, including recuperation time.
Difference between planning and programming
To understand better the difference between planning and programming, one life comparison can be used, which in turn goes back to the organization of healthy eating. Planning a nutritious macrobiotic diet would be compiling lists of seasonal foods and meals for different seasons. While programming is much more and more detailed than that. It implies a full description of when, how, and under what conditions a particular food should be made and eaten. As well as who will all be involved in the process. Moreover, programming a healthy diet would, for example, determine the exact duration and exact temperature of heat treatment of food. The order in which individual foods are inserted into the pot during cooking. How much protein, carbohydrates, fats, spices should a dish contain…
Professional plan for freedivers
The basic precondition for managing the training and sports form of professional freedivers is the existence of a personal individual plan and program which includes fitness and specific preparation. Mental training and breathing exercises. The implementation of program tasks is recorded daily. Which then enables the analysis, control, and correction of the plan with the aim of optimizing the work.
Freedivers lifestyle tip: be consistent and progressive
Determination, perseverance, and self-control are the main personality traits that adorn the freediver lifestyle. In freediving, there is just one approach to obtain top results. We can characterize it with the phrase “little by little”. Behind that is the persistent, optimally designed training. With maximum respect for the principle of continuity. Target orientations of each training and gradual appropriate progressiveness and ripple of training loads.
There is certainly no sport in which self-control is as important as freediving. Every deep dive is an event described as very risky, a gambler of the “all or nothing” type with life as the main role. By frequently entering into such uncertain situations, the probability of an always positive outcome decreases rapidly. And mere survival will depend only on the ability of the mind to have permanent control over emotions. It is not easy to stay calm with the knowledge that you are at a depth of a hundred meters, and that returning to the surface depends on how well you assess your current diving ability and calmly complete the ascent to finish while fighting the extreme urge to breathe.
Therefore, there are psychological approaches and mental training to practice frequently in order to maintain mental order and mental stability as a permanent state.
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