WILLIAM TRUBRIDGE INTERVIEW for THE FREEDIVE CAFE PODCAST

Everything octopus makes is made with pure free diver in mind. The design is beautiful, the colours the shapes the aesthetic of octopus is one of my favourite things about them. But more importantly than that, the usability and durability are top notch. Freedom cafe’s special relationship with octopus means that you guys are dear listeners, get a lovely 10% off any products, any orders you make through the website. To get that 10% discount just put freedive Cafe into the discount code box at checkout. And voila, the website is octopus freediving.com. I really hope you enjoy this second interview with will let me know what you think. Share with your friends and enjoy with your ears. Let’s dive.

03:36

All right. So welcome back to the free deaf. Cathy will pleasure to have you here again. And thanks for sharing your time

03:42

just joining us to be here again.

03:44

All right, so for the listeners, Will’s first episode was Episode 69. So head over to the website and check that out if you haven’t done so already. That was a classic freedive Cafe episode. It was more of a broad look at your freediving career and we skipped a lot of the classic questions that I usually ask athletes. So this time, I want to borrow into some specifics and possibly head down a few technical rabbit holes while I have you this time. So let’s see what happens. First of all, we should cover two topics that will help us get up to date with you and the projects you’re involved in. To begin with just tell us well what Coronavirus has meant for you, where are you now and what has it been like for you during the current crisis?

04:29

Yeah, so now I’m in the Bahamas, I got here like just before everything blew up. And America especially. So I just snuck in through Canada before they close the borders in March and had been here ever since. And a lot of that time we’ve been on lockdown. So it can even go to the Blue Hole. Then there was like a couple of months where I had a really bad ear infection and complications. So I haven’t been able to train as much as I’d have liked to But yeah, that’s that’s where I am that’s one supposed to be doing. And just

recently, my family was able to join me from from Japan once they ease the restrictions of travel into the Bahamas. And so that’s been very welcome after almost five months of not seeing my daughter and

05:18

yeah, that’s insane. Your daughter’s so young and then to have this I didn’t realise was five months. that’s a that’s a crazy long time to not see your baby daughter. stuff. Yeah, I bet. What are things like in the Bahamas in general? Have there been many cases there? Or has it been pretty, pretty quiet there?

05:36

You know what they did? They did pretty well, in the beginning, because the Prime Minister’s actually a MD, a doctor before he did politics. And so he was pretty quick at locking down the whole country, closing the borders and putting everyone into lockdown. And they got the cases down to zero for a good period. And I think they might have gotten complacent after that or just caved under the pressure of needing to reopen tourism again. And so they did so to America with obviously, testing and stuff, but I meant that Bahamians, travelled to America and came back and bought the virus with them. And so he got an attic. And now they’ve closed borders again. And and luckily not this island, Long Island. But other islands like the main one nwsl have gotten back into mandatory lockdown. So yeah, they’ve been pretty stringent about it. But like everywhere, they’re battling the comeback virus. Yeah.

06:40

Yeah, so the Prime Minister’s an MD I wish all politicians were doctors or scientists of some kind before they got into office that might have changed things a little bit.

06:54

With just women. What we’re seeing around it, right. Yeah. Is that that woman leaders like just under New Zealand’s or the Prime Minister of Taiwan, and I saw

07:04

anyone Yeah, she’s done a great job. Yeah. Yeah.

07:07

So maybe because they have that kind of motherly instinct to protect their family, their extended family, their country? They have their they have their priorities in the right place.

07:19

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, so. And then I have to ask about the status of the free Dev and World Series. When we first spoke, we briefly discussed the possibility of such a series happening that actually came off the back of a Patreon question. But I hadn’t been announced that it hadn’t been announced at that point. And then it was in my interview with Marco Constantino a couple of months later that we really got the news that the freediving World Series was going to be a thing. And then came the list of the competitions and dates and all that. Of course, that hasn’t happened as planned. What is the status of the World Series now? And you know, what do you think its future holds for it?

08:01

Right? So yes, it’s on hold. Now, obviously, this year, it’s impossible to organise international events. Because just because of travel, if anything is not anything else, people aren’t able to cross borders freely. And so we cannot declare an event to be an international world freediving series, when as much as half the population or more can’t count reaches both. So we’ve suspended it until 2021. And we hope to start in the Caribbean cap in Honduras, Roseanne with the first edition of the Brianne World Series, and then go from there to little blue policy in July and Bahamas and carry on with the same programme that we had planned for this year. Transfer to 2021.

08:52

So would you say that this really depends on the development of a safe and effective vaccine that everyone should be able to get their hands on by by, you know, early this year? Or next year? I see.

09:03

Yeah, it seems like that’s what everyone is kind of counting on as the magic silver bullet. In this case, I don’t think it’s going to be the only thing that we need in order to conquer this virus. But it’s definitely an important part of the puzzle. So yeah, hopefully it looks like there’s a number of vaccines that will be starting to get implemented by that time.

Hopefully, they’re readily available lunch and athletes can use them. And that means that the board is able to open up and events

09:39

Yeah, yeah, crazy times. Let’s hope that things get back to some kind of relative normality sooner rather than later and hopefully with some, you know, positive benefits some kind of evolution in the way that we we do things as well after after all this. Okay, so let’s um, let’s get into the the questions that I have. I have here I usually have a number of questions that I ask athletes. You know, regarding training and you know, complimentary training and nutrition and things like that, we didn’t really do that with you last time, we covered a couple of things like we covered nutrition, we spoke about stretching, so we won’t do that again, I thought to make it a little bit more interesting. We could get a get a little bit deeper into the process of a successful deep dive, I thought we could do structure this interview as if it was a dive itself. What I mean is we can imagine we can visualise ourselves diving to say 100 metres, and what the different distinct stages of that dive might be. And then we can address Oh, yeah, points that come up with relation to each stage. So we do it like that.

10:46

Okay, that sounds good. Yeah, my daughter just walked in said that if you hear her saying that.

10:53

If you need to attend, then then no problem. Yeah. Let’s, let’s begin with the the breathe up, or the relaxation phase, the the pre dive breathing, whatever you like to call it? How will How do you breathe in the two minutes before your dive? And what are you doing in your head at this time, if anything in terms of mental strategies that you might have to achieve the maximum state of relaxation that you can,

11:20

yeah, so that those last few minutes before that I began the critical phase, because we obviously want to ensure that we’re starting the diet nice and relaxed. But probably the most important thing, the most difficult thing to counter is the the, the kind of instinct to breathe more over breathe, because especially in a competition or a record attempt,

when we are maybe a little more, have a little more anxiety on wanders around that, then the instinct is to, to breathe deeper and quicker. And so countering that instinct is probably the the main part of what’s happening in those last few minutes before deep fried, I’ve been just focusing on the relaxation more than the breathing. So I’m trying to not have too much control of my breathing. So yeah, anytime that we try and what is the word that I’m looking for where you cannot like influencing or law? manipulate? Yeah. Okay. So anytime that we’re trying to kind of manipulate our breath and control it consciously, then we run that risk of, of the breathing. And

12:47

I can hear her at the door shouting for you. Yeah, good.

12:50

Yeah, go for it. Yeah,

12:51

you could take your

12:56

doctor. Okay, I’ll set it

13:06

very, very cute well.

13:11

So anytime that we’re trying to do anything kind of extra breaths, like, excels at twice, as long as he inhales, candle breathing, all these kind of artificial types of breathing, then we won’t be able to relax as completely, because obviously, you can do that kind of style breathing as you’re going to sleep for instance. And so and as well as that we run the risk of over breathing because even slowly, deep breaths, very quickly descend into hyperventilation, it’s more flow of, of and we actually require and so we end up off gassing

too much carbon dioxide, and as the carbon dioxide that’s required in order to obviously kick in the dive reflex as early as possible during the dive, which shifts you over to anaerobic energy productions that you conserve energy to conserve oxygen for the brain. And that’s one of the most vital parts of of deep free diving. It’s getting that dive reflex and quick and early, so that you go into that low economy mode.

14:22

And so when you’re when you’re lying there on the surface, and I’ve seen you obviously I’ve seen you doing this before you dive you have a user a little nose clip, like a swimmers nose clip, but do you do you for myself, you know, I find that breathing through my nose is really important for keeping my breathing normal and relaxed and when I put a mask on or I put a nose clip on then it becomes much more difficult to not manipulate my breath somehow to you also have that into you put that nose clip on, you know, the last minute kind of thing,

14:54

if I can. So yeah, recently we’ve had beautiful conditions in the Blue Hole. It’s Perfectly can make an ally they’re breathing through my nose on my back without nightmare scrub on for a while and then just put it on a couple of minutes before the dive. But often in competitions, different places, we have a little bit of surface chop. And if you’re doing that in a way of splashes over your face, and you take them to your nose, it goes into your sinuses and your middle ear, then you’re screwed as you can dive. So, yeah, obviously breathing through the nose is breathable for a variety of reasons. One of the interesting ones is that it creates nitric oxide, which is a really important guests, the bodies for a number of reasons. So in the preparation before I get into the water, and for as long as I can, and the water on my back, I do breathe through my nose if I can,

15:48

yes. Another thing that we might see you doing before you do your deep dives is packing. So at what point, if any, do you suggest? Because there’s a little bit of controversy about packing, right? So at which point do you suggest an aspiring deep diver begins to experiment with packing? When do you say it becomes necessary isn’t really necessary? and under what situations should it be avoided? So there’s one of my classic four question, medleys there,

16:22

and I’ll do the classic just respond to them. So no tacking is an interesting one. If for deep, freediving, it’s not as important. So putting in extra air isn’t as important as being able to tolerate lower volumes in the lungs. So kind of expanding the lungs isn’t as important as deflating them and accommodating the pressure. But it is a part of it. And it does help having that extra air. But there’s a caveat here because the lung volumes of freedivers vary greatly. So my lung volume is always smack on average for my for my height and age, whereas some other freedivers have low volumes that are 20 3040, even 50% more than I am for the same body weight. So in that case, packing extra on top of that would perhaps be counterproductive, because in depth diving, after a certain point increases and buoyancy through increases in lung volume will stop you will will push you backwards essentially, you imagine like trying to swim down from the surface with a like a 20 litre floats attached to you, it’s impossible, you just use the energy just to get off the surface. And you could strap weight onto yourself. But then the problem just flips on its head and you have had that problem when you’re coming back up instead. So ideally, we would be as close to neutral in most of the diet as possible that we need the lung volume for the oxygen reserves. So it’s a it’s a kind of balancing act. And no discipline that is that balancing act more prominence than and opens and opens discipline where we have the weakest form of motion, that point C changes, that’s really subtle changes and buoyancy, make all the difference. And so in my case, because I don’t have a huge lung volume, I have a fairly high tightness natively buoyant body, in general, then packing results as beneficial to the dive. But that might not be the same for another diver who has a bigger money, volume and point an order.

18:58

That’s really interesting. And I never thought about it that way before in terms of you know, your, your body composition, perhaps causing you to be negative really early on in a dive. And being able to counteract that with packing. You know, I’ve jokingly talked about like, because I’m really heavy as well. And I’ve talked about like putting ping pong balls in my wetsuit or something like that to, you know, make me a little bit more buoyant. Obviously, you can kind of achieve that with packing. But it sounds like what you’re saying is there’s a point of diminishing returns, I guess where the effort required to get down to your point of neutral buoyancy or negative buoyancy sort of cancels out the benefits that you would have otherwise.

19:45

Exactly. And you have to remember that that phase at the start of the dive when you’re getting off the surface, up until negative buoyancy is what you’re working completely at aerobically so your muscles are burning oxygen as the energy source That phase, so anything you do there has a kind of a greater cost to it compared to later in the day where your blood shifted and your muscles are working anaerobically without oxygen.

20:11

Very interesting. So yeah, that’s, that leads us perfectly on to the next part, then where we start to dive in, at first 20 or 30 metres of the dive before the freefall, which is a kind of that, you know, aerobic work phase. So, you know, to get from the surface to the freefall boundary is requiring a balance of strength and technique and relaxation, a whole bunch of stuff. But could you share your thoughts on what is most important in this stage of the dive? And what differences there are between the three disciplines in that stage of the dive?

20:46

Sure, yeah, it is a delicate phase, because it’s the part of the dive where we have, we should have the greatest opposing force. So the greatest in this case, positive buoyancy to work against. In my case, I think when I did that work out that I’m at the surface, I’m about five metres or five, six metres, positively buoyant, with full length and packing. That means I’ve got five, five kilos of, of force stored against essentially, whereas at the bottom, when I turn around 100 metres depth, I think the maximum that I’m working against is about 2.7 kilos. So yes, we do need quite a high power output to overcome that buoyancy. But it doesn’t last long. By the time I get to even just a few minutes, and I’ve lost a few litres of, of that buoyancy, and I’m down to kind of one or two or so. And then you get to neutral buoyancy. And you can, you can glide more. So it’s only the first kind of two or three strokes where you need to put in a little bit more power. But you do need to get through that phase clearly and efficiently. So I often see divers who, especially poor free divers transferring into depth, they’ll kind of be doing a glide in their first two or three strokes off the surface, and then that fades kind of bouncing back up. So we swim in low funds, we have to continuously and powerfully to get to negative buoyancy, and then you start to kind of relax and glide more. And then the other disciplines, and for immersion, constant weight is more or less the same, except that you have, you have so much more propulsive force in those disciplines. That you can maintain a little bit more relaxation, and you don’t need to swim as continuously. Especially in free immersion, once you kind of have your hand around the rope, you’re not gonna come back up with with points, positive points. And so you can, you can take your time a little bit more, but yes, I still apply the same kind

of thinking and try and get through that phase as efficiently as I can. Because also with with full length, you’re, it’s not as relaxed state, I want to get to that neutral point to make it a point and see when the lines are collapsed down to around residual volume, and you feel a lot more more relaxed down there. Whereas on the surface, you have this huge inflated length that isn’t so comfortable.

23:34

Yeah, for sure. And when not for yourself and your own diving, to what extent do you count strokes? Do you use alarms? You know, how precise Are you with things like that? And how important do you think things like that are? Because you know other people who are like, you know, like, throw your alarm away? You know, like, forget about the alarm don’t cause strokes. And then there are other people who are very precise, and you know, working on the progress based on these variables. How is it for you?

24:06

Yeah, I’m, I’m definitely an advocate of using alarms and counting strokes. I think it’s really important tools. And they don’t need to become impediments to our relaxation. You can almost count strokes or listen out for your alarms subconsciously without actually kind of being involved in that process too much of your rational mind. So on the way down, I take seven strokes before I go into the freefall. And it’s almost as if there’s a part of my brain that’s counting that and doing it by itself like it I’m not really involved in that. And there’s an alarm I have at 30 metres, which kind of confirms that I’m at a dead weight I can start the freefall and I have an alarm 20 metres Before the base plate, just to let me know that it’s it’s coming out fairly soon and start to get ready for the turn. And another one, just at about seven metres below the base date, but they’ve made so that he gets into the turn position, extend one arm, and I start to allow the other hands to pass over their head, the rope passing through it so that as soon as I feel the tennis ball, I can grab the rope, grab the tag and start the turn and one fluid motion.

25:33

So yeah, I want to bring in a question here. Since we were just talking about CNF and technique. There’s a question from a Patreon supporter, Daniel. And Daniel is working in the 50 metre, no fins range, and wonders if you have some specific advice for training in and beyond this depth range, I guess he’s asking how he might best approach the next level, so to speak,

26:01

right? Typically, divers in that range that I see often don’t have as much experience in the freefall phase of the dive. So if you’re down to 50 metres, the freefall is only kind of the last 20 metres or so of that. And if you’re doing a target dive, once every few days, that’s possibly the only time that you’ve actually spent in freefall. And often that can become that can hinder you because when you are going on those deeper dives, you don’t feel as comfortable as at ease in the freefall. Because you just literally haven’t spent that much time. And that’s in that scenario, whereas actively descending actively ascending, you’re done that in every CNF dive that you’ve you’ve done. So I’m a big advocate of doing depth tables where you choose the depth that’s very easy and repeatable for you. So if it’s if you’re a 50 metre diver, then something around around the lines of 2022 metres maybe should be pretty straightforward. And you should be able to do kind of six to eight repetitions of that depth, and then reducing the recovery times as short as possible. So a dose that depth might take, say 15 seconds. And if you have an interval between the patches of every couple of minutes, and trying to reduce that over the course of six to eight repetitions, something along those lines will enable you to spend a lot more time working on the features of the dive that you’d have in a maximal dive. So hopefully, in a 2022 metre dive, you could potentially even just slightly overweight yourself so that you get a little bit of a freefall just before you hit the plate. And that will train all the time devices that we use in order to maintain our streamlining and free fall in a relaxed but yet streamlined position. And we normally does don’t get that and training and so feels like an alien state. It disrupts our relaxation, and then that influences the dive. So yeah, depth tables can be a solution to that.

28:24

Hmm, very good advice. Interesting advice. There you go, Daniel. Yeah, so we enter the freefall. And now that we’ve entered the freefall, what would you say? Our focuses now.

28:38

So there’s a few things that have to happen, obviously, you have to maintain streamlining and your position next to the rope. And you have to equalise, there’s pretty much, that’s pretty much all you need to do. And you should be able to do all of those autonomously, in the sense that you’re not actually actively engaged with it with your mind. So again, having spent a lot of time in that scenario enables you to just kind of Get your mind out of the way and and let your body take over. And so, position and streamlining. Those are just kind of finding tuned movements that your body makes, in order to stay close to the road,

stay in front of it. And to to free forward straight line. And it’s mostly to do with how you use your feet, your feet are kind of like a rudder, and also your heads the angle of your head determines your, your flight path basically. So those those kind of small movements there, allow you to freefall straight. And then I like to keep my eyes mostly closed, but you have to check your position every now and again. So I kind of blinked them open. It works out maybe every couple of seconds. So you just have this very slow rhythm of blinking eyes open checking your position. making any corrections that you need to and then closing them again. And that process just happens spontaneously, I’m not thinking about my position. I’m just blinking open, changing clothes. And that rhythm continues. And then obviously there’s the equalisation, which depends on what technique you’re using, whether you’re doing a math or if you’re doing reverse packing to bring air up into the mouth as you need it. So, contingent on relaxation is or relaxation is always contingent on. Let me say that again. So equalisation is always contingent on relaxation. So, if you’re having problems with equalisation, then part of that is almost always going to be something to do with not being completely relaxed. So working on that during a free fall will always pay dividends, equalisation.

31:01

So now at this point, we’re we’re diving below our residual volume and you were just talking there about equalisation and, and, and freefall. Now, I want to do I want to talk about FRC and RV dives. Hey, guys, please allow me to bug you for less than a minute to tell you about the benefits of becoming a Patreon supporter. For a start, you won’t get bugged in the middle of the episodes like this are here ads at the top of the show. The episodes on Patreon are in high resolution audio, and are the extra long versions of the show with the desert island Questions section. If you want to hear what Will’s favourite books are, his favourite movies, and what he would eat for a last supper, you can hear that on the Patreon version of the show. patrons get lots of other benefits, too. But the main thing is that you allow me to continue to produce this podcast on a regular basis. And that’s amazing. Thank you so much to everyone who is supporting the show already. Big Love to you all. To find out more head over to patreon.com slash free dev cafe. All right, let’s get back to Mr. trubridge. recovered stretching in the first episode. And I know you believe that to be extremely important regards to this topic. So I highly recommend the listeners to check out that episode and your Instagram page where you shared a number of educational videos on the topic and also the if you can get access to the webinar series that is underway right now you’ve covered that extensively. They’re stretching and exhale stretching and things like that. But what I didn’t ask you last time was do you recommend partial exhale and full exhale dives in training. So FRC and RV dives, there are many instructors who are ambivalent about them some who are for one, but not the other, if you recommend them, when and why do you employ them?

32:59

Right? Yeah, they definitely have utility. If I see an RV lives, personally, I pretty much only do RV lives because I want a more a deeper stretch. And that’s principally the reason that I I do them is to expose the body to a negative pressure and the lines that you wouldn’t normally encounter. Even even on the deepest, full inhale dies, I don’t get the same negative pressure as they were defined. For example, do a full inhale and descend to 25 millimetres or exhale and reverse pack everything I can descend down to 20 metres. So you can expose yourself to a really strong negative pressure which adapts the body as well will the structures the diaphragm the ribcage, rigid Airways, the depth of the pressure and typically for me, are the is the quickest way to do that. But for someone who hasn’t done this kind of diet before you definitely want to start with FRC Path of Exile because it’s it’s easier and also there is some risk of doing yourself and injuring and squeezing the lens was there is so you want to just be very conservative. Work on it with FRC to begin with. to such a point where you feel comfortable with that and you feel like you can kind of max out your equalisation capability would fit then you would start to employ Avi bands.

34:36

And I’ve heard someone else recommend when doing RV dives to start out, for example, feet first or head up not using any weights. Would you also say that so wise recommendation as well for someone starting with RV diving because RV diving is pretty pretty intense, right? It’s especially if you if you don’t have the natural flow ability in the thoracic area, would you say That’s good advice?

35:04

Yeah, you definitely don’t want to be overweighted. And maybe even more importantly, you don’t want to do anything strenuous during the dive. Because if you imagine the whole system is kind of being exposed to this negative pressure in the lungs, which is pulling everything in at once to kind of implode your ribcage, essentially, it sounds kind of horrific. But that’s, that’s the force that’s, that’s being exerted. And so any kind of sudden movement or use of the skeletal muscle that that, that connects to this can tweak the whole system. So it can just expose it to a little bit of more pressure in this one direction, or, or or compressing it here or something which will tweak it and can provoke injury, both to the lungs themselves, but also to your to the muscle because the muscles aren’t used to being in that state where the rib cage that’s kind of holds them all together, is so small and condensed, it’s very easy to to strain a muscle, especially some of the internal

muscles that we’re not normally even aware of having such as like the SOS and these other muscles and around the thorax. And so you really want to be careful to have relaxed movements throughout the head, the neck around the shoulders, you should never be kind of throwing those around, or looking up towards the surface. And so when I do it, I just exhale, take one pull off the surface and I’m free falling down. And when I turn around, but at the bottom, I’m just doing so really delicately not moving anything other than kind of my hands and arms. And just just kind of protecting everything as much as you can. So that is really important with these exercises. If you feel like you can’t execute them with that level of relaxation, or if you feel like you’re going to get contractions or breathing reflexes during the dive, then you should either go shallow or not do as for an exam.

37:29

Many people have asked about doing FRC RV dives as a warm ups before maximum efforts. And also doing FRC RV training after a maximum attempt to kind of like add on some training after your deep dive of the day. What are your thoughts on this?

37:49

I did have more utility beforehand in order to prepare in advance for that. So I sometimes do it, do still do those kind of dives as well maps before free immersion or constantly directs what I’m going to close to equalisation. And I’d like to 150 and 120 Plus, especially at the start of the season when I’m not as kind of adapted to the pressure. If I can I’ll switch over to no warmup for those disciplines as well. But it depends on where I am in my training. But definitely for no no fans, I try not to do any warmup at all. So yes, if you feel like you’re limited by equalisation, by pressure adaptation, then RV dives or if as he dies beforehand, can help you to to mitigate that a little bit. I don’t see a huge utility in doing them after a maximal dive. And in some cases, if you have if you do have a little bit of NMR in the lungs, not necessarily like a squeeze where you have blood but just some fluid in the lungs. Then as he dives that kind of thing can exacerbate that a little bit. So I would say if anything due to metal started fishing before for Tiger ties,

39:05

right. And I just just occurred to me that a question that I’ve never thought of before but one of my one of my friends was training recently and she was doing some FRC dive but in constant weight and and then someone was complaining and telling her she shouldn’t do that. And I wondered if you ever do your RV dives in no fins style, let’s say or do you do all your your RV diving and just gently and free motion pulling on the rope? Yeah, I

39:41

did the more free version. It’s kind of would be mixing objectives a little bit because the IV dies for me I just a tool to expose the body’s progression and combining that with the nofap movement and wouldn’t see any major advantages as well. Definitely potentially dangerous. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, especially for someone who’s not as familiar with them all.