Taupo Advanced CNF Course

Last week in Lake Taupo, New Zealand, Vertical Blue held an advanced CNF course in collaboration with the Lazy Seal Freediving Club (www.lazyseal.co.nz). The course took place over 5 days from January 13-17 ín Lake Taupo, New Zealand's most suitable location for freediving training.

Students, photographers and instructors all stayed in a villa in the small lakeside town of Tauranga-Taupo. All 8 students were of an extremely high level (at least 3 had performances to over 80% of the current world record), so it was an exciting challenge to be able to work with such an elite group. In the classroom sessions we were able to bypass all basic concepts and concentrate on some of the more delicate aspects of performance that I have discovered and developed over the last 5 years, such as dive strategies to maximise energy efficiency (MEE), no warm-up training, diet, use of yogic bandhas to 'super-slow' the metabolism & HR, and many more.

Thanks to the generous use of Philip Clayton's fully-equipped RIB we were able to easily train out on the lake each morning, where we were blessed with calm, warm weather for all 5 days of the course. The Lake was a toasty 21°C on the surface, with at least 12m of visibility, meaning the two expert underwater photographers Igor Liberti and Richard Robinson (www.diverdick.co.nz) were able to take some stunning shots. On Saturday Graham Mackereth brought out an ROV, an underwater robot operated by Clive from a container parked on the lake shore. It buzzed and swiveled to watch the students with two cameras, and flashed its lights when you looked into the lens.

After evening sessions of pranayama, lung stretches and exhale SA's everyone would settle down to a barbecue dinner and maybe a game of pool in the downstairs salon. It was a pleasure and an honour to be able to work with such an advanced group, and I trust we will be seeing some of them on the scene at international competitions in the future... Thanks to Kathryn Mc Phee from Lazy Seal for organising the course, and to Igor and Richard for the stunning underwater images.

Awesome course Will. Weather was just perfect. A lot of new aspects to experiment with, having great success in dropping my weights right down, proving it's unnecessary.The accent requires littlernenergy, with that added confidence venture deeper.(Been diving up in Auckland last wknd)|'ll eliminate it all together with my Orca 2m.

by Gavin Gray on 2008-01-28 00:58:24