The Rich Roll Podcast - Holding Your Breath for 7 Minutes & Swimming 218 Meters Without Coming Up for Air

Episode Date: September 16, 2013

Sure, you've seen him on shows like CSI and Gilmore Girls. But today's guest isn't just another actor. He can do some amazing things you can't. Very specific things, albeit obscure. Like hold his breath for a full seven minutes. Or swim 218 meters underwater along the bottom of a pool without coming up for air — not a single breath. Welcome to the mind-blowing world of Freediving, explained through the lens of one of the best in the sport — Australian National Record Holding Champion Tanc Sade. One of the things I love about the podcast is the excuse to meet compelling people doing amazing things outside the mainstream — things I would ordinarily never come across in my daily life and yet find utterly compelling. Freediving certainly fits the bill — a sport that couldn't be more different from endurance athletics and yet in certain respects still shares a commonality. Although the pursuit of excellence in any sport (as in life) require a strong mental game, Freediving requires unparallelled mental & emotional preparation. Learning to control the flexibility of not just your body or your thoughts but even your metabolic process through advanced meditation techniques. Getting there is the fascinating part, and Tanc shows us how he does it, and why. And that's just the beginning. No spoilers. Just sit back. Listen. And let Tanc blow your mind. In the interim — and to just paint the picture for you about what we are talking about here — have a look at Tanc's 218-meter Australian national record-setting effort – an event called “Dynamic Apnea”: NOTE: Tanc is a professional. You are not. So no matter how inspired you may be by this interview, please DO NOT attempt your own half-baked unsupervised freediving experiment at home — any type of breath hold work unsupervised can cause death. If you are interested in learning more about the sport, research freediving courses and/or clubs in your locale and undertake proper instruction from someone skilled in this discipline. And if you have additional questions, reach out Tanc on Facebook and he would be happy to advise and guide you in the right direction. Thanks! Rich

Hey, everybody. Before we begin today, I just wanted to take a quick moment to thank you for all the support that you've shown me and shown the podcast. When I started this show back in December, I had no idea that it would develop the audience that it has, and it warms my heart to get all the crazy, amazing feedback from you guys who have been enjoying listening. to get all the crazy, amazing feedback from you guys who have been enjoying listening. So if you've been enjoying the show, tell a friend, keep listening, and know that I appreciate it very, very much. If you want to stay on top of the latest podcast episodes, if you want to get information about the latest in nutrition,

if you want to know when our new products are coming out, like the t-shirts that we have coming up, then go to richroll.com and subscribe to my newsletter if you haven't done so already. All right. Thank you guys. Let's get on to the show. Welcome to episode 49 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Tank Sade. Hey everybody, it's Rich Roll here. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the Rich Roll podcast. What do we do here? Well, I am an ultra endurance triathlete. What do we do here? Well, I am an ultra endurance triathlete. I am an author of the number one Amazon bestselling book, Finding Ultra.

I'm the host of your show here. I'm a family guy. I'm married. I got four kids and I love to swim, bike, run, be outside, stay fit on a plant-based diet. On this show, what I try to do is bring to you some of the most interesting minds and personalities in health, wellness, and fitness. A lot of plant-based people,

but a lot of different kinds of people too that do all different kinds of interesting things. A lot of whom are people you may not have ever heard of that I'd love to bring on the show so we can learn new things about new pursuits, new ways of living, new kinds of sports, all different kinds of stuff. But the kind of consistent theme is paradigm busting minds and personalities, people who are on the cutting edge of living their life passionately according to their own rules. So I've had doctors, I've had nutritionists, I've had world-class athletes,

I've had entrepreneurs, all different kinds of people. And today is a guest who certainly fits the bill of being unique and compelling and different. His name is Tank Sade and he is an Australian actor, but he's also a freediver. He's the Australian national champion in freediving. And what is freediving? Well, I will admit that I knew very little about this sport. I had seen video footage of freedivers in the ocean who dive down as deep as they can go to set depth records. And that's certainly one part, one aspect of this sport. But there's a whole other component to this sport that I knew nothing about, which is swimming underwater for distance or just simply holding your breath underwater in a static position in a competition format. And Tank is a guy who does his competitions

in the pool. He's the Australian national record holder for swimming underwater with a fin a monofin which is like a mermaid tail and we talk all about that in the episode but he can swim 218 meters underwater without breathing he can also hold his breath in a static position in the pool for upwards of seven minutes so it's certainly a unique talent and a certain kind of athleticism that's very different from the endurance athlete world or the strength world. It's something that requires a tremendous amount of mental focus and a discipline in which meditation, calming your body, using your mind to control the pace of your metabolism becomes paramount to success.

So it's less about strength and kind of training in the traditional context that we think about and more about how to use your mind to propel your body beyond what you think is capable. And it's a fascinating new world that we get to explore and discover today. So I can't wait to share with you this interview with a very, very compelling and fascinating guy. Before we get into it today, a couple little notes. I'm going to be in Tucson on September 21st as part of the Healthy You Network. Tucson, come out and see me speak. Come on. It's going to be me. It's going to be Dr. Michael Greger, who's been on the show before. We love him. Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, who's the compassionate cook, she's going to be there as well. So if you want to learn more,

go to healthyyouetwork.com. And if you're in Tucson, I think they have billboards up around town for the event, which is pretty funny. So anyway, check it out. Hope to meet you and see you there. Also, I'm going to be in Washington, DC, my hometown, coming up the following weekend on September 28th as part of the DC VegFest. If you want to learn more about that, go to dcvegfest.com. I'm speaking on Saturday afternoon, I believe. So that should be a good time. And I'm looking forward to getting back to DC, hanging out with my parents, maybe seeing a couple old friends. So good times, right? What else? My MindBodyGreen course course i have a whole uh course on plant-based nutrition

at mindbodygreen.com it's on the home page you can find it there it's three and a half hours of video content broken up into five to ten minute little chunks each addressing a specific topic that is relevant to switching over to a plant-powered lifestyle. It's been great. The feedback's been amazing. People are really enjoying it. And there's an online community there where you can raise your concerns, ask your questions, and Julie and I jump in, we answer them, the community gets in there and supports each other. And it's been really cool to see that blossom. People are really enjoying it. And I'm really proud of it. The production value is really high. And I think we covered all the bases. So whether you're brand new to eating a plant-based diet, you're just plant curious, you want to learn more. It's a great place to start. But if you've been eating

plant-based for a long time, maybe run into some obstacles, or you have questions about what's the best way to eat this way when I'm traveling, or what do I eat before my workout or after my workout or what are the smoothies that you like or what are some of the superfoods you like and why is it that you think this is such a good way of eating and living? All those things are addressed in the course. So check it out.

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I've gotten a lot of emails from people who say, well, I live in the United Kingdom. I live in Europe. I live here. I live there. I don't live in the United States and I want to use the Amazon banner ad, but it's for us only. We're aware of that. We're in the middle of, like I said, doing a little bit of a website redesign, and we're going to configure everything. So no matter where you live, you can use that Amazon banner ad and support the show. So thanks for raising that issue. We are on top of it. You can also donate to the show. There's a donate button. So you can, if you're feeling so inclined, you can throw us a few bucks on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a one-time basis, it's up to you how much. And thank you so much for

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What are you going to do with this new body, this new good feeling that you have from treating your body right? You know, how you exert yourself and where you focus that energy is really important. And I think in order to do that right, you got to get the best information so that you can get in touch with yourself, find out what makes you tick, and start expressing more of that. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts

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So that's it. Let's get on to the show. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Tank Save. Ray Rock. Yes, sir. I am indeed. Yeah. Thanks for taking the time. Thanks for having me. So our mutual friend, Osher. How do you know Osher? I know him from the Aussie contingency out here in LA.

The Aussie contingency is pretty tight out here, isn't it? It is. I think it's always good to be around fellow Aussies. We have a certain sense of humor. It's perhaps a little ruder, a little bit more crass. I have a joke. I humor. It's perhaps a little ruder, a little bit more crass. I have a joke. I started this podcast in December, and I've got, I think this is the 49th, 50th episode

or something like that. Wow. And I literally, it seems like every other person I've interviewed is either from New Zealand or Australia. That's funny. So you're continuing the trend, man. I'm honored to be a part of it. Yeah, man, thanks.

And it's cool to be back in my old neighborhood I used to live. Like I told you before we were recording, I lived on Marina 4th right around the corner here. So I love this neighborhood. Yeah, Santa Monica's great. I was quite fortunate to find this place when I first got here. So being an Aussie, I like to be right close to the beach, so it's great. Yeah.

How long have you been here? I've been here almost eight years now. Oh, wow. Nice, man. And what's going on right now with the acting? Are you working right now or auditioning or what's going on? Yeah. Actually, I just auditioned today for a pilot that's being shot in Costa Rica with John Malkovich.

Oh, wow. Malkovich, he's going to do TV. He's doing TV wow it's from the creators of God what's that show on HBO which one

the big one the big Boardwalk Empire no no no Thorns Crown oh Game of Thrones Game of Thrones

that's it yeah and he's playing Blackbeard and then I'm doing a movie at the end of this month out in Vegas for 22 days oh nice I'm doing a movie at the end of this month out in Vegas for 22 days

oh nice I'm not sure I can handle Vegas for 22 days but I've got a show that's a long time man yeah you know I don't know

I think that would not be healthy for me yeah cool and do you know do you know Dan McPherson I have I've actually met him a couple of times down in Venice

on Abbot Kinney he seems like a really nice guy yeah he's cool I think he just went back to Australia I Oh, did he? But anyway, yeah, the tight Aussie contingent of actors slash athletes. Yeah, we have a mutual friend, Mark Stabina, who played international rugby. So keeping that athletic kind of circle going. Nice, man. I like that. I like the, I like, I love, I'm obsessed with creative people and artists and I love the intersection of sport and artistry.

And I think that, you know, your sport is, it's so unique and it's so different. And I think it lends itself to that kind of, different kind of approach that we're going to get into, particularly like the mental approach to it, which I think is probably really unique and, and extraordinary in your sport, um, compared to others, you know, in terms of performance. I mean, I think that it would seem like the mental aspect of what you do really takes paramount importance. Whereas with other athletes, it's

like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I need to visualize or I should do this or I should do that. But it kind of gets second shrift, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would go so far as saying that probably 60 to 70% of the performance in this sport is mental. And the difference between a good day and a really, really, really bad day is purely mental. between a good day and a really, really, really bad day is purely mental. I mean, the discrepancy, you know, you could lose two-thirds of your performance if your head's not right.

And I can't really think of many other sports that would be like that, probably golf. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I would see it's similar to that. It would be like playing golf but holding your breath. Yeah, exactly. Right? Playing golf in a tremendous amount of pain. to that. It would be like playing golf, but holding your breath. Yeah, exactly. Playing golf in a tremendous amount of pain. I'm excited to talk to you about this because I know very,

very little about this sport. And it was fascinating to kind of watch some of the videos and some of the stuff that you sent over to me to take a look at beforehand. And although I know close to nothing about free diving, I do know quite a bit about monofin swimming. I've had some experience with that. Oh, wow. Yeah. I went to, this is a long time ago. I have a background as a swimmer and I was a swimmer in college and, and, uh, you know, some years after I retired, there was a little movement in the United States to put together a fin swimming team. Right. And it was started by the guy who founded finis okay um and this was before finis was finis it was like literally out of his garage he started this company and he had been traveling around europe and was a swimmer and you know and he had been a collegiate swimmer um

john mix is his name and uh and he stumbled upon a fin swimming meet somewhere in like Eastern Europe. I don't know where it was, or I don't know where he was, but it could have been in Russia. It could have been anywhere. And he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe how fast these guys were swimming. And he couldn't believe that there was even a sport. It's like literally competitive swimming,

except you have a monofin on, you know? Yeah, a girlfriend of mine in Australia, she's Italian. She's currently ranked third in the world. Oh, really? Okay. So it's huge in Europe. It's weird because from my understanding, yeah, in Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Eastern Bloc countries,

when you're very young, they sort of identify whether you're gonna be more proficient in regular swimming or in fin swimming and they divide you accordingly. And they develop these swimmers that are very specific to the underwater fin swimming discipline.

And I had the opportunity to go to the world championships outside of Budapest. It was in Dunia Javaros. And we had a team. It was a bunch of former college swimmers, but we had like Pablo Morales was on the team and Jenny Thompson, like both, um, Olympic medalists, Olympic medalists. And, uh, we just went and got our

asses kicked. I mean, like we didn't know what we were doing. We were there to have fun, but we did like train with the fin and we tried to learn like, how do you do this? And it's a very, very different discipline swimming underwater with a fin. And we had the center mount snorkel. We never did the apnea. Well, they have the apnea, the 50 meters underwater. And then they have the ones with the breathing apparatus where you hold the tube, the oxygen tank in front of you.

And you swim like 1500 meters underwater without breaking the surface. So it was crazy. But I just remember being at this meet and being amazed at how good some of these swimmers were who I'd never heard of. And when they, for example, when they do the 50 meters, they dive in off the blocks

like a regular swim meet with the fan on. And then there's just this massive like tidal wave, looks like a little tsunami that goes down the pool and just drenches all the officials at the far end. And guys are doing i don't know the times offhand but it was some ridiculous number like 11 seconds or something like that to go 50 meters underwater yeah they're quick so so it's cool and uh you know that we went we did that meet and uh it was a good time but it never obviously it never took off in the u.s no one's ever really heard of it but But is that, so I guess that's in Australia, there are people that do that though. Yeah, there are people that fin swim in Australia.

And anyone who comes from a fin swimming background has a big advantage when it comes to dynamic apnea. The current world record holder, Alexei and his mother, Natalia, both came from fin swimming backgrounds. Interesting. Are they from Russia? Yeah, they are. I think that's one of the, how old is that guy now? Alexei's young, he's probably 30, I think, I don't even know if he's 30.

Must be a different guy. His mom is in her 50s. Interesting, I mean, I remember I met this one guy who was a Russian champion and he could do, I don't know if you've seen those videos where they're like underwater in the ocean, you swim up from like 10 meters down and you break the surface with your entire body.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Breaching, yeah, like that. That's phenomenal. Which you have to be, it looks easy, but you have to be incredibly strong to do that. Very, very strong. And I thought his name was Alexi, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it's probably a different guy.

But anyway, it's a fascinating little weird kind of subculture sport that, you know, people in America have no exposure to whatsoever. And then you go to these foreign countries and it's like, it's all about that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then you have the ocean fin swimming, which is, you know, like 20 kilometer races. Oh, I didn't know about that. Yeah. Yeah. Front snorkel, open water, 20 Ks. Really? Probably about 15 miles, would you say? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I didn't know about that. Yeah, front snorkel, open water, 20 Ks. Really? Probably about 15 miles, would you say? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

That's interesting. And the discipline is very, I mean, you realize when you're training with this fin, how important your hydrodynamics are. You have to learn how to be incredibly streamlined underwater, which you have a great streamline, by the way. Oh, thank you. I'm very impressed with your streamline.

It's actually gotten better since I've been here. And people think that you're kicking and you're using your leg muscles, but it's really not that at all. It's a very kind of subtle undulation where you're pressing down with your chest almost. And it's very much a core exercise more than anything else.

Yeah, I'd probably say it's probably 70, 80% from your core, like from your torso. And I mean, you'd get lactic incredibly quickly if you just use your knees, use your legs rather. Right, I mean, those muscles are so big and they're actually not that efficient at propelling you forward. No, absolutely not.

And you also have problems with hydrodynamics when you start bending at the knees because you're just hitting a big front of water. So you wanna keep that as straight as possible. Right, I mean, when you watch a dolphin swim, there isn't that much motion. It's a very, very tiny, subtle motion, but incredible forward propulsion, the way they move.

I guess that's why they call it a dolphin kick. Yeah, they did, that's right. And when I was, I swam inam, uh, in college in the, it was the late eighties and that was the very beginning of experimentation with the underwater dolphin kick. Um, and it was the first time where people were starting to realize that they could actually go faster if they stayed underwater with people with really solid, proficient underwater dolphining. And, uh, and the rules allowed you, there was no provision in international swimming rules that said you had to break the surface

at any particular time. So people were really pushing the envelope and especially the backstrokers. So there was a whole contingent of backstrokers and this is like around 1988, who got incredibly good at swimming underwater. And at the Seoul Olympics, most of the final field in the 100 backstroke

was underwater the entire time. Wow. It was David Berkoff, a teammate of mine, Sean Murphy, a bunch of guys who were just incredibly, incredibly fast underwater, and some of the butterflies too. And then they ultimately ended up changing the rules. Right.

You had to break the surface at 15 meters. You can't stay underwater because the world records were like dropping like crazy and it was becoming a completely different sport. I'd really like to see that actually. Yeah, I'm sure there's videos of that on YouTube. That was at the Seoul Olympics or prior? Seoul Olympics, yeah.

It was where it really kind of like was on the world stage. There was a guy named David Berkoff who I can't remember whether he had the world record in the 100 backstroke. He definitely had the American record at one point. And he was really the first one to just really take it to the hilt. And he was a student at Harvard at the time, amazingly talented swimmer.

And he would go further and faster than anybody. It was crazy to watch. I know there's this video floating around uh recently a college swimmer did the 50 meter backstroke and he did the entire thing underwater i mean he got dq'd but you know he just wanted to see how fast he could go i think it was like 20 seconds or something yeah i'm not surprised yeah i mean i'm not yeah i'm not surprised i mean that's why they changed the rule so for people that don't know like 20 seconds for was it 50 meters or yards 50 50 meters 50 meters that's really fast yeah i think it, like 20 seconds for, was it 50 meters or yards? 50 meters.

50 meters. That's really fast. Yeah. I think it was like 20s, maybe a couple seconds quicker. Right, right, right, right, right. So yeah, so it's interesting. And yet, you know, what you do is very different. It's not about seeing how fast you can go.

It's all about conservation. So why don't you, I wanna get into the story about how this all started for you. I know you've told it a million times, but you're gonna have to tell it. But explain to people kind of what this discipline is. Or just give a primer on free diving in general and the different kind of aspects of it.

Because I think when people think of free diving, they think of people that dive straight down in the ocean yeah yeah and how that's different from the pool competitions that you do right well so there's free diving is basically broken up into two areas there's depth which is always in the ocean and then there's pool and so in depth you have a constant weight which is swimming down with a monofin as far as you can go and then you have um constant weight no fins which is the same thing but without fins and then you have constant weight means what does that mean constant weight means that whatever weight you take down you have to bring back up so that becomes the challenge of well if i'm going to wear any lead how much much is it going to be? And usually most divers wear very minimal lead

because what happens is at depth you compress, your lungs compress basically to the size of a grapefruit. So while you're buoyant on the surface, you're incredibly negative at depth. So at depth, you've then got to lug that weight back up. The idea behind bringing lead with you is to help you submerge more quickly. Exactly, because what happens is in the first 20 odd meters, you're quite buoyant. And you really have to fight against that buoyancy to get down.

And then when you get to about 30 meters plus, you can actually go into a sink phase where you can just stop swimming altogether and you'll just drop a meter a meter you know probably every second and a half so it's it's how much energy you're going to expend in that first 30 meters to get to that point right exactly yeah so the the way most people go about now is they wear very minimal lead probably as much to negate the buoyancy of the wetsuit um and the bigger the lungs the more oxygen you pack the more point you're going to be at the surface.

So yeah, there are a couple of disciplines in depth. There's constant weight with fin, without fin. Then there's free immersion where you pull yourself down the line and then there's variable weight where you go down on a sled and then you have to free swim back up. They're the four main disciplines in depth. And then when you go to pull, you then again have the dynamic, what's called dynamic apnea, and that's where you can wear fins or a monofin.

And then you have dynamic nofins, which is, as it sounds, it's basically like a modified breaststroke. And then you have a static breath hold, which is you just sit there underwater and you hold your breath as long as you can. Just like you're eight years old and you're at the pool with your friends, right? Exactly. And that static discipline is the most challenging mentally

because you have no distractions. There's no swimming. There's no worrying about technique. There's no focusing on turns or anything like that. And can you put like a lead weight on your lap so you just sit at the bottom? You actually just float on the surface. Oh, okay.

Face down. Face down, yeah. So yeah, no lead required in static batholds. If you're floating face down, how do they know when you black out? That's a good point you raised. What happens is you'll have a surface coach who will be in the water with you. And while you floating face down, how do they know when you black out? That's a good point you raised. What happens is you'll have a surface coach who will be in the water with you. And while you're face down, I mean, their first thing they got to do is they got to make sure you don't float away.

So they just basically hold you there. They use their hands very, very delicately to the point where you don't even know that they're touching you. And they keep you within close proximity of the wall because if you have to come up quickly, you can grab onto something. We can talk about that a little bit more later. And then what they do is they will talk you through your performance. Some people like a lot of chatter. When I'm coaching, I tend to chat a lot to the person

that kept them distracted. I'll remind them to relax certain muscles, relax your shoulders and your jaw and everything's okay and this is the tough bit, so let's just work through this. And then at a certain point, depending on the ability of the athlete or their personal preferences, you'll ask them for a signal. So for me, for example, I get my first signal at six minutes.

So at six minutes, most people probably start early. So say for example, two and a half minutes, the coach will say signal. And then what you'll do is you'll just move your finger and then that'll let them know that you're still conscious. And are they telling you how much time or are you looking at a clock or something? That's up to you.

I don't like to know. So I don't get my first i i only know when i'm at six minutes that okay i'm at six minutes now um a lot of guys would probably start getting calls at two three minutes so you know be like three minutes signal 3 34 435 um and then when i get to six i want them quite regularly like i i'll get them every 15 seconds. And that's where you're riding that line of making sure you come up conscious versus blacking out. If you do black out, then it's an automatic disqualification

and you get zero points. Right, because I would imagine if they didn't have that rule, then everyone would just go to blackout on purpose, right? Exactly. So it's a safety measure to keep, you know. And then when you come up it's not as simple as just coming up there's there's very strict safety protocol that you

have to adhere to right and if you don't you get disqualified and that is you have 15 seconds um once your airway breaks the surface to remove all facial equipment so that could be either a mask or goggles and a nose clip do you have to do that yourself, unaided? No one can touch you. If anyone touches you, you're immediately disqualified. I got it. So you have to remove your facial equipment. Then you have to make the okay signal. And the facial equipment is just goggles and a nose plug?

Yeah, exactly. Make the okay signal and then you have to say, I'm okay. The only other acceptable response is, I am okay. If you say anything out of that, if you do that out of order, if you leave your nose clip on, if you take longer than 15 seconds, you're immediately disqualified. Interesting. So at the end of a seven-minute breath hold or 200-watt meter dive,

you're really skirting on the edge of you know how conscious you are so you have to make a conscious decision that your time is up because you have to a lot for the energy it's going to take for you to go through that that that sort of checklist of things you have to do exactly if you're too close to the edge you're not going to make it through that without blacking out right yeah and you'll see and and a lot of people just don't have the mental capacity at that point and they're not blacking out but they might rush it they might forget their nose clip on um they could do a whole number of things you know um it can be challenging for foreigners actually because i have to say it in

english and so sometimes i'll come and they'll say oh really no matter where you are it has to be in english i'm good you know that's a dq um so yeah Oh, really? No matter where you are, it has to be in English? They'll say, I'm good. That's a DQ. So yeah, it's about finding that point where, it's one of those rare sports where you want to take it to 99% because 101% is blacking out or getting disqualified. Right. Interesting. Yeah, it's like the only sport where you're not trying to go 100%.

Exactly. And that is in part strategy and it's in part mental capacity. And just to put it into perspective, so your longest, what's it called again when you just hold it, it's dynamic? Static, static is just a breath hold. My personal best is 705,

but I don't compete in that discipline. Right. And what would be, what's the world record for that? The world record is 10 minutes 55. Wow. And that was a few years ago by Stéphane Misfoud. He's French. Oh, French guy.

But just at the world championships in Serbia, the top three places hit nine minutes or nine minutes or just done those nothing a nine eight fifty seven eight fifty or something right so that gives you a comparison of really where that one guy was compared to everyone else mm-hmm anything I would say a seven minute breath holds respectable and eight minute breath holds really in the top echelon and then anything above eight and a half is exceptional and how much we're going to get into the particulars of it but how much of it do you think is genetic predisposition position somebody just is naturally gifted with tremendous

lung capacity or something like that and how much of it can be impacted by training? I would say probably half and half. Some people just have incredibly large lungs, I'm not exactly sure, but probably the average capacity would be six liters for an adult male. And you have freedivers out there who have eight and a half liter lungs. So you have that, and then there's a thing called packing,

which freedivers do at the elite level. And that's where you physically use your tongue to piston more air into your mouth once you've taken a maximum breath. So what that's like is that's essentially, it'd be like blowing more air into a balloon so that you're expanding your lungs beyond their physical limits. Oh, from air that might be higher up in your,

you're sort of up in your mouth or something? Or how, what do you mean? Oh, you mean in training, learning how to do that? Yeah, so what we do is we take a full breath of air and then we, if you can imagine, use our tongue to push air. So we open our mouth imagine use our tongue to push air so we open our mouth and use our tongue to push air down our throat and then block off our throat and then we'll take another breath push you know it's like oh i see so you're creating like a high pressure chamber

in your lungs exactly and wow that's amazing the top guys in the world would probably pack between two and four liters wow that and that's know, there are a handful of guys who can do that. So they could take their lungs from, you know, eight liters to 11 liters. That's amazing. So which is almost double the capacity of a, you know, the average person. Right, and when you're in the midst of the event,

are you holding it the whole time or are you slowly releasing? No, you hold it. You hold it the entire time. And that predominantly has to do with carbon dioxide. No, you hold it. You hold it the entire time. And that predominantly has to do with carbon dioxide.

But then the constant weight no fins world record holder, William Trubridge, who's a Kiwi, he has very average size lungs. I think his lungs are around six liters. But he has phenomenal technique and he has a fantastic mental capacity. So, you know, yes, it's a great advantage, but nothing beats hard work and training and, you know, fixing your mental capacity and pain tolerance as well. Yeah, I mean, I think on the sort of

mental capacity aspect of it, you know, you read these stories. I love reading about sort of the Eastern mystics and you always read these stories about these yogis who learn how to control their metabolism through just, you know, like super intense meditation practice and experience where they literally can lower their heart rate,

lower their blood pressure, and, you know, basically dial down their metabolic rate to almost nothing. Like I remember I talked about this in my book, but there was a guy, there was a TV show in the, in, in America in the 1970s called that's incredible. And I remember watching it as a kid. And there was a guy called the Yogi Kudu who was like this, you know, celebrity Yogi dude or whatever. And he folded himself up into like a lucite box that was like tiny, like, you know, they showed him, they showed him like

furl himself into this tiny little box and they put it at the bottom of the pool and they put a weight on it and he was down there for like i don't know how long it was but it was a really long time and they they were like measuring his heart rate and all that kind of stuff and literally he was like in this like close to dead state where he wasn't using any oxygen you know so i would imagine like the competitive edge really comes in with your ability to like tap into that aspect of it, which is, you know, that I would imagine requires years and years and years

of learning how to use your consciousness or your mind to control your biological processes in your body. Yeah, absolutely. And that's something we work on a lot with meditation and most free divers do a lot of yoga as well. And there's also something called the mammalian dive reflex and that's this thing that when you submerse yourself

in water and a lot of it's about your eyelids touching the water, but or just your face in general, especially if the water is a bit colder, after a short period of time, your metabolic rate diminishes, it slows down and your heart rate drops. And that'll happen to anyone. It's just naturally.

Yeah, just naturally. I mean, if we measured, if we got you on the side of the pool and we got you to do a breath hold, or if we just had you sitting there and we measured your heart rate, and then if we put you face down in the water with nothing on your face and you did the same thing,

you'll find your heart rate drops after a couple of minutes. That's what is that attributable to? Just some sort of, you know, Darwinian thing that evolved over time. You know, we came out of the ocean and so we still have that, you know, and that's the same thing that seals and whales. That's like fascinating.

All that stuff, yeah. I mean, in a breath hold, there are some athletes whose, you know, resting heart rate would be about 60, but they'll get four minutes into a breath hold, there are some athletes who's, you know, resting heart rate would be about 60, but they'll get four minutes into a breath hold and they'll find it down to about 15. Wow. 15. Yeah, 15, 20, yeah.

15, that's amazing. Yeah. Wow. All right, so let's get to your discipline, which is, what is it? Dynamic pool with the fin? What do you call it exactly? Yeah, the monofin. Yeah.

And that's basically where it's just one big fin, which looks sort of like a mermaid tail. And you stick your feet in it and it's incredibly uncomfortable. Really tight on your feet. Yeah, really super tight because you don't want to lose any of your efficiency in the fin. I guess it would be the same as ski boots or something like that. Right.

The fin really becomes an extension of your legs. Exactly, and you want to use all of that surface area to maximize your propulsion in the water. You kind of start from your upper torso and you kind of create this rhythm where all of it, including your legs and the monofin, propels you through the water. And are there regulations about how stiff the fin should be or is that a personal preference?

Because I know they come from really stiff. Like in fin swimming, it's the sprinters want to use a really stiff fin and the distance swimmers will use one that has a lot more give to it. Exactly. And that's personal preference. There's some, I kind of have a medium stiffness fin

and then there's Dave Mullins who is a former world record holder and quite possibly will be again in the next couple of days. You know, he has an incredibly soft fin. It's almost like butter. And this is a behemoth of a man. I think he's like six foot five or something.

And he's got these trunks as legs, but I mean, he just has phenomenal techniques. So the tendency is the better your technique, the softer the fin. But yeah, so I hold the Australian national record in dynamic apnea um which is 218 meters right and just to explain it in very elementary terms you swim underwater in a 50 meter pool and the idea is to see how far you can go without taking a breath exactly yeah and that's it and so 218 meters 218 which is probably a little over

two and a third lengths of a football field right it's uh it's uh four four lengths and a quarter of a 50 meter pool or almost nine lengths of a 25 yard pool or probably nine and change on a typical high school 25-yard pool in the United States. I know eight lengths is 180 meters, so it'd probably be 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because 25 yards, 25 yards. Yeah, most pools in America are 25 yards. Right. With 225 yards is nine lengths. But then converting it to meters, yeah, it's probably almost 10. Yeah, I have to do the math all the time because I know I'm chasing records. It's like 22.86 meters equals 25 yards.

Right. Yeah. Where do you, which pool do you use down here to train? I train in Culver City. Oh, at the plunge. At the plunge. They're a fantastic pool and Diego down there helps us out a lot

and makes sure that we're taken care of. That's really the only pool around here that stays open at 50 meters most of the time or has liberal hours about that like the one uh santa monica college is only 50 meters like a couple mornings a week like really early too i think you have to go really early in the morning wow and they let you use the monofin like most pools don't let you use them no they wouldn't no no it's dangerous i mean they're sharp you can really injure somebody if you're like lap swimming with other swimmers with it. Right, right.

Well, we're on the bottom. So, I mean, I almost, I've probably brushed someone once in the last 12 months and they've got rubberized sides now. So they're a lot easier. I mean, it's just be like brushing up against someone. Right. But yeah, if you're on the surface,

then they're quite wide and you're taking up quite a bit of room but because we're on the bottom of the pool you know people just think we're a novelty like yeah what is that oh my god it's the merman yeah exactly yeah I mean for people don't know that I mean the fin really is about

it's almost three feet wide and at its base I mean it really is like a mermaid tail alright so 218 meters three feet wide and at its base. I mean, it really is like a mermaid tail. Yeah. All right, so 218 meters. Let's go, let's back up to how this whole crazy journey began and then we can get into the details of that because it's a pretty funny story. Yeah, so I grew up spearfishing,

which is essentially freediving with a spear gun. And so I had done that since I was about 15. And I... In Sydney? Is that where you grew up? In Australia, yeah. Yeah, on the east coast of Australia. And, you know, we're quite spoiled over there. The water's warm, it's clear, and there's a lot of fish.

And when I moved out here, I was like, oh, God, no, I don't want to be spearfishing in LA. So I kind of held off on it for a while., no, I don't wanna be spearfishing in LA. So I kind of held off on it for a while. And then eventually I got in there and the water's freezing. It's 52 degrees, it's 10 foot of visibility. People have this idea that,

oh, sunny Southern California, the ocean. The ocean is never really that warm here. Baywatch killed it for everyone. Yeah. Yeah, so I had done that and I was doing that out here for a couple of years and then I was at a pub in Venice one night and there was a couple of cute girls

and some of my mates wanted to kind of mosey on over. So we did and I was talking to this girl and we started chatting and she said she was a freediver and I said, oh, well, so am I. And she said, oh, really? And she said, well, where do you compete? And I said, compete? No, I just spearfish. and she said well where do you compete and I said compete no you know I just spearfish and she said oh I'm a competitive free diver and I said oh so what are you doing she said well we train in a pool and I was like what you train in

a pool just that just defies everything about the sport and she said yeah yeah no we train in the pool and um and you should come training one day and I I said, well, how do you train? And she said, oh, well, we do these oxygen tables and I said, oxygen table? And so she said, yeah. And she pulled out her iPhone and she had this app which goes through a series of breath holds. And I said, all right, well, let's do one.

It's about one o'clock in the morning. How many beers did you have in you at this point? I actually don't drink. Okay, good. actually don't drink. Okay, good. I don't drink. So I knew I had a leg up on her, but I was thinking, there's no way I'm letting a girl beat me.

It's just not happening. I don't care how, you know, what she is. And so we do this warm-up. She called it a warm-up and it was a 245-minute breath hold, which I'm sure I had done in the past, but it's not something I'd actually sat there and figured out. So I was like, oh, bugger. So we're there at the bar you know she's got two or three girls to her left I've got two or three guys

to my right and everyone's like cheering us on and and unbeknownst to me she'd been sick previous couple of days so you know I had a bit of an advantage and she she wimps out at about two minutes or something and I was like I am not stopping this you know my manhood was on the line so I got to the an advantage and she wimped out at about two minutes or something. And I was like, I am not stopping this.

My manhood was on the line. So I got to the 245 and she's like, right, you can come train with us. And so that was that. And she went off to the Bahamas for a couple of weeks to do a competition. And then she came back and it was winter and it was cold. There was no fish. And I rang her up and said, hey, what are you doing? And so, yeah, I went out fish and I rang her up and said, hey, what are you doing?

And so, yeah, I went out there and I started training with them and I just had a natural propensity to do it. Right, so it was just a fit from the beginning. How long ago was that? That was two years ago now. Right, only two years. And you set the Australian record a year ago, right? Yeah. So really it was only a year from commencement to national record holder.

A year, a very full on year. How old are you now? I'm 33. I just turned 33. But the second time, I didn't have a monofin. So I was just swimming in my spearfishing fins. And she said, are you getting really good at this? You really should get a monofin.

I was like, I am not spending $700 for a monofin, which I'm never going to use. And she said, you should borrow Ben's. Unbeknownst to me, Jenna and Ben were both on the US national team. I didn't realize how good they were. How many people are doing it in the United States? It is growing exponentially.

In the last two years, it's grown a lot. There are... That's grown a lot. There are... It's a good question. When you tally up freedivers who freedive in the ocean, competitive pool, ocean, and spearfishing, there's probably a couple of thousand. Uh-huh. Yeah.

In the United States or worldwide? Oh, wow, that's a lot. Yeah. I would not have thought that. I would have said, you know, maybe 100. Yeah. Wow. I mean, probably 100 that are, you know, competitive.

But definitely in the ocean, I mean, people out there freediving. Between Hawaii, Florida, and SoCal, you know, a lot of spearfishermen out there and what was it about doing it in the pool versus doing it for depth in the ocean that appealed to you i mean did you consider the depth option yeah definitely and and there's there's been talks about me doing depth um the first issue is a lack of sponsorship. You can't do depth in the US. So you're either going to the Bahamas, the Mediterranean or Dubai. So it becomes prohibitively expensive when you take into account flights and accommodation and, you know, competition fees and that sort of thing.

Whereas the pool, I can train any day I want, you know, for a couple of bucks. And there's a pool 15 minutes from me. So that's a way that I can train all year round and I really have a love of the ocean and I love spearfishing and I love bringing fish home for the family. And obviously, it's sustainable and it's the most sustainable way of consuming food. So it's really important to us that I do that. And I'm very careful about what I buy in the store and that sort of thing.

And yeah, so generally when I'm out in the ocean, I want to be doing something that's just for me and it's not competitive. And I mean, everyone has a love-hate relationship with freediving because it is such a stressful sport. And you just kind of get so amped up that it's nice to have a break and just have fun in the ocean right I may you know a lot of people

have been trying to get me into depth because it's from everything people have told me it's much more pleasant it's much more it's less taxing mentally and you get narcosis so that's that's that's a lot less painful to tell me what that is um it it's sort of like i mean i've never taken drugs but from what i what i what i can ascertain

it's kind of like being stoned. You know, severe cases of narcosis, you'll start hallucinating. But it's a result of lack of oxygen or? No, it's pressure at depth. Oh, I see. So, I mean, narcosis, from what I understand, and depth is not my specialty, kicks in, you know, varies for different people,

but usually around 70 meters. What's that times three? It's about 230 feet. And so with the compression on your lungs, it becomes less painful because your contractions aren't as strong. I see. Against the limitations of your ribcage. Right, right, right, right, right. And also mentally, if you're diving, you know, say for example,

you're diving to 50 or 100 meters, you know, you go down to 100 and then there is no option but to come back up. So it's very simple really. You don't have a choice. You just have to come back up. Whereas when you're competing in the pool, if you're having a bad day or it hurts too much, you're only three or eight feet from the surface.

So it's very easy to quit. And that happens a lot in the pool. And because you don't have the compression on your lungs then it becomes much more painful and the pain doesn't diminish and you're also constantly swimming whereas in depth you have that free ride

from 30 meters down that's interesting, the pressure on your body makes it less painful yeah, that's what. The pressure on your body makes it less painful. Yeah, well, that's what everyone tells me. But the challenge with depth is there's the technical physiological aspect of having to equalize because you only have so much air in your mouth

to use to clear your station tubes. So once you get to a certain depth, you have to find reserves of air in order to clear your ears oh wow and so what people do is they do this this thing called reverse packing and that's where they use their diaphragm to squeeze air up and into their mouth so that they can clear their ears and that is the limiting factor for probably maybe 60, 70% of freedivers is that they can't clear their ears. And that is also the greatest injury is perforated eardrums because they'll ride their ears too far and then they'll perf in the ear.

Right. And how do you develop the ability to control your diaphragm in that way? It seems like how do you even begin to learn how to manipulate that in that way like it seems like you know how do you even begin to learn how to manipulate that like in that way like it's such a bizarre specific thing to learn you know how do you even approach that exactly and you're speaking to someone who has absolutely no idea i've been told conceptually how it's done and i've there are ways that you can try to attempt it without going to depth and that's called on an exhale. So what happens is if you blow the air out of your lungs

and you dive to 10, 15 feet, you'll actually emulate diving to 200 feet because you don't have the air in your lungs and so you're having to pull that up. And I've tried that a couple of times and it's been's been an abysmal failure right wow yeah that's trying to eat crazy yeah so so um so you realize that you have this proficiency and you want to give it a go and you end up hiring a coach right to train you for the to to train you i mean i want to i want to know about like what the preparation is like what the daily kind of training routine looks like for something like this. So I just, I was doing a lot of,

well, I was getting a lot of advice from the guys on the US team. And then it was just the beauty of the internet. You know, I was reading up, I was getting as much literature as I could. And then I was just training in the pool and I was making steady gains. So I didn't really have to do anything at that point because I was still making big gains. You know, I started off with probably a hundred meter dynamic and that was in bi-fins.

And then I put on a mono fin. I think at that point, my best was 125 meters with bi-fins, traditional fins. And then Jenna said, well, you really need to put on mono. So I borrowed Ben's. And the first time I did it, I had no idea what I was doing. I did 110 meters. And then the second time I went for a max attempt, I did 175, which at the time was a US record.

And that's when I went, oh, okay, well, this is fun. Whenever you're doing well at something, it's always immediately fun. Yeah, that's not so hard. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, the difference between like spearfishing bi-fins and a mono-fin is night and day. Yeah, exactly.

And it's a completely different set of muscles and I didn't know what those muscles were or how to use them. Right. So then I spent the best part of six months just training technique and really drilling my dolphin kick. And that's where I started working with Wayne Judge, who's an Australian coach and, you know,

one of the premier coaches going around. And we just started talking online. I knew some people at Sydney Freedivers and Wayne at the time was living in Gladstone, which is this really small town in kind of mid-northern Queensland. And we worked online and he never charged me a cent. He just did it out of the love of the sport and was excited about a new up-and-coming Australian. And so what we would do is he'd give me training drills and I'd go off and do them. Always spotted. This is a sport where you always have someone on deck watching you.

Right. Because, you know, you could black out at any moment's notice. So, you know, I'd just train with one of the guys on the team and I would have these drills and I'd go down there with, you know, a drill. And then once a week, I would have someone video me with a GoPro underwater doing a couple of 50s and I'd upload it and I'd send it to him and he'd critique my my my technique yeah so you know it could be something as little as you know the fore-aft

position of my hand you know or your your fingers are pointed too high or they're too low or you know you need more flexibility in your shoulders you're not streamlined enough so you know then it was about three hours a week of doing flexibility work in the gym just to try and really you know get hyper hyper mobile and I think women have but not doing a lot of strength work just no I did no strength work yeah I actually no core I would think that doing some solid core work would be of benefit yeah do do do five kilometers of kickboard work yeah uh and you'll get that core strength I've done that I know what that's like yeah that Yeah. And you'll get that core strength. I've done that. I know what that's like.

Yeah, that'll give you core strength. But I was, I mean, I'd done a lot of weight training growing up and that was purely for vanity, you know, and for my acting career and that sort of thing. And I stopped weight training because, you know, I really wanted to get as flexible as possible and I didn't want any excess muscle because that would consume more oxygen right um so i quit the weight training and uh and i do some weight training now in the pre-season um but then probably a month out from

a competition i'll i'll stop that right and then and when you're going to the pool is it always you know at the bottom of the pool holding your breath or are you doing traditional swim sets and regular kind of swimming and yeah like aerobic kind of work early on in the season it's all aerobic it's all on the surface it's all kickboard work it's all technique work um i might do some co2 tables which is i'm and i'm a terrible swimmer by the way um when it comes to you know freestyle and that sort of thing but but what i'll do is I'll do maybe 1,200 meters freestyle. And what I'll do is on the first 100, I'll breathe every fourth stroke. And then on the second, every sixth.

And then on the eighth and on the 12th and then on the 14th. And then I'll come back down again. And the freestyler's probably take two or three breaths on a 50. Right. And do it in 25 strokes or something. I'm not that guy. So halfway through it, I've got a very strong headache from CO2 overload. So I'll do that pre-season, early season.

But to do that kind of like hypoxic work where you're you know you're you're staggering the time or the number of strokes in between breaths and kind of getting your lungs to you know acclimate to that i mean has that been established to be something that can improve your capacity to hold your breath in these distances like is there an equation where that actually like i'm trying to understand what the kind of things you do are like how they translate into being able to hold your breath longer right that uh that is co2 tolerance work so basically what happens physiologically is when you hold your breath and then you get that urge to breathe that has nothing to do with the amount of oxygen in your body that is co2 that's building up in your system. And so you've got to think of CO2 as kind of like a fuel gauge.

So when it gets to a certain level, it just goes to that warning light, you're getting empty. So some kind of mental trigger happens where it says you need to breathe right now, even though you actually really don't need to. Yeah, and it's a safety mechanism. It's the fight or flight, it's a survival mechanism.

So I've done tests in hospitals where, in research labs, where they will increase the amount of CO2 that I'm breathing, but they'll keep the oxygen level at the same rate. So I'm essentially just breathing normal air, but they're increasing the level of CO2. And what happens is all of a sudden I'm out of breath. It's like living in Los Angeles. Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, exactly. It's good training here for what you do, right? Yeah. So CO2 tolerance work is getting used to the discomfort of having high levels of CO2 in your systems. It's kind of like pain tolerance work. I see. As far as I know, and there's still,

freediving is something we're learning about a lot and new stuff comes out every couple of weeks but as you become more acclimated to that like let's say a higher percentage of CO2 in your system do you sort of like when you get stronger in the weight room then a heavy

weight doesn't feel heavy anymore does that sort of go away whereas you know oh now it doesn't feel like anything even though I have all this CO2 I'm not experiencing that discomfort exactly i mean you still experience it but it diminishes right and a lot of free diving is that so you start a swim and then it gets incredibly difficult and you get you're getting big contractions and it's really hurting and it's about overcoming that fight or flight thing mentally. And then it tends to get easier because you kind of settle into a groove.

And then, you know, the last stretch of the swim is just, it's a lot of CO2. I mean, different people experience it differently. So when you go, for example, 218 meters, at what point do you first start to experience that kind of sympathetic nervous system discomfort? I have my first contraction just before the 50. So that's like that first involuntary.

Oh, already, 50 meters already. Yeah, like that. And that's kind of like your dive reflex kicking in. It's called MDR. And then at around about, and this seems to happen for most people, at around about 75 meters. And this happens whether you do a 120 swim

or whether you do a 250 swim. At about 75 meters, you want to quit. And I mean, I've worked with so many athletes who would just come up at 75, like on the meter. You know, it's something that happens. That's not that far. No, it's not.

I mean, that's not far at all. I mean, you're going a lot slower, but I mean, you know, I can go, but I mean, I can go a hundred meters with a monofin underwater and deal and go hard. So when you guys are going really slow, it's all about conservation. Yeah, and it's that time, I think, it's that time underwater when you get to about 75

and you think, oh, you know what, this isn't my day. Do I wanna go through and endure the rest of this pain? And I have that pretty much every swim and then it's about mentally overcoming that obstacle and for me it lasts from around you know 75 80 meters till about 120 125 without doubt 75 to 125 is my hardest point of the swim interesting because that's only halfway and then you break through it's It's not even halfway. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, it's about a third into it when it starts getting. And then when it gets about 125, it starts to get easier because I have that mental carrot of going,

well, the 150 mark is only 20 meters in front of me. Right. And then I get to 150 and I make the turn and that's when it starts to get painful. That's when it's, for me, it's, you know, and other people don't experience any pain but i do and you know from about one it's actually quite distracting the pain you know 150 is like oh god you know here we go and from about 175 i'm so focused on accepting the pain that you know 200 comes and goes and then it's pushing on and I mean, I've done greater distances in training.

I just haven't had the opportunity to. How do you decide how hard to push off the wall? I mean, that's gotta be like trying to find the right amount because if you push off too lightly, you're not getting enough inertia and you're gonna have to use the fin to generate that forward propulsion. But if you push off too hard, you're going anaerobic.

And you're talking about all the things that is freediving. It's about finding the optimum range of your efficiency. And some people go a bit quicker and then other people go slower. I mean, the French are notoriously quick. It's almost like they're racing. And then you get the Kiwis and Dave Mullins, who we were talking about earlier, who's notoriously slow. You know, I do 50 meters around about the 47-second mark,

which tends to be on the slower side. Most of the U.S. team do them, you know, low 40s. And then you get someone like Mullins who's like mid-50s. So, yeah, it's about finding your range and where your efficiency is. And I probably spent, you know, six, 12 months figuring out where I was. I was around about the 50 second mark. And then I thought that is a bit quick. I need to, a bit slow. I need to pick it up a bit. Have you ever tried to just go really hard and see how far you could go before you like, like go fast?

I mean, I've done a hundred meter sprintsints um but you know i've gone as quick as 44 seconds for a 200 44 a lap and yeah i just found that harder than to take the extra three seconds a lap right and does anybody do a flip turn or is it all grabbing the wall yes yeah some guys do there's man there is there is as many turns as there are freedivers. Right. There's the flip turn. There's the, where they come in. I'm trying to describe it on a podcast. They kind of rotate 90 degrees. Oh, pivot their body. Yeah, pivot so that they're no longer,

they're facing the side of the pool. And then as they come around, they'll come into a flip turn. Then there are guys who don't kick off the wall at all. They'll come into the wall and they'll just use, they'll fold up their legs and they'll just push off with one arm and turn around yeah and then i do this hybrid where i you i touch the wall to to do the initial pivot and then i'll use my feet to gently kick off the wall and if i can hold a tight streamline then just off a gentle push i'll get a good, you know, six meters. Does anybody swim on their back?

I'm going to say no, but there is one guy who at one point set a US record, Wes Lapp, who did the oddest thing. He did, I think he said in a 25-meter pool, I'm not sure. I think it was 25. He did 25 on his front and did a half flip turn, I guess, and then did 25 on his back, and then did a half flip turn, did 25 on his front. And it just made me dizzy watching it. Right.

But he's the only guy I know. But I think for some people, doing it on your back, it's more efficient. Yeah, I mean, when I do surface work, I can do the dolphin kick much easier on my back than I can on my front. Right. And again, a lot of that is flexibility in the pelvis.

And if you've been doing that since a very young age, you're gonna have much better flexibility. Women tend to have better flexibility as well. But for someone who, for me, who started it two years ago, something I work on a lot. A lot of my training is about technique. Right. So you're doing pool work,

you're doing kickboard work, work flexibility yoga um and what is the what is the meditation aspect of it look like like on a daily basis um i do most of my meditation first thing in the morning um and a lot of that incorporates relaxation visualization um Is there a specific technique that you do or that you've learned to do or you just found your own? I've found my own. Like over the time I've done lots of different types of meditation from basic relaxation work to, you know, when I was working in the theater to...

What? Oh, no, it's fine. Okay. Airplanes flying over. These mics pick it up. It's fine if they do. I, it's fine. Airplane's flying over. These mics pick it up. It's fine if they do. I do it at home like the kids come in, there's motorcycles, don't worry about it. Oh, okay.

So, yeah, when it comes to relaxation, I do a kind of hybrid of a few different things. A lot of it's about relaxation and working with the breath to slow down my metabolic rate and also to lower my heart rate. And then I do a lot of stuff which kind of incorporates just accepting the state that my body's in. It's kind of perhaps a little difficult to explain, but when you're going through different mental aspects, it's about accepting. Surrendering to what is.

You know, that's a great way of saying it. Yeah, surrendering. As Eckhart Tolle would say, I guess. Yeah, God, it was a long time since I read his book. Yeah, and that's exactly what it is, is just accepting the state you're in and whatever thoughts that are coming in and just letting them come and go, you know, letting those negative thoughts come and go. And we all have them.

And a friend of mine says that the water never lies and there isn't a more truthful statement because when you are under and you are under, my swims take around about three and a half minutes. A lot of thoughts come and go in those three and a half minutes and a lot of the meditation I do is about accepting those thoughts and letting them come and go and not listening to them. And then there's, you know, the TM work I do

and then there's a visualization. And that's where I mentally go through the swim from five minutes before until a minute after it's ended. Right. And I meticulously go through every single detail of the swim, including making mistakes in the swim, including those negative thoughts that come in at 75 meters, overcoming things that I'm doing wrong.

My technique tends to start going when I'm in that pain. So when I'm visualizing that swim when i get to about 160 odd meters i start thinking about my technique and and it's about positive positive thoughts rather than negative ones so you know while you're in the swim you know it's it's quite normal for someone to say oh damn like you know my kicks off or you know that was a bad kick or no you know i stuffed up that turn and you know it's all about just skipping that thought and going to okay tank let's let's fix the next kick and that's a better kick come on yeah that's good

let's try and do that again all right no that wasn't so bad but that's right let's try another one and releasing uh releasing like releasing the judgment upon yourself. Exactly. And the visualization being so refined and specific and rehearsed so that by the time you're doing the event, it's a foregone conclusion. Exactly. I would imagine it's pretty similar in your acting too. visualizing the rehearsal process or visualizing how you're going to sort of embody this different persona or what have you to actually walk in the shoes of another human being and then have it become part of you. That's a great point actually.

I never really thought about that. But as an actor from a very early age, you're working on really exercising the muscle of imagination and getting it as vivid and as detailed as possible especially working in the theater so you know i never thought about that because that i would say is probably my greatest strength is my mental uh aspect of the sport because i'm still learning an incredible amount so there's a there's a high level of inexperience and there's also my techniques you know average at best um but you know i'm known for not quitting and and pushing through you know regardless of how bad the swim is or whether i'm you know competing injured or sick or whatever and and i've actually had to change in the last six months the way i do my

visualization because as you said i've always done it to the point where I've put a finite limit on it. So the no fins record is 175 meters. And at the nationals this year, I had visualized that swim so many times in my head to go to 176 meters and then to come up. And at about 140, I just kind of went into autopilot and i'd started to involuntarily lose air and that's the first sign of severe hypoxia um which doesn't ordinarily happen for me at 140 but i just i didn't really think of it and so because i'd mentally done the swim so many times in my head i had just pushed pushed on anyway. And at 172 meters, and I really should have come up at probably about 160, I'd blacked out underwater.

And, you know, that's just really interesting in the sense that how much visualization can have a play on your performance. And that's fine if you're a marathon runner or a golfer or whatever. But, you know, so now when I visualize my swims, I leave them open-ended. You know, I probably visualize a no fin swim to 140, 150 and then just leave it. Right, interesting. I mean, I talk about meditation quite a bit on the podcast

and I truly, truly believe that it is sort of the greatest kind of unexplored territory for improving your athletic performance. Like it just doesn't get the attention it deserves. And it snaps into crystal clear focus in a sport like yours, but because it's, I don't think there's anybody who could perform at your level without being very, very proficient and practiced

and devoted to a meditation practice. Like it has, you know, anybody at your level has got to be doing that all the time, but you don't really see it so much in other sports. And I love that idea of learning to feel the negative thoughts that pop up and having this sort of wherewithal to dismiss them. And it begs the question of your sort of higher consciousness versus your lower thinking mind that's running a tape or

whatever, and being able to distinguish between those two things. Because innately or by default, I'll just assume that I am my thoughts, no matter where they're coming from. Well, if I'm thinking this, then it must be so, or that must be where I'm coming from. But to be able to kind of stop in mid thought and say, oh, that's interesting that that's coming up, but I'm going to choose to move away from that and move in this other direction to literally bifurcate these things and say, these are two different things. Like I'm sort of this higher consciousness looking down upon, you know, this lower entity that's trying to push me in a negative direction and I'm going to make a different choice, you know,

and that doesn't come naturally, you know, that only comes through practice. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. Most free divers tend to not do big swims or max efforts very often and some will only save them for the race event. Whereas because I'm aware of my inexperience and not doing that many competitions, I tend to do a lot of big swims.

And I probably did 20 swims of 200 meters plus. And what I learned from that was regardless of how I was feeling, it had very little effect to do with my performance. Interesting. My absolute worst swim to date mentally was the first time I cracked the Australian national record. Oh, wow. In training.

I'd quit the sport halfway through the swim. I'd said, I'm not getting any better. That's okay. You're not getting any better. The more you train, the worse you you feel you can let this go just finish this swim and then we can walk away from this sport for a month or two and then we can come back and and that was a big eye-opener for me that said that what i'm thinking on a subconscious level or a conscious level has nothing to do with my performance and and that's why I was doing so many

of those big swims because in those swims, I was making mistakes. None of them were perfect. And I could still pull out a 200. I mean, I remember one swim I did 218. This was before I went for that record attempt. And I stuffed up the turn so bad at 200 that I ended up in the next lane. And I had to come back around under the lane rope and go to 218. And that's when I got a level of confidence that I'd never had before. And I get those from making mistakes.

So that could have been a 224 swim or something like that. And I've since done that, I've since done 230 swims. So yeah, that's a really good point you make. I think, for me, I spend in training, I probably spend 40% of my time doing meditation and mental work, 40% pull and strength, and then the other 20 is flexibility. Right. And do you go to yoga for the flexibility or is that like gym work?

I do a combination of stuff. I do some very light yoga. I have some shoulder problems, so I'm careful with the harder stuff. I work with some people at Equinox who do therapy ball work. So the first probably 15 minutes of the hour class is using the massage therapy balls

to really break down tissue and open up your flexibility. And then the last 40 minutes is like a real stretchy kind of program rather than strength-based. There's a little bit of strength in there. And then I'll just go to the gym and, you know, I'll get out on the mat and I'll bring out the roller and I'll, you know, roll out for 10, 15 minutes and then I'll do a whole series of stretches starting from my ankles,

ankles flexibility right up to my shoulders and my pecs. Right. And do you ever do hypoxic breathing exercises like dry land, hyperventilation stuff? We don't do any hyperventilation. That's like the worst thing for freedom. And that's the first thing I say to anyone is never,

never, never, never, never hyperventilate. Why is that? Because that, remember we were talking about the CO2 and how that's kind of like an indicator of, that urge to breathe. So when you hyperventilate, you unnaturally lower the level of co2 in your system so it takes out that warning light so um people tend to finish their swims in a lot worse shape and that's how

you black out um because you don't see the signals coming so if you don't hyperventilate you tend to be much sharper at the end right and and you know no no ocean spear fishermen now hyperventilates, whereas in the past, it was a big thing. Interesting, yeah. So before your event, I was envisioning like you're trying to get as much oxygen into your system and then you go under. Like that's what swimmers do a little bit.

So what, you just get super calm and just take one breath and go under and that's it? Exactly. I just do really small tidal breathing, like as if you were sleeping, that amount of breath. But you're ultimately trying to fill your lungs up as much as possible, right? So you have to be taking this tremendously huge breath, right? Yeah. And that's the one breath that I take. I see. I gotcha. But before that, the minutes before that, there's no hyperventilation. So yeah, I do dry land work i do um what are called oxygen and co2 tables and that's

an o2 table is basically where you increase the the breath hold so you could start with say a three and a half minute breath hold have two minute recovery four minute breath hold two minute recovery so it's like an interval, except you're just sitting there holding your breath. Exactly, laying on my bed, hoping I don't put my pants in pain. And then the CO2 work is your breath hold remains constant, but your recovery diminishes. I see. So what you're doing is you're keeping your O2 levels up.

You're accumulating the CO2 and you're like, I gotcha. Yeah, so the last probably three breath holds I do will be, you know, four and a half minutes, but I'll get 15 seconds to breathe. So it'd be four and a half, 15 seconds, four and a half, 15 seconds, four and a half. Right. And then, you know, similar stuff on the bike,

on the gym, you know, I go to Equinox in Santa Monica and, you know, just go down there and, you know, get on the, usually the seated bike. I like that one more so I don't have to expend as much energy. And, you know, just do the, usually the seated bike, I like that one more. So I don't have to expend as much energy. And, you know, just do a minute breath holds,

two minute breath holds. While you're pedaling. While you're pedaling. Right. You have to be a little bit more conservative when you're doing it on the bike, because if you do blackout, you know, one, it'll be awfully embarrassing, and two, you know, you could hurt yourself.

Whereas if I'm laying on a yoga mat, then, you know, if I were to blackout, then it's fine. Nothing's gonna happen to me. And on the subject of blacking out, I mean, I watched the videos of some of your efforts and there was one where you finish up and you surface and your fingers are all kind of, it looks like your hands turn into these claws, right?

I mean, I've done hypoxic breathing work and that happens to my hands. Like that must be the opposite of that, being hyper oxygenated or something. Like where suddenly you have this involuntary thing where your muscles start to do strange things and you were shaking. And it was like, you were trying to sort of compose yourself

and get oxygen into your system. But what is going on when that's happening? So as throughout the swim, your oxygen obviously depletes and then you get to a point where your body will systematically start shutting down parts, different organs or whatever you don't need. And one of the first things that goes usually is your diaphragm,

your digestive tract rather, because that consumes a lot of energy. So unfortunately, some guys in the sport have been known to have what we affectionately call a brownout, which can happen to marathon runners a lot or Ironman and that sort of thing. So at some point, your body will say, okay, I need the reserve of oxygen to keep the vital organs going. So your body will just switch off

and that's when you blackout. Now, on the way to that, you can experience something. Because your brain uses a lot of oxygen, right? So whatever's left is saying. It's kind of like thinking you're flying a plane and you're running out of fuel. And then so the pilot switches off two of the engines

and just coasts on the other two. That's pretty much what's happening. And something that can happen is called LMC, which is an acronym for loss of motor control. And it's affectionately called SAMBA. And it's when you start involuntarily shaking. So you kind of, it looks like a bad dance. And so when you can come up and there's a

period of time before you get to re-oxygenate your blood because you can you can take a breath and it's in your lungs but then it needs to transfer from your lungs to your blood and that's the kind of hairy hairy kind of 10 seconds or so when you first come up i employ a process called hook breathing and it's something that was invented by u.s fighter pilots i think in world war ii someone just after world war ii what happens is when you when you pull a certain amount of g's in an aircraft your blood pressure plummets and what that was causing that was causing pilots to black out right so they had to find an artificial way of there's actually a great video of a guy doing it online in um in a simulator

um so what you have to do is you have to artificially find a way to increase your blood pressure to maintain it at a certain level because if it drops to a certain level you will black out and so when i come up um there are two things i'm doing one is i'm doing my best not to exhale a lot of oxygen a lot of co2 because as soon as that CO2 drops, your body says, oh, okay, you're fine, and your blood pressure will do the same, and that's when you black out. And the other thing I do is I do this thing called hook breathing

where you basically bear down a lot of pressure on your head, and you can see it in the video, so it's really hard to describe, but it's almost like you're trying to blow out but you keep your mouth closed um it's almost it's almost just imagine if you're incredibly constipated and you're pushing really hard except you're doing it in your head um and that can that can keep a keep a black out of bay yeah it elevates your blood pressure yeah it does and it stops you from blacking out. And I will try not to do anything. You know, I have 15 seconds.

So what I do is my technique is when I come up from my swim, I'll throw my arms straight over the pool's edge and I'll support myself by ramming my fists under my chin. So if I do black out, if my head wants to drop, or if I am in a samba, I can keep my head elevated. Because one of the rules is if you have a head dip, if your mouth dips below the surface once you come up, that's an immediate blackout. That's an immediate disqualification.

Even if you actually didn't blackout. Yeah, well, I mean, if you can't, yes. If you had nods or, you know, you might come up and then accidentally kind of go back down again. Any of that stuff is a blackout, is a DQ. But what happens is a lot of people get these things called head nods. And that's just a little momentarily. Momentarily?

Momentarily. A momentary blackout. Yeah, is momentarily a word? Momentarily, yeah. Damn it, it is now. Yeah, yeah, it is. A momentary blackout. So, yeah, so I get up and I brace myself.

It's almost like I'm in a boxer's huddle, you know, in a boxer's tight, he kind of wraps himself around. So I do that around the gutter of the pool or around the lane rope and then I do a couple of these hook breaths and then I start breathing and that's, I will not take my arms off that side of the pool until I've had a good eight or nine seconds because I have had in swims past where I've rushed to my mask and just letting go of one hand and then I've kind of lost control and I've had a samba. So yeah, that's what's going on there. I mean, is it like, you know, are the shades closing?

Like it's dark around the corners and you have stars in your eyes and you're just trying to battle to not pass out? Yeah, exactly. What are you seeing and like what are you experiencing when that's going on? I'm seeing that at the end of my swim. So at that point, I'm technically about to get into a blackout. So then it's like get out of here and let's, you know, it's almost like skirting unconsciousness

and then bringing it back around um and i guess another way of describing it is to use another boxers analogy is is when you do get knocked out you know that the the decent boxer will will suck up seven or eight seconds on the floor before he you know rushes to stand up to soak it up and it's that sort of thing i'm it's that sort's that sort of thing where I'm just milking my time. And do you ever have like some kind of like, have you ever had like a strange, like, what would you call it? Like a psychedelic experience?

I mean, like where does your consciousness go when you're in this like altered state? Like, you know, does time stop? Does it accelerate? Are you, you know know having weird kind of dreamlike thoughts i mean what is going on yeah for me the the last 50 meters tends to feel the quickest um and i think that's in part i'm so distracted by the pain and keeping everything together and a part of it is by the end of it your your mental capacity is diminishing at least it is for me some people go into a euphoric state towards the end of their swim and it feels so easy and then

then they're gone and those people always blacking out right um it's easier if you're having big warning bells you know like oh my video my vision's starting to go or um i'm losing focus um or i'm seeing you seeing little speckly bits or I'm getting tunnel vision or my vision is going black and white. So as soon as I start seeing those, another big thing for me is involuntary air loss. So I get to the point where I can't hold air in my mouth anymore and I get these little tufts of air.

And you'll see that in that record swim where I was so gone. of air and you'll see that in that record swim where I was so gone. From about 208 or 210 meters on, I'm just losing constant stream of air. But for me, it's when you come to from a blackout, it's like coming off morphine. It's the most euphoric feeling that I've ever felt. It's a complete dreamlike state. I blacked out at the nationals. I had a big blackout at the nationals. And when I came to, I remember I felt like, you know the experience when you're waking up from a nice dream, but you haven't opened

your eyes yet, but you know you're kind of coming to. It was that feeling where I just felt, oh, wow, this feels so lovely. And I opened my eyes and two guys were kind of holding me. And the first thing I said was, wow, I feel so dreamy. It was quite funny. They have, uh, they must have, you know, a pretty decent medical staff at these events. I mean, we got to talk a little bit about, I mean, I can imagine somebody listening to this going, well, this is insane. Like, you know, this guy's crazy. Like this is just dangerous. Like, why is he even doing it? You know, like, can we speak to the sort of inherent dangers of this or? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, how does that work? Well, first of all, blackouts look a lot worse than they are.

When people see them, they tend to freak out a bit, especially to the uninitiated. But really, a blackout is pretty much the same as just passing out. The same feeling you get when you stand up too quickly and you feel whizzy and most people have passed out at some point or another. In terms of impacts on your body physiologically, it's nothing. There's still plenty of oxygen in your in your body and then once you start breathing again you're completely fine and and i've blacked out in the past and you know five minutes later gone back into doing a you know a half hour warm down um

so there's you know there's there tends to be a a bit of misinformation going out there i mean the the critical thing with freediving is there is absolutely nothing wrong with blacking out on the surface. If you black out underwater and you're not being supervised, then you will drown. I mean, it's that simple. Right. I mean, if you're a depth diver and you're down, you know, 20 meters or something like that, and you experience that, that's a different animal altogether, I would imagine. It's not too dissimilar because what happens at depth is most people get what's called shallow water blackout.

It's very rare. I think something like 95% of blackouts in depth happen in the top 10 meters. What is that attributable to? I think, and don't quote me on this, but I think it's the shift in the blood in your body. The blood's re-entering the rest of your body because the compression is, the biggest pressure differential is in the top 15, 20 meters.

Interesting. So, and a lot of depth divers will really slow down in the last 10 meters to just kind of allow themselves to acclimate a little bit. So you have safety divers, you have a safety diver usually i think i think there's one at 15 meters and there's one at 30 so what happens is is you'll do your dive and then they'll time it so then they'll meet you at 30 on the way back up and then that guy will meet you and he will take you to 15 and then another guy will be there waiting for you at 15 and he'll take you to the surface so if you do black out you know it's just a matter of a guy sticking his hand under your chin to keep your mouth closed

and bring you to the surface there's a survival mechanism that we have that you're basically your trachea shuts off so water cannot enter your lungs so when you get to the surface if you are blacked out usually i mean the only thing that happens is the safety diver will remind you to breathe he'll say your name and he'll give you a light tap on the face and blow across your eyelids. And that's just, you just need enough to just remind you, hey, dude, you know, start breathing again. Yeah, it's crazy that you have to be reminded to breathe.

Especially when you're a freediver because you spend so much time telling yourself, don't breathe, that you just, you need that, you know. And some people just black out for a second and then that's fine. So, you know you know as i said there has never been in competition a serious injury in free diving is that right interesting yeah let alone a fatality there's an oh and the last safety mechanism with depth is is every diver is attached to a lanyard and the lanyard is attached to the rope so if someone does black out at depth they have a last resort fail safe mechanism of pulling them back up yanking them up since the

lanyard has been brought into freediving it has never been employed once oh wow how long how long is it how i mean how long has the sport been around i think world championships have now been going for 20 years wow um but freediving has been around since the beginning of time. You go to the Japanese hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Right. So you just competed in Belgrade at the world championships, right? Yes, I did. But it didn't exactly go the way you wanted it to?

No. And I think that's in part me being very hard on myself. It was my first world championships. I think I surprised some people. I think I did better than a lot of people would have expected for someone who had been doing the sport for 18 months. How many are the world championships every four years or every two years or something?

Every two, every two. So I wanted, my goal was to make two finals. I was competing in the no fins and the dynamic, which is with the monofin. And then I missed. I was competing in the no fins and the dynamic, which is with the monofin. And then I missed out on the final in the no fins on a technicality, which was just bad luck at the end of the day. Four of us equaled distance for the final spot in the final and only three could get in.

So how many people do they take for the final? They take 16. 16. And do they do it, is it in the same day many people do they take for the final? They take 16. 16. And do they do it, is it in the same day? You do a preliminary and it's the following day? Yeah.

So they do the three events on three days and then there's a rest day and then the three events in the final. I see. So the first three days are preliminary heats.

Yeah. Okay. And then when you, say you qualify for the final, does everybody get, like are there people going at the same time or you go eight at a time oh eight at a time so it's just like a swim meet yeah so and that's and and basically i got equal equal 14th which you know i was just unlucky basically um to make the no fins final so i was a bit disappointed with that that was something i

was really wanting to do and a part of that was strategic because a lot of guys were blacking out on that first day and so everyone had told me to swim conservatively it just sounds funny like oh guys are blacking out you know like what other sport are you you know I had heard that a third a third of the guys in that first heat had blacked out and this this was my first world championships. I didn't know what to expect. And so a few people that said tank, swim conservatively. And I was in the top eight for most of the day. How many people are vying for that top 16? 140.

Oh, wow. That's a lot. Yeah. And were you swimming for Australia or for the United States? For Australia, yeah. And I swam a 155, which for me is a very conservative swim.

I could swim 1.55, you know, two in the morning after a night out. That's a Serbian expression, by the way. I'd never heard that before. Serbia, yes, I can do 1.55 at two in the morning. It's like, really? Why would you do that? And so, yeah, I missed out on that final. But, you know

it was a learning lesson at the end of the day if I'd done 160 I would have been in the final so I mean the difference between 17th place and 7th place

in no fins was 11 meters it was nothing it was a really tight field and then in the dynamic final the winner how far did he go?

In the heat, he did 178, I think, in the prelim. And then in the final, he's the world champion. He did 208. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I was gunning to do about 175, somewhere around there. 208. In the final. 208 meters underwater with no fins no fins yeah and explain the the

wetsuit thing because it would seem to me i was watching the videos what is the explanation for wearing a wetsuit the wetsuit does two things one is you know you got to remember with you're not swimming very fast i mean we're doing a meter a second somewhere around there um and your heart rate drops, so you actually get cold. And so what you want to do is you want to maintain your core body temperature by wearing a wetsuit

so that you're not expending more oxygen in order to keep your body warm. You don't want to shiver or anything like that. But you've got to be like kind of coming to the surface. Like it's got to be lifting you to the surface a little bit, is it not? It's more buoyant, but we wear a neck you to the surface a little bit. Is it not? It's more buoyant,

but we wear a neck weight to counteract the buoyancy. Okay, I didn't know that. I mean, we wear the neck weight to counteract mainly the buoyancy in our lungs. I mean, I wear 12, 13 pounds around my neck. Oh, wow. Yeah, so that I stay, that's how I get that hydrodynamic

by keeping my chest down with the lead. In the pool, that is. So, yeah, and then it's about hydrodynamics. I mean, you know, I have two wetsuits. I have my comp wetsuit and I have one that's tattered. I mean, it's filled with holes. And the difference... That's the aquasphere.

Yeah, the aquasphere. So, that's like a triathlon competition. Exactly. That's what I use, yeah. And Aquasphere, I love those suits. I think they're fantastic. The difference in either having no suit or having what I call a drag suit

because it's just got tons of holes in it and wearing my comp suit, which is exactly the same suit, is five seconds per 50 yards. Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I mean, it's so much more hydrodynamic versus the texture of your skin or other kind of whatever you would wear that would create that kind of friction that's going to slow you down.

Yeah. And then in the dynamic, I made the dynamic final. I did 209 meters in the prelim again was a conservative swim i just the idea is you want to save it for the big day right and then i got a chest infection um after that and i did i did a silly thing i did 230 meters in the dynamic final which was 12 meters beyond my own national record. And I blacked out as I came up to the surface. So, yeah, I would have ideally would have liked to have done 220.

I'd put a marker down on the bottom of the pool at 220 and then two minutes before I had to pull it out. So, I didn't realize when I'd hit 220 and I, they had a halfway mark with 225. So, 225, I started to come up and that's when I'd hit 220 and I, they had a halfway mark with 225. So 225, I started to come up and that's when I blacked out. How long does it take you to recover after an effort? I mean, can you come back later that day or the next day, or is it a couple of days or what do you experience

in the aftermath of something like that in the hours that follow? The aftermath of a blackout or just a swim? Or just a hard effort, a swim. Yeah, you're at the world championships, you've done your prelim, you've swum conservatively, but I'm still would imagine it takes a lot out of you.

I mean, do you really need that extra day or two to recover? I mean, could you come back in the afternoon and do it again? I mean, how quickly does the body bounce back from something like that? I mean, ideally you want to, I like 24 hours, but say in the US nationals, you have two disciplines in one day.

So you'll have the static breath hold in the morning and then you could be up two hours again after that and you'll have to do the no fins dynamic. Yeah, the no fins dynamic. So, if you're doing a seven minute breath hold in the morning and then having to back it up with 150, 180 meters swim or whatever it is, then that's, you know, that's hard on the body.

And I- And is it causing like micro tears in your lung tissue or things like that that you have to- No, no, it's just that, it's just taxing the nervous system and your kidneys and whatnot and just, you know, the blood toxicity. And, you know, most people will, you know,

tend to try and be a little bit conservative in one of the events. I haven't competed in statics yet just because I've been focusing on dynamics. And then, you know, by the next day I'm totally fine. And I do a lot of drills in training where I'll do a really big swim and I'll follow it up five minutes later with another big swim and another big swim just to kind of get used to that, you know, trying to emulate game day. Right, right, right.

All right. So the world championships, was that this summer? That was in July or something like that? Yeah, yeah. Late June, early July in Serbia. So what's going on now? Like what's the next thing? Well, there'll be a – I'm trying to see if I can get to a competition in Sydney at the end of the year. I would like to have a crack at the to a competition in Sydney at the end of the year.

I would like to have a crack at the NoFins national record, which is 175. So that's kind of like my next goal. And then it's really looking to the US Nationals in April next year and vying for a spot on the Australia team for the depth team world championships. Right. I mean, do you have to go back to Australia and compete there to make their team or qualify?

No, I can do it anywhere in the world. Yeah. And it's just about my ranking. And, you know, I fortunately have the number one ranking at the moment, so I automatically qualify. But, yeah, it should really just harp on the safety aspects of the sport. You know, it's paramount that if you're interested in freediving that you do

a freediving course I think and that you surround yourself with other freedivers and join a club in the US Is there like a main website people can go to if they're interested in learning more about this like a federation website or something? Yeah there's ADA which is A-I for indigo,

D-A for alpha. So alpha, indigo, delta, alpha. I say this because nobody understands. Are you in the military? Nobody understands my Australian accent. A-I-D-A. Yeah, thank you. If I spell my name,

people think I'm saying T-I-N-C. Tink. Yeah, Tink. Tink. Yeah. I love the fact that your name is Tank. Yeah. And that you do this.

I mean, you can't script this stuff. No. Yeah. It was a terrible upbringing, I'll tell you what. That's your God-given name now. Yeah. It was rough. But, you know, if-

Or you weren't playing rugby. Yeah. Was there an expectation that that was the direction you were going to go? Most people assume I'm a lot bigger than I am when they hear about me. And then they're bitterly disappointed when they see that I'm this tiny diminutive figure. You're the Australian Seth Meyers. Yeah, yeah, there you go.

Thank you. You can, I would say, you can either find me on Facebook and I will give you any information you want. And that's, you can find my name or there'll be a link on your podcast. Or you can go to Southern California Freedivers and we have a group there on Facebook. If you're in the US or just, you know, just go into Facebook and type in freedivers or

Google freediving clubs and, you know, get along, meet the guys, do an induction, get some safety work done, understand everything about the sport that happens physiologically and what you need to do safety wise before you go out there and do something silly. And unfortunately people do silly stuff. They'll see us do stuff in the pool and then they'll go, well, I can do this.

And they'll start doing stuff. I would imagine there's a lot of bravado and I can hold my breath longer than you and it's easy to get into trouble. And I mean, does one last like kind of technical question, does VO2 max have anything to do with it? Is that pertinent at all? Like if you, oh, I have huge VO2 max,

that may mean you have some kind of huge endurance engine or capacity or the capacity to push yourself really hard. But I'm wondering whether that is even relevant at all. I don't think it is. I was a cyclist growing up. Yeah, you were a mountain biker, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I kind of competed at a state and national level.

So that was six days a week on the bike. And I think cyclists and rowers probably have the two biggest VO2s out of all the sports. Cross country skiers probably too. Yeah, cross country skiers, yeah. And cardio is disadvantageous to freediving. Interesting. So I quit all cardio.

I haven't done cardio in a year. Wow. Which kind of makes me a bit edgy. But that's just because I've had competition after competition after competition. And the good guys, they don't do that. They do cardio nine months a year and they want to peak at a certain time,

usually the world championships or whatever. But I'm kind of learning so learning so why is that like sort of you know why why is doing cardio work like why would it not be a disadvantage to get out on your bike a couple days a week and like you know build the heart and the lungs that way a little bit um it seems counterintuitive and it certainly doesn't completely make sense to me but the the idea is is that you become more efficient at burning oxygen because you have to replenish it quicker um and it increases your metabolic rate so while most people want to do that they want to burn more calories throughout the day by building muscle and doing cardio free divers want the exact opposite of that right so

your training camp would be to take an extreme example. Rather than going out on your bike all day, you'd be better off flying to India and going and sitting in a cave in the Himalayas with a monk and working on your breathing. I mean, dietary-wise, I eat three meals a day and that's it. I never snack in between. And I don't eat for six hours before an event

because I want my stomach to be empty. I don't want it to be burning anything. Because that requires energy. Yeah, exactly. So you're talking about just the tiniest amounts of energy expenditure become mission critical. Yeah, because you are swimming for three and a half plus minutes um so you're doing an aerobic activity anaerobically right so there's that you know the juxtaposition

between those two things yeah yeah yeah and then you have the lactic acid build up and you know it's you know just imagine doing squats but holding your breath holding your breath doing it right exactly it's amazing, man. It's fascinating. Very, very, very cool. It's a fun sport. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you go down to the plunge,

how many people show up to train with you? It depends. It could be usually up to like six, maybe up to six guys, a couple of guys from the US team. We have an Italian. Is that an everyday thing or a couple of times a week? Well, no, a couple guys from the u.s team we have an italian is that an everyday thing or a couple times a week well no a couple of times a week i mean i train i tend to be in the pool

four maybe four or five sessions a week um most of the other guys probably a little bit less yeah um and i mean most of that stuff i'm doing is stuff that that you know surface work or you know stuff not on a breath hold. And is this something you can continue to get better at as you age? Is there like, what is it? I mean, are there guys in their forties doing this or like continue to improve?

The female world champion is 50. Yeah. Yeah, because your heart rate. Yeah, I'm not surprised actually, yeah. Cause metabolically you slow down as you get older. Right. So it's, yeah, if you have a good base and you have good technique and you're used to training well

and you know, I think this sport will absolutely blow up in the next five years as you get a lot of ex swimmers coming over. And that's what's starting to happen now. I mean, you get these Olympic swimmers and they're gonna blow us out of the water. Right. Well, just efficiency wise,

they can put a monofin on and swim underwater. It doesn't have any kind of energy impact on them because they're so accustomed to that and they're so strong at doing that and they've been doing it for so many years that by the time they hit 100 meters, it's like they haven't even started. Yeah. The hardest challenge with swimmers

is getting them to slow down. Yeah, I would imagine, yeah. You try to get a breaststroke. Let's pick it up. If we're going to go 220 meters, let's get it done with already. Try and get a breaststroke at a 50 meters in 50 seconds. He's just like, man, what are we doing?

Because in the no fins technique, we separate the arm and the leg stroke. And so it's an arm stroke and then it's a glide and then it's a leg stroke and then it's a glide and then it's an arm stroke and then it's a glide. So yeah's a leg stroke and then it's a glide and then it's an arm stroke and then it's a glide so oh so you're you're so yeah we didn't even get into that so when you're when you're when you're not using the fin yeah you're still underwater but you're doing kind of an underwater breaststroke i see i got you it's the same it's a modified stroke that a

breaststroker would do off the push off the wall uh-huh it's pretty much that you see them do that big push off the wall right and they take one stroke and they they pull their arms right right right they get that glide uh-huh um a lot of breaststrokers will throw in a dolphin kick as well yeah yeah well they're not supposed to but a lot of them get you can kind of get away with a little bit of that yeah we don't we don't tend to do that but i'll show you some videos of what it looks like you can get an idea of it um but yeah yeah that's that's that's a whole anotherher kettle of fish, that one, because you're spending so much time in the glide position. I mean, I cover 25 yards in two strokes.

So that's two kicks and two arm pulls. Two pulls, right. That's got to have a more anaerobic component to it than just being in the dolphin, streamlined dolphin kick with the fin. Yeah, yeah. Because you're using your arms, you're using more muscles.

Exactly, yeah. And I find it harder to hold technique as the swim goes on because my arms with breaststroke, it's much more finicky. You don't have a monofin to have that margin of error you know i mean when your technique goes in dolphin dolphin kick you can just kick more with your quads and you still get that but if your arm strokes a little bit off and your your arm slips through the water and you're not getting

the pull that you need you're looking you know that's a that's a massive screw up exactly and just imagine being in a tremendous amount of pain your chest is heaving you're starting, you know, that's a massive screw up. Exactly. And just imagine being in a tremendous amount of pain. Your chest is heaving. You're starting to lose your vision. Your mental capacity is dropping. All of a sudden, your arm pull is nothing like, at least for me. I mean, you know, my first 50 I'll do in two, two and a half strokes. By the time I'm at 150, I'm at three and a half, four strokes.

And then from 160, I'm going into like four, five strokes, you know, because everything's just, and that's just areas that I need to work in. You know, I'm not as strong at the end. I'm getting uncomfortable just hearing about it. Like I'm starting to get like panicked. I'll show you some videos. Yeah, I want to see it.

All right, cool, man. Well, we got to wrap it up, dude. I've taken up enough of your time but um this is fascinating i learned a lot like i yeah like i said i mean i didn't really didn't know that much about it and um there's so much more to it than i would have imagined and uh it's really cool man it would be cool to see the sport you know blow up a little bit more and yeah more people get into it so if people want to find out more about it they they can go, what is it? AIDA, what was it? AIDA will have more information, AIDA.com.

I would just Google it. Google it or just go into Google and search freediving or whatever in your area if you want to learn more. Or just click on one of the links. I'm sure there's tons of videos on YouTube, right? Yeah, absolutely. Cool. And if people want to kind of follow you and find out more about what you're doing, you're at TanksAid on Twitter, T-A-N-C-S-A-D-E. Yep. And you're on Facebook and all that.

Same name. Yeah, exactly. And of course, there's the Dysfunctional Bachelor. Oh, wow. We've got to talk about that. You've delved deep, haven't you, mate? Hey, I do. It doesn't take much research to find that. All I had to do was go to your Facebook page and see your post right so the dysfunctional bachelor I guess it's self explanatory right

but that's just your blog yeah it's tongue in cheek it's kind of having a little bit of fun right right right and your film production company Five Island Films Five Island Films yeah it's a little indie film production company

that we set up a few years ago and we just kind of make little projects for art really and you know have a creative vision and try to tell stories that we want to tell that it's not necessarily generated by you know the dollars right and so in addition to being an actor you're a writer and director and you did that project with terence stamp yes i did that's amazing yeah my very first film first film. Yeah, he's phenomenal. He's a great talent and it's really nice

to have someone that level of experience around. Cool. So are you going to be writing and directing a feature? I'm working on a feature right now. It's a drama. It's set in a small town

in Northern New England. And I've been talking to some production companies about that and we're just, you know, going through the motions. Right. Cool. All right, man.

I'll stay in touch, man. I want to follow your journey. So, um, Tank, uh, needs your support. You've got great support from some sponsors. I know you're sponsored by like two times you, Aquasphere, Equinox, I think is helping you out too. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

But, uh, let's give this guy a shout out and help him out and if you go to the blog page on my website I'm going to put up a few videos so you can check out what he's doing and get more interested in what's up right? Absolutely, thank you so much mate, appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you

for the time, it's been fascinating alright dude, peace plants Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you