A year ago, I came to the island of Tenerife to learn freediving. One evening, with a small group of freedivers who had quickly become friends, we watched the film “the Big Blue” in an apartment above the dive centre. There, before I was able to remember most of terms in the world of freediving, I learned about the discipline No Limits.
My takeaway back then was that No Limits was a complicated-looking, intimidating, highly risky, and now-abandoned competition discipline in which freedivers had pushed to extreme depth and the risks had caused serious consequences including several deaths.
As I slowly eased into the freediving world in the last 12 months, my curiosity towards No Limits grew. I’m never interested in pushing to the extreme depths, but I had a growing desire to experience this special form of variable weights freediving.
And on a beautiful day of October 2022, I finally had the (unexpected) chance to try it! And (unexpectedly) on the fourth dive I went down to 50m, with Frenzel equalisation all the way (since I only just started to learn mouthfill at that point) and felt really good and super relaxed on the way down (even though I was really nervous about the No Limits procedures)! This was a depth that seemed so far away to me personally, and I was SO amazed at the fact that I didn’t really feel the strong chest pressure that I alway felt when I dive to 40 metres. Everyone kept telling me relaxation makes all the difference when it comes to chest pressure, and now I finally felt the incredible difference for myself.
Looking back, I realised that I’ve overcome several plateaus now since I started which I thought to be my limit - 22 metres, 39 metres, 43 metres and now I am at 50 metres. Each time, I thought to myself “maybe this is it, maybe this is the limit of my body, everyone was born with different limitations and maybe I’ve met mine”. But each time, with different trainings, dry exercises, coaching, practice and repetition, breakthrough happened like miracles.
This is about freediving, but isn’t this just about anything in life?
So grateful to be able to continue exploring my potential, body and mind!
Dive safely, and dive for fun!
(And interestingly, only a couple of days after the No Limits session I managed to get to 50+m with FIM and Frenzel which was something I thought I'd not manage anytime soon. The psychological part of freediving really fascinates me. How our perception and mental blocks changes / limits / unlocks our performance and potential...!)