The Deep Dive with Renee Blundon

Freediving allows me that escape to another world, and has me challenge and question what it is that I think I know. It humbles and broadens my perspective, with every dive a new experience filled with surprises, opening my mind to a new level of awareness. 

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We are really lucky in that we can choose to build relationships, friendships and the community around us, as we persue our goals and passions in life, which I think is a key step in choosing to be happy :)

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This episode about the Apnea Squats Challenge, an AWESOME dry training for freediving to prepare the legs for constant weight freediving and dynamic apnea in the pool.

To do this training, you always start with a static apnea breath-hold sitting on a chair (minimum 60 seconds static) and then do as many squats as you can (must be a 90 degree angle minimum). REPEAT TWICE. 5 times per week.

The breathe-up is tidal breathing + 2 purge breaths, and then one full breath. No more than that.

This training is unique because it goes by a point system. You get 1 point per second of breath-hold and 5 points per squat. My goal was to get 350-450 points in the first week, which I achieved on the 3rd session. (Totally up to you what you want to set your goal to.)

The badges for the Apnea Squats Challenge are:

• Green badge = 200 points
• Blue badge = 300 points
• Red badge = 400 points
• Gold badge = 500 points

If you have a good static apnea breath-hold time, you may want to consider doing a longer static apnea (i.e. 2-3 minutes static apnea), before doing the squats. You may be able to get more points that way. It's just not allowed to do less than a 60 second breath-hold, but you can always do longer ;)

Resources / References:

Florian Dagoury's Instagram

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Today is day 1 of my 2022 freediving season. It's been almost two weeks since the Freediving World Cup competition, which marked the end of my 2021 season, and now I'm excited to apply all of the new insights I've learned throughout this year. Today I begin base training, starting with a swimming training session, designed by my coach Florian Dagoury. This training is aimed to stretch the ribcage, train the muscles to use O2 slower with less lactic, providing a mild CO2 workout. I like it because it also gets you super fit!! Go to reneeblundon.com for the swim training program and show notes.

Resources / References:

Florian Dagoury's Instagram

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A discussion with Sally Norton and Renee Blundon about oxalates and how they impact freediving, athletic performance and overall health.

We will discuss; what ARE oxalates, what foods are they in, how the ‘super foods’ we are consuming may not be so super (!!!), how low oxalate eating can be extremely beneficial for health and athletic performance & recovery AND MORE!

Resources / References:

For more info about low oxalate nutrition and/or to set-up a consultation call with Sally Norton, you can check-out her website at: sallyknorton.com

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Today's episode is a guided freedive visualization, that you can listen to anytime before your freedive. Renee will guide you in creating an inspiring vivid mental picture of a deep target dive from start to finish.

Many freediving athletes routinely use visualization techniques as part of their mental training for freediving. It helps to enhance your techniques just through mental repetition and rehearsal, and it helps to cultivate a heightened state of mental awareness, which can boost your self confidence for your dives as well as your overall well-being, therefore enhancing performance on your freedives.

Time Stamps:

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:34 Why do a freediving visualization?
• 2:25 When and where to do a freedive visualization?
• 2:55 Info & instructions for this guided session
• 4:13 The dive visualization
• 18:04 Conclusion

Resources / References:

Sara Campbell - Discover Your Depths https://www.discoveryourdepths.com/

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"The Nose Is For Breathing, The Mouth is for Eating."

How do you breathe? Through your mouth or through your nose? It might be something you've never given much thought about. But on this episode, competitive freediver, Renee Blundon, will try to convince you that you should. 

Breathing through the nose, Renee believes, is the secret to better health, wellbeing and performance. And yet, most of us breathe through our mouths, breathing too fast and shallow, so our health and performance is not nearly as optimal as it could be.

In this episode, Renee reviews the physiology of nasal breathing versus mouth breathing, and how breathing IS NOT a byproduct of what you're doing, nasal breathing in indigenous cultures, animals when it comes to nose versus mouth breathing, the unawareness about mouth breathing and how breathing through the nose while exercising / training is more beneficial than breathing through the mouth because you can make BETTER decisions.

This is part 2 of 2, so make sure to listen to the previous episode!

Time Stamps:

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:32 How our lungs eating the air
• 2:43 Mouth breathing and the bad human zoo we live in today
• 3:56 Breathing is NOT a byproduct of what we're doing
• 4:16 Indigenous cultures DID NOT open their mouth when hunting or gathering
• 6:03 Animals when it comes to mouth versus nasal breathing
• 8:01 Mouth breathing for performance - there's a time and a place for it
• 8:35 Unawareness about mouth breathing
• 9:00 Freediving and mouth versus nose breathing
• 10:00 Breathing through the nose while working-out / training
• 12:04 Nose breathing for performance - making better decisions
• 14:30 Conclusion

Resources / References:

You can join the open source information network for this podcast at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/reneeblundonpodcast

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"The Nose Is For Breathing, The Mouth is for Eating"

How do you breathe? Through your mouth or through your nose? It might be something you've never given much thought about. But on this episode (as well as the next episode), competitive freediver, Renee Blundon, will try to convince you that you should. 

Breathing through the nose, Renee believes, is the secret to better health, wellbeing and performance. And yet, most of us breathe through our mouths, breathing too fast and shallow, so our health and performance is not nearly as optimal as it could be.

In this episode, Renee talks through the physiology of nasal breathing versus mouth breathing, and why we've developed this habit of over-breathing through the mouth.

This is part 1 of 2, so make sure to continue listening on the next episode!

Timestamps:

• 0:00 Introduction to the podcast
• 1:32 What happens when you bring awareness to your breathing?
• 4:29 Why do we want to modify our breathing?
• 5:56 Being in-tune with the central nervous system - humans versus animals in the wild
• 8:50 Why do we instantly relax when we switch to nose breathing?
• 10:36 Mouth breathing and over-breathing - not getting enough O2 and offloading too much CO2
• 12:50 Conclusion

Resources / References:

You can join the open source information network for this podcast at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/reneeblundonpodcast

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As a freediver who battles with anxiety attacks, I am constantly inventing and testing-out new methods for mental training, especially for relaxation, because the more relaxed you are, the longer you can hold your breath!

In this podcast episode, I'll talk about a relaxation breathing and mental training technique that can help massively to lower anxiety and train the mind to be more relaxed in stressful situations and just in life in general.

It's a technique I use for freediving but anyone can benefit from it, whether you're an athlete, in the military, or if you're a performer, an actor or musician, if you're someone with a stressful job or if you're preparing for a business meeting. Either way it works the same, it builds something in your mind, that you can use in stressful situations to become more relaxed. And you can do this right at home just laying down on a yoga mat.

I can also personally confirm that the combination of short breath-holds, complete relaxation and concentration / mindfulness generates a sensation of euphoria and rapture, which creates mental clarity that may rest in the body for hours or even days after a session!

Time Stamps:

• 00:00 Introduction to this episode
• 01:30 Podcast intro
• 03:05 Why are we doing this - the Effects of Stress
• 08:10 What we will do in this session?
• 09:20 Recap of the relaxation breathing technique
• 11:00 Adding the mental relaxation breathing
• 18:30 Conclusion

Resources / References:

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Relaxation breathing is a powerful tool for freediving and for life in general in order to decrease your heart rate and help calm the body and mind.

In this podcast episode, I'll go over a relaxation breathing technique, also known as the 'Branko Petrovic Technique', which is used in freediving to help you relax deeply before your freedives and breath-holds. It slows down your breathing and intake of oxygen, therefore relaxing your nervous system and bringing your body back to its natural restful state.

Because your heart-rate is lowered quite quickly and less oxygen is consumed, this means you'll be able to hold your breath much longer. And even if you are not planning to do any freediving or breath-holding, the breathing technique can help anyone who wants to relax more and help to quite the mind.

While practicing this technique it's important to breathe as relaxed as possible without tensing any part of your body and without straining your intercostal muscles or diaphragm in order to keep the heart rate low. This will help your mind and your muscles to actively prepare you for a period of non-breathing, and be chill about it.

The pause after each inhale and exhale helps to decrease your breathing rate even more, and this relaxation effect is enhanced even more when you do this breathing exercise in the water while breathing through a snorkel face-down on the surface. If there are waves, you can allow the waves to relax you even more (!) by keeping the body loose and de-contracting while allowing the water to move you in whichever which way, imagining you're like a rag-doll or just a piece of seaweed just floating along on the surface of the water.

This relaxation breathing technique helps lower stress and anxiety by quickly slowing down the heart rate and helping the body settle in the present moment. A study in 2013 proved that freedivers had a significantly lower level of stress, anxiety and negative affectivity compared to non-freedivers. And I believe this is mostly due to relaxation breathing / training and lifestyle elements.

The relaxation breathing can also help you feel better overall. Not only can it help lower your stress, but it can also boost your mood, because during the breath-work, feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and noradrenaline, are enhanced during the breathing exercise and also afterwards.

The relaxation breathing technique also helps increase your energy and focus your mind. So you'll be able to focus better on your goals and have more energy to do the things you like.

Also because you'll be using oxygen much more efficiently after doing this breathing, this also leads to better respiration, lower heart rate, increased blood flow to the vital organs and better overall health.

So even though you may have never thought about changing your relaxation breathing for freediving or to practice relaxation breathing in general, it's time to give it a thought. Because the many benefits of this relaxation breathing exercise are super beneficial for your relaxation for freediving as well as for your physical and mental health in your everyday life.

Time Stamps:

• 00:00 Introduction to this episode
• 02:02 Podcast intro
• 03:09 How I learned it
• 04:05 Relaxation is key
• 05:02 The steps for the relaxation breathing
• 07:45 Guided session of relaxation breathing
• 12:40 Wrapping up & some additional info
• 15:17 Conclusion and what's next

Resources / References:

Pascal Huron (Facebook)

Branko Petrovic (Facebook)

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