Lessons From: A Freediver

When was the last time you tried to hold your breath? In the bath? Driving through a tunnel? In the pool as a kid?

Wherever it was, I bet you never managed to pop the three-minute bubble – let alone hit seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Why seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds? Because that’s where William Trubridge weighs in. No, it’s not April and I’m not fooling.

The Kiwi-bred professional freediver and recently acclaimed WAFA (World’s Absolute Freediver Award) recipient has, quite literally, spent his life in and on the open water. Sailing from the UK to New Zealand with his family at the ripe old age of 18 months (no confirmation to date that he ever took the helm), William spent his younger years toying with pretty much everything water-based before finding his freediving colours post-university.

For those not au fait with the sport, freediving concerns itself with the various disciplines of breath-hold control in a number of underwater contexts. From ‘Static Apnea’, where the diver focuses solely on holding their breath for as long as possible; to ‘Constant Weight Apnea’, where the diver descends to a pre-defined depth following a guide line that must not be touched at any point – via ‘No Limits’, where most divers opt for a weighted sled to drop them to the darkest depths of the ocean before being propelled back to the surface with the aid of a gas-inflated bag. Oh, and that record currently stands at 214 metres.

Sound crazy? Perhaps. But when you begin to look at the way the human body copes with stress – and the exponential freediving techniques at hand to suppress its effects and elevate physiological comprehension – you’ll begin to realise just why this sport of extremes is more about pushing your mind and soul than merely your body.

Sure, William holds a trove of world records – including perhaps his most impressive ‘Constant Weight without fins’, where to put it in layman’s terms, he ‘breastroked’ to an astonishing 101m– but for him, it’s not necessarily about breaking records; it’s about pushing his own boundaries and exploring the untouched in both mind and matter.

We could go into the ins and outs of a freediver’s training routine, list the numerous records and stories built up over the years – and probably write an entire thesis on another freediving hero, Jacques Mayol – but instead, I decided to speak to William from his training camp and home near Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas, and find out what we could all learn from one of the world’s greatest freedivers.

One of the first things a novice freediver grasps is that the compelling need to breath we’ve all felt at some point isn’t due to running out of oxygen – it’s because your body isn’t used to the levels of carbon dioxide it’s witnessing. As a result, your brain gives the order to breathe again (or if you’re with an above-water friend, to cheat through your nose and pretend you’re still going).

However, as William explains, “…if you’re able to stay relaxed and calm despite that incoming urge to breathe, then you can extend your breath hold for a long time after that. It’s all to do with mental control and staying relaxed.” 

When asked about how he maintains that sense of relaxation in his day-to-day life – and especially before a big dive – he continued: “I need to make sure that I get enough sleep, that I have a regular daily rhythm, and diet needs to be aimed at normalising the blood acidity because holding your breath can change your body chemistry – so you need to eat alkalising foods to target that and make sure you load plenty of carbohydrates on with antioxidants.

“It also requires a healthy plant-based diet and good sleeping patterns to not get too stressed out by daily life. All of these factors have to be considered in addition to what I’m doing with my dive.”

Scientists in 1970 said the human body would never freedive past 100 metres. Jacques Mayol proved them wrong in 1976. Then William proved them wrong again in 2010 with a dive to 101 metres entirely under his own steam. A significant key to this? Preparation through relaxation.

While it goes without saying that a healthy diet has long been underrated in the office environment – and admittedly it’d be going to extremes to monitor your body’s alkaline levels at your desk – it’s pivotal that you give your mind and body the best possible fuel and internal environment to work in if you want to reap the benefits of heightened relaxation as a functional tool.

Just like freediving to 101metres – albeit in an entirely metaphorical sense – your body will react to pressure and your mind will want to revert to its base-instincts. Combine a well-fuelled vessel with an ability to override those soft-wired impulses, and you’ll position yourself to surpass boundaries previously deemed adamantine. The ocean and the office might be a million miles apart – but when you’re battling against psychological blocks, external contexts become largely irrelevant.

This might seem like an obvious and slightly ‘hippy’ comment to some, but your mind really is the key to everything you do. And when it comes to stress and indecision, your mind can become your best friend or your worst enemy.

“Once the dive starts, everything happens on autopilot,” explains William, “and so it’s the build-up to that that you’ve got to concentrate on. When you’re lying there, breathing up for a deep dive and you know you’re going to be three or four minutes underwater at whatever depth, if a voice pops into your head and says ‘this is the last breath that you’ll ever take’ – or something even worse than that – it’s hard not to be affected by it.

“It’s only with time and through training yourself to not offer any special attention to those voices that you’ll recognise that it’s just a part of you; just an ‘impish’ devil’s advocate flinging these things your way. If, on a particular dive, I don’t give it attention – and the dive is good and you feel good about it – then the next time that voice comes up, you’re going to be a little more confident in dealing with it, or at least realise that it isn’t relevant.”

The idea that your mind provides this “impish devil’s advocate” is something that most of us have likely experienced at some level – albeit not in a life-or-death context such as William’s. Yet the underlying point remains: you can’t control your voice from the subconscious, but you can learn to deal with it in a positive way. Paradoxically, however, you have to first listen to it to identify the fear it’s attempting to instil. From there, a combination of detachment and relaxation comes into play to quieten the residual noise.

“Something that I’ve found extremely valuable through freediving is the importance of being able to detach from things – whether that’s stress, emotions, your work or the thoughts that are going through your mind,” continues William. “You need to train to be able to detach. But through meditation or through freediving, which is a kind of imposed meditation, you can definitely achieve this. It could be as simple as taking 10 to 15 minutes a day where you take some time to empty your mind and detach from everything that’s going on. That has a huge impact on my ability in the sport, but also in terms of my daily life.”

When it comes to the crunch, there’ll always be times when indecision will rule; you can’t avoid those voices questioning your ability to succeed – they’re hardwired in. But by understanding more about how your proverbial motherboard is wired, you can begin to place the transistors needed to redirect your thought process and lead you back onto the path of least resistance.

William, just like the freediving greats before him, has proven to the watching world just what the mind is capable of, which most recently has meant him grabbing a new national record for a constant weight dive to 121 metres at Dean’s Blue Hole. But, as William will be the first to tell you, “…even though I’m in competition against other people, I see my dives more as performances that I need to do for myself.” And in that sense, you’re only ever competing against yourself. Just remember to breathe.

@NPAPryke

Topics:

Human Resources,

Leadership