7 ms·

The World’s Greatest Freediver

51 points by SirLJ 5y ago

wiz21c 5y ago
> Alexey controls his mind and his body with totality. I understand this is often advertised as a goal in life. But the fact is that most of the time you don't control much of what happens inside and outside you... This happens only in very restricted contexts.
- Pyramus 5y ago
  I agree with you - I understood 'totality' as in 'everything that can be controlled' (anything else would be contradictory). As such it's still very desirable. I also want to highlight that trying to control mind and body will lead you very quickly to the realization that we are more of an observer of inside/outside events than anything else. I can recommend Sam Harris ideas and thoughts on the existence of free will and consequences.
Someone 5y ago
> “Statistically,” he says, “it's very safe. Citation needed. In the event described 42 divers competed. On day nine, five divers blacked out. That’s about 12%. Also, coughing up blood from a torn lung apparently doesn’t disqualify a competitor. If that’s common, that’s another worrying aspect of this. Yes, they had lots of safety crew present. That may make competitions safer than training, even though there’s more pressure to go for records there. I wouldn’t call it very safe, though. Also, there’s a lot of self-reported unverified claims along the lines of “They are secrets that, once revealed, make the divers not just more effective at their craft, they argue, but more effective, conscious, skillful, and thoughtful as human beings” in the article. I think those have about as much truth in them as the claims about learning Latin and Ancient Greek making you a better human being.
- Azrael3000 5y ago
  While a blackout sounds horrific and certainly requires an immediate response, it's not necessarily bad. Afaik there are no studies about it, but I would guess a blackout does not result in any long lasting injuries. In the end a blackout is the bodies response to keep you alive just a little longer by focusing on the absolute minimum it takes to do so. The safety protocols have also evolved over times. Nicks death for example has triggered a rewrite of the rules that would require a medical examination after a blackout or if you cough up blood. This examination can result in a ban from further competing for the next days for example. Of course it's not a safe sport, it's an extreme sport in an extreme environment. But lots has been learned in the past decades, as it is still a rather "new" sport and if exercised correctly it is rather safe. Also the article just talks about a competition. Most freediving happens either in training or when people do it recreationally. While accidents happen there as well, these are mostly about the lack of safety divers, that's why the first rule of freediving is, never dive alone. Finally, on your last paragraph, freediving does change your day to day life, at least from my experience. I just do it recreationally, so I'm far from these depths and times Alexey and the others achieve, but the mental control you learn can be applied in many situations.
  - watwut 5y ago
    > Afaik there are no studies about it, but I would guess a blackout does not result in any long lasting injuries. That is exact opposite of what I would intuitively guess. I would guess that it is way more likely that blackout means you body is getting injured rather then opposite.
    - yomama99 5y ago
      Blacking out while freediving is much different than the type of "blacking out" you normally would associate with sport injuries. It's an evolved response the body does to conserve oxygen use in the brain. Consciousness shuts off, but the brain is still active. For example, someone who blacks out this way will not get water in their lungs--a part of the brain that is still active keeps your mouth shut so that no water is accidentally inhaled. Freedivers try to avoid blackouts, but in this context, there are established safety procedures and it is not nearly as bad as you may think.
      - yomama99 5y ago
        Forgot to mention if you listen to accounts of blacking out while freediving, it's clearly much different than a physical concussion. People wake up as if they just had a deep nap, with generally no symptoms as the day goes on.
      - watwut 5y ago
        I did not said I think it is like concussion. I said that I find it less likely it does not affect the brain in the long term.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
        You're talking about laryngospasm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngospasm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngospasm Before laryngospasm occurs water must enter the larynx. At which point, if you 're a few meters under the surface of the sea, you're in the process of drowing. Think of it this way: if it were safe to lose consciousness underwater, if we had a magickal reflex response that kept us safe- why would anyone ever have to drown?
- YPPH 5y ago
  While the immediate risks are obvious and well-documented, I'm curious to know whether there are any long-term risks associated with lengthy breath-holding such as that undertaken by free divers, even when it doesn't result in a black out. My gut feeling says yes, but I have absolutely no evidence to back up that and it's pure speculation. Something worthy of further study, perhaps, although it would only affect a minority of the population. An impressive feat but one I wouldn't personally be undertaking.
  - Azrael3000 5y ago
    While I don't have any hard evidence to back up my claims, I would tend say no. Reason being is that we are mammals and some mammals live in the ocean like seals. Their bodies have the same reaction to diving than ours [0] and it certainly does them no harm. Sure they are more efficient and better adapted, but the underlying physiological principles are the same. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex
    - YPPH 5y ago
      The diving reflex is a good point, and it seems there are several defensive mechanism against brain damage whilst holding one's breath. Perhaps I am mistaken.
  - darkerside 5y ago
    Would you assume fasting, depriving your body of necessary for, is also harmful?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - animal531 5y ago
    Quick googling shows that there might be positive aspects to holding your breath, but I imagine one would have to do a deep dive (no pun intended) into the subject matter before reaching a conclusion.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  Well, learning Latin and Ancient Greek definitely makes you a better human being, so that's a bad example...
  - weego 5y ago
    No it doesn't, it makes you are more learned person. That's not the same as better for any humanistic definition of better.
- fuzzybear3965 5y ago
  It depends on how you define safety. And, I think the comparison, here, isn't being made to sitting on a couch (which carries its own health risks) but to other professional sports, or maybe its being compared to the safety of even amateur competition across sports. Elite physical competition always carries some risks of injury (even death) - those have to be balanced against the benefits of competing. Definitely there are more dangerous sports that we would consider safe (American football, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, etc.), where "safe" is defined as "would encourage, or not admonish, our children from pursuing".
- toss1 5y ago
  In my experience, it's axiomatic in high-risk sports to understand the difference between "smart crazy" vs "dumb crazy"; everyone knows what it is, but it is rarely described. One friend best described it as the difference between using knowledge, technology, and/or skill to reliably perform ordinarily dangerous activities, vs. getting away with something by pure dumb luck. Here the technology is lean (nose clips, lights, fins, cable, alarms) and the knowledge, technique, and skill is extensive, but clearly many can make a career of it. What you are doing is like staring at the crash statistics for cars, or even racecars, and minimizing the very real and large body of safety knowledge, equipment, and process that reduces the risk to tolerable levels. And to scoff at how this knowledge makes one "more effective, conscious, skillful, and thoughtful as human beings" is pure ignorance. I can tell you personally (having a healthy dose of this mental training, and great respect for the much further extents achieved by these freedivers) that it makes all the difference in the world - but of course if you have not done it, you literally do not know what you are missing. (edit: clarity, punctuation)
- twox2 5y ago
  “They are secrets that, once revealed, make the divers not just more effective at their craft, they argue, but more effective, conscious, skillful, and thoughtful as human beings” If you can suspend your initial disbelief and are willing to do some reading on the topic of breath work, I recommend the writing of James Nestor and of course Wim Hof. Divers are using these techniques in order to train to hold their breath a long time, but the claims of the other benefits are verifiable and measurable in labs as well.
reactspa 5y ago
Greater than these guys? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bajau-sea-nomads-free-diving-spleen-science https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bajau-sea...
- goldenkey 5y ago
  Let's compare their spleens Dr. Strangelove.
ojciecczas 5y ago
It seems they haven't heard about Guillaume Néry... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQITWbAaDx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQITWbAaDx0
- Azrael3000 5y ago
  Considering this article is actually very good, I am sure they have heard of him. While he is absolutely impressive and one of my favourite divers, the pure numbers speak for Alexey.
- stefs 5y ago
  It seems they haven't heard about Guybrush Threepwood, who could hold his breath for 10 minutes.
bjarneh 5y ago
What a great read. Has to be one of the few people around that was introduced to an extreme sport by his mom.
- iechoz6H 5y ago
  Interesting comment/coincidence as yesterday I watched The Last Mountain [1], the poignant story of the deaths, 24 years apart, of ground breaking mountaineer Alison Hargreaves [2] and her son Tom Ballard [3]. Well worth a watch. 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00103ms https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00103ms 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Hargreaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Hargreaves 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Ballard_(climber) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Ballard_(climber)
  - bjarneh 5y ago
    The BBC player was geo-blocked, but what a tragic story. I guess when you get that climbing-bug, it's almost like an addiction.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  And he's kept going although his mom disappeared (read: died) doing it in 2015.
- lovemenot 5y ago
  I thought so too. But the chronology seems reversed. He got into the sport before she did - aged 40. Then she became a champion. I am not sure whether I read that right. What was really impressive (again maybe I read it wrong) was that she became the best amongst both sexes. I cannot readily think of any other sport that has at some time been dominated by a woman.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    Ultra swimming
mrfusion 5y ago
So if you’re this good at holding your breath you could basically live underwater like a dolphin. Coming up to breath every minute or two. How weird would it be to spend a few hours like that?
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  I doubt that he could hold his breath so long again right after like that. He probably needs to spend a while getting air before he could go back down. I wonder if there's a multiple-dive discipline of freediving, maybe the deepest you can go 3x successively, with only say 15 seconds of air in between each dive.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  One key difference is that humans need about as long as they were under water, at rest, to recover oxygen in their blood and normalize co2 levels. We can’t swim up, exhale, breathe, and swim back down. That’s a recipe for a guaranteed black out. We also can’t swim very strongly while holding our breath. Everything is slow, controlled, deliberate, and conservative in all ways possible.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    Seems like a quick fix for a CRISPR/CAS9 edit.

51 points by SirLJ 5y ago

> Alexey controls his mind and his body with totality. I understand this is often advertised as a goal in life. But the fact is that most of the time you don't control much of what happens inside and outside you... This happens only in very restricted contexts.

Pyramus 5y ago
I agree with you - I understood 'totality' as in 'everything that can be controlled' (anything else would be contradictory). As such it's still very desirable. I also want to highlight that trying to control mind and body will lead you very quickly to the realization that we are more of an observer of inside/outside events than anything else. I can recommend Sam Harris ideas and thoughts on the existence of free will and consequences.

Someone 5y ago

> “Statistically,” he says, “it's very safe. Citation needed. In the event described 42 divers competed. On day nine, five divers blacked out. That’s about 12%. Also, coughing up blood from a torn lung apparently doesn’t disqualify a competitor. If that’s common, that’s another worrying aspect of this. Yes, they had lots of safety crew present. That may make competitions safer than training, even though there’s more pressure to go for records there. I wouldn’t call it very safe, though. Also, there’s a lot of self-reported unverified claims along the lines of “They are secrets that, once revealed, make the divers not just more effective at their craft, they argue, but more effective, conscious, skillful, and thoughtful as human beings” in the article. I think those have about as much truth in them as the claims about learning Latin and Ancient Greek making you a better human being.

Azrael3000 5y ago
While a blackout sounds horrific and certainly requires an immediate response, it's not necessarily bad. Afaik there are no studies about it, but I would guess a blackout does not result in any long lasting injuries. In the end a blackout is the bodies response to keep you alive just a little longer by focusing on the absolute minimum it takes to do so. The safety protocols have also evolved over times. Nicks death for example has triggered a rewrite of the rules that would require a medical examination after a blackout or if you cough up blood. This examination can result in a ban from further competing for the next days for example. Of course it's not a safe sport, it's an extreme sport in an extreme environment. But lots has been learned in the past decades, as it is still a rather "new" sport and if exercised correctly it is rather safe. Also the article just talks about a competition. Most freediving happens either in training or when people do it recreationally. While accidents happen there as well, these are mostly about the lack of safety divers, that's why the first rule of freediving is, never dive alone. Finally, on your last paragraph, freediving does change your day to day life, at least from my experience. I just do it recreationally, so I'm far from these depths and times Alexey and the others achieve, but the mental control you learn can be applied in many situations.
- watwut 5y ago
  > Afaik there are no studies about it, but I would guess a blackout does not result in any long lasting injuries. That is exact opposite of what I would intuitively guess. I would guess that it is way more likely that blackout means you body is getting injured rather then opposite.
  - yomama99 5y ago
    Blacking out while freediving is much different than the type of "blacking out" you normally would associate with sport injuries. It's an evolved response the body does to conserve oxygen use in the brain. Consciousness shuts off, but the brain is still active. For example, someone who blacks out this way will not get water in their lungs--a part of the brain that is still active keeps your mouth shut so that no water is accidentally inhaled. Freedivers try to avoid blackouts, but in this context, there are established safety procedures and it is not nearly as bad as you may think.
    - yomama99 5y ago
      Forgot to mention if you listen to accounts of blacking out while freediving, it's clearly much different than a physical concussion. People wake up as if they just had a deep nap, with generally no symptoms as the day goes on.
    - watwut 5y ago
      I did not said I think it is like concussion. I said that I find it less likely it does not affect the brain in the long term.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
      You're talking about laryngospasm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngospasm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngospasm Before laryngospasm occurs water must enter the larynx. At which point, if you 're a few meters under the surface of the sea, you're in the process of drowing. Think of it this way: if it were safe to lose consciousness underwater, if we had a magickal reflex response that kept us safe- why would anyone ever have to drown?
YPPH 5y ago
While the immediate risks are obvious and well-documented, I'm curious to know whether there are any long-term risks associated with lengthy breath-holding such as that undertaken by free divers, even when it doesn't result in a black out. My gut feeling says yes, but I have absolutely no evidence to back up that and it's pure speculation. Something worthy of further study, perhaps, although it would only affect a minority of the population. An impressive feat but one I wouldn't personally be undertaking.
- Azrael3000 5y ago
  While I don't have any hard evidence to back up my claims, I would tend say no. Reason being is that we are mammals and some mammals live in the ocean like seals. Their bodies have the same reaction to diving than ours [0] and it certainly does them no harm. Sure they are more efficient and better adapted, but the underlying physiological principles are the same. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex
  - YPPH 5y ago
    The diving reflex is a good point, and it seems there are several defensive mechanism against brain damage whilst holding one's breath. Perhaps I am mistaken.
- darkerside 5y ago
  Would you assume fasting, depriving your body of necessary for, is also harmful?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- animal531 5y ago
  Quick googling shows that there might be positive aspects to holding your breath, but I imagine one would have to do a deep dive (no pun intended) into the subject matter before reaching a conclusion.
Grustaf 5y ago
Well, learning Latin and Ancient Greek definitely makes you a better human being, so that's a bad example...
- weego 5y ago
  No it doesn't, it makes you are more learned person. That's not the same as better for any humanistic definition of better.
fuzzybear3965 5y ago
It depends on how you define safety. And, I think the comparison, here, isn't being made to sitting on a couch (which carries its own health risks) but to other professional sports, or maybe its being compared to the safety of even amateur competition across sports. Elite physical competition always carries some risks of injury (even death) - those have to be balanced against the benefits of competing. Definitely there are more dangerous sports that we would consider safe (American football, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, etc.), where "safe" is defined as "would encourage, or not admonish, our children from pursuing".
toss1 5y ago
In my experience, it's axiomatic in high-risk sports to understand the difference between "smart crazy" vs "dumb crazy"; everyone knows what it is, but it is rarely described. One friend best described it as the difference between using knowledge, technology, and/or skill to reliably perform ordinarily dangerous activities, vs. getting away with something by pure dumb luck. Here the technology is lean (nose clips, lights, fins, cable, alarms) and the knowledge, technique, and skill is extensive, but clearly many can make a career of it. What you are doing is like staring at the crash statistics for cars, or even racecars, and minimizing the very real and large body of safety knowledge, equipment, and process that reduces the risk to tolerable levels. And to scoff at how this knowledge makes one "more effective, conscious, skillful, and thoughtful as human beings" is pure ignorance. I can tell you personally (having a healthy dose of this mental training, and great respect for the much further extents achieved by these freedivers) that it makes all the difference in the world - but of course if you have not done it, you literally do not know what you are missing. (edit: clarity, punctuation)
twox2 5y ago
“They are secrets that, once revealed, make the divers not just more effective at their craft, they argue, but more effective, conscious, skillful, and thoughtful as human beings” If you can suspend your initial disbelief and are willing to do some reading on the topic of breath work, I recommend the writing of James Nestor and of course Wim Hof. Divers are using these techniques in order to train to hold their breath a long time, but the claims of the other benefits are verifiable and measurable in labs as well.

reactspa 5y ago

Greater than these guys? https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bajau-sea-nomads-free-diving-spleen-science https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/bajau-sea...

goldenkey 5y ago
Let's compare their spleens Dr. Strangelove.

ojciecczas 5y ago

It seems they haven't heard about Guillaume Néry... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQITWbAaDx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQITWbAaDx0

Azrael3000 5y ago
Considering this article is actually very good, I am sure they have heard of him. While he is absolutely impressive and one of my favourite divers, the pure numbers speak for Alexey.
stefs 5y ago
It seems they haven't heard about Guybrush Threepwood, who could hold his breath for 10 minutes.

bjarneh 5y ago

What a great read. Has to be one of the few people around that was introduced to an extreme sport by his mom.

iechoz6H 5y ago
Interesting comment/coincidence as yesterday I watched The Last Mountain [1], the poignant story of the deaths, 24 years apart, of ground breaking mountaineer Alison Hargreaves [2] and her son Tom Ballard [3]. Well worth a watch. 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00103ms https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00103ms 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Hargreaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Hargreaves 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Ballard_(climber) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Ballard_(climber)
- bjarneh 5y ago
  The BBC player was geo-blocked, but what a tragic story. I guess when you get that climbing-bug, it's almost like an addiction.
dustintrex 5y ago
And he's kept going although his mom disappeared (read: died) doing it in 2015.
lovemenot 5y ago
I thought so too. But the chronology seems reversed. He got into the sport before she did - aged 40. Then she became a champion. I am not sure whether I read that right. What was really impressive (again maybe I read it wrong) was that she became the best amongst both sexes. I cannot readily think of any other sport that has at some time been dominated by a woman.
- jl2718 5y ago
  Ultra swimming

mrfusion 5y ago

So if you’re this good at holding your breath you could basically live underwater like a dolphin. Coming up to breath every minute or two. How weird would it be to spend a few hours like that?

cool_dude85 5y ago
I doubt that he could hold his breath so long again right after like that. He probably needs to spend a while getting air before he could go back down. I wonder if there's a multiple-dive discipline of freediving, maybe the deepest you can go 3x successively, with only say 15 seconds of air in between each dive.
steve_adams_86 5y ago
One key difference is that humans need about as long as they were under water, at rest, to recover oxygen in their blood and normalize co2 levels. We can’t swim up, exhale, breathe, and swim back down. That’s a recipe for a guaranteed black out. We also can’t swim very strongly while holding our breath. Everything is slow, controlled, deliberate, and conservative in all ways possible.
- jl2718 5y ago
  Seems like a quick fix for a CRISPR/CAS9 edit.