Freedive Training: Cardio, Intervals, CO2 and O2 Tables

Freevive training can be a complicated process for many people. Just about every dive will agree that the best way to train for breeding is to freedive. Nothing beats in water experience. Unfortunately, not everyone has the time or access to be in the water as much as we would like. Fortunately there are several ways to train for freedivng outside of being in the water. It should be noted that these training techniques try to help the same muscle groups and mental skills that are helpful in freediving. Remember, never train freediving in the water without a dive buddy that understands rescue protocol.

Cardio: How Endurance Improves Freediving

There are a lucky group of people that actually enjoy cardio. Those people are widely considered crazy by the rest of us. The rest of us just need to grin and bear it when we are doing cardio and recognize that doing some of it will help us enjoy other hobbies. The biggest benefit of cardio in freediving is building up endurance. There is nothing worse than getting in the water in a strong current and struggling to be able to dive because you are running out of energy on the surface. Implementing a regular cardio routine has untold benefits to allowing you to enjoy a long day in the water. Some great activities that help also build up you leg muscles are swimming, biking, and of course running.

Intervals: Improving Recovery and Anaerobic Exercise

If there is anything more unpleasant to train than cardio it has to be intervals. It takes the unpleasantness of cardio and magnifies it with the feeling like your heart and lungs are going to explode. For those of you unfamiliar with Interval workouts the more familiar term is sprints. Sprints can be applied to any of the previously mentioned cardio exercises. Basically just push yourself further than you can sustain.

If you are running you can do distance intervals or timing intervals. Runt to a light pole, walk to the next light pole, or run 30 seconds then walk 60 seconds. Swimming can be swimming hard for a lap, recover for a lap. This process is designed to spike your heart rate and helps train your body to recover from anaerobic exercises quicker. Anaerobic exercise is any exercise that uses more oxygen than your body can replace in the amount of time the exercise continues. You can understand how this type of exercise could be helpful I training for freediving.

CO2 and O2 Tables: Training the Mind to Accept Discomfort

CO2 and O2 tables are useful tool in getting your body used to holding its breath. They eat h work in different ways to improve this goal.  

CO2 tables focus on getting a build up of CO2 in your body. ?This helps your body become accustomed to that discomfort that makes your mind think you need to breathe. It is not a lack of oxygen that makes you think you need to breathe, but the build up of CO2. By regularly exposing your body to increased levels of CO2 it pushes your mental limits of what your body considers normal. The method of doing this is typically to hold your breath for a consistent amount of time and to reduce the amount of time you breath up before holding your breath.

O2 Tables work on a similar principle but in an inverse way. O2 tables allow for a more gradual buildup of CO2 by having a consistent breath up and holding your breath for longer and longer intervals. 

Bluewater Spearfishing Basics

Bluewater spearfishing has its challenges. It is simultaneously the most boring and exciting spearfishing there is. It does require its own collection of equipment as well as techniques. 

Mental Fortitude

Bluewater spearfishing is challenging because the fish are elusive.  Pelagic species are highly migratory, live in deep water, and are fast predatory fish.  In order to target these species you have to have infinite patience while drifting through infinitely deep, blue water. There is a delayed gratification to bluewater spearfishing. Typically, you spend eight to ten hours a day drifting over structure you will never see, hoping your boat driver dropped you on the right drift. If you are lucky you will have a few seconds of excitement just seeing your target species. If you hit the jackpot those seconds of excitement are followed by either a few minutes or several hours of absolute insanity as you attempt to land a fish of a lifetime.

Bluewater Equipment

Spearfishing for Bluewater species still requires the basics you need for any freediving. It does require a couple other pieces of equipment specific to hunting these giant pelagic species. 

Speargun

The first difference is a larger speargun. Many pelagic species are wary of predation, and simply won’t get close enough to hunt with shorter spearguns. Bluewater spearguns tend to be both longer and wider.  They are larger because they need to compensate for the recoil of additional bands and larger spear shafts. For a more detailed explanation check out this article. The spear shaft used with the Bluewater gun will most likely require a slip-tip to allow the fish to fight without tearing a hole in itself.

Floats and Floatlines

After that, you will need to look into a float and floatline setup.  The type of float and floatline will be dependent on both the species as well as your own abilities. Larger fish will need multiple or larger floats as well a bungees to connect them. Smaller or more delicate fish will need smaller floats to prevent too much back pressure causing the slip-tip to pull out. For a more detailed explanation on choosing the right float and floatline check out the linked articles.

Bluewater Spearfishing Rigging and Accessories

Beyond the speargun and floats you have some choices between types of rigging as well as a few accessories that can help you land your fish a bit easier. Most bluewater spearos have adopted a breakaway setup to allow them to keep their speargun with them and to streamline their bluewater setup. For more information on that check out this article. 

One of the accessories that comes in handy to bring the fish in on your drifts is a flasher.  There are several types of flashers and all of them help. A flasher is some type of shiny object or collection of objects designed to look like bait fish in a ball. Because pelagic species are usually highly opportunistic predatory fish they often come in to check out feeding opportunities. A group of divers may try several flasher rigs within a group using flasher floats set to depth, as well as throw flashers to target specific fish as they come in. Check out this video of our throw flashers doing the job.

An often underrated pice of equipment is the floatline clutch. These large fish often will make multiple runs as you start to pull them in. A floatline clutch helps you keep the progress you have made against your fish.

Bluewater Spearfishing Techniques

Diving as a buddy group is critically important in all diving from a safety perspective.  That is never more true than in bluewater spearfishing. Working as a team helps bring in more fish because there are more people to work the flashers and flasher floats as people dive. This is also critical for safety, as bluewater spearfishing supplies its own entanglement hazards. Be ready to help your buddy no mater what happens.

Drifts

The most common form of bluewater spearfishing is drift diving. Pelagic species tend to be most active in heavy current and anchoring a boat and effectively diving in these conditions are challenging at best. It does take a competent boat driver to put a group of divers up-current of the targeted structure and monitor divers as they do their drift. A real quality boat driver can let divers keep their floats and flatlines in the water without running over the flatlines or getting them tangled in the propellers.

Anchoring Up

If you are anchored up in an area without too much current you may have the option to chum. A warning about chum; you will encounter several sharks. A combination of sand, menhaden oil, oatmeal flakes, ground or chunked up fish, and glass minnows if you can find them, are a sure way to bring fish up into the water column. It is also a sure way to bring in sharks too. 

Research

Learn about the species you are targeting. Research what depths they tend to swim. Determine if moon phase or water temperature impact how the fish act. Try and identify reasons or signals of where the fish may aggregate. If bait is hitting the surface or birds are chasing bait at the surface that may be an indicator of pelagic species chasing bait fish near the surface where divers may be able to reach them. Bluewater spearfishing is a great opportunity to become more familiar with fish behavior through research combined with your own experiences. 

Reading Fish Behavior: Identifying What The Fish is Going to Do

The short version is that every fish species acts differently, and individual fish within a species will adapt as well. With experience, there are strategies we can learn that improve our ability to read fish behavior and get closer to all fish species. There are also broad categories for types of fish that can help determine how a given species may act. There are other factors that may impact how fish may act. For example, frequency the fish is hunted in a given area, or time of year are both factors that can influence how a fish can be expected to act. Ultimately, your experiences will dictate how you interact with certain species of fish.

Reef Fish Behavior

Reef fish are generally fish found towards the bottom of structure. Grouper and Snapper are common examples of reef fish within the United States. Sea Trout and Job Fish are example in Australia and other parts of the Pacific. No matter where you are in the world there are always a  few species that are easy (or easier) to hunt. We will focus on species that tend to be harder to hunt. 

Large reef fish tend to be weary of new arrivals to their environment. There are two broad actions you can expect most reef fish to do. They will either swim away, or be curious. If they are curious the best thing you can do is be still on the bottom and try and wait them out. Use a rock to hide behind for a better opportunity. If they are swimming away you have two main options. You can either try and chase them down, or you can call your dive and try and approach the fish from another direction. For a more in depth breakdown of the best method to do this check out the Hunting Techniques blog post and skip to the “Cone of Death” section.

Pelagic Fish Behavior

Pelagic species can be a bit harder to read in the water. Because they are more rarely seen in a day of diving it is easy to forget about hunting techniques and to just try and run them. This usually results in the fish getting spooked and swimming away faster than you have any hope in catching up. The best thing to do with most blue water species, like Wahoo, is to take a calm breath and try to create an intersecting path with the fish. Body language is everything when spearfishing. In simple terms you want to be the sea turtle instead of the shark. Not to sound too corny, but you almost have to lie to yourself and think that you don’t want to kill the fish. If you believe it the fish may believe it, and that can help you close the distance. 

Overlapping Species

There are highly migratory species that tend to congregate on reefs as they move through an area. Mackerel are a common species that can be found on normal reef structure during certain times of year. These species tend to turn into targets of opportunity. Some of these species can come through and you may be lucky to see them ever again, so you may have to take advantage of them coming through quickly. Other species may simply do large loops on structure. Cobia are an excellent example on some shipwrecks. It is common for cobia to do large circles outside a bait ball on a shipwreck. When they do this you can just try and make an intersecting path with them and wet within range of the fish to close the deal. 

Other Factors

There are countless factors that impact how fish behave. Below is a description of a few common factors and how they can impact fish behavior and hunting technique.

Spawns

As we mentioned earlier, there are several factors that can impact how a fish can behave. One of the biggest factors that can change behavior is a fish spawn. Spawns are different for most species of fish. Many fish species have evolved to have mass spawns to improve the likelihood of successful breeding. That means that during certain times of years there tend to be large aggregations of a given fish species in one location and they tend to be focused on breeding rather than avoiding predation. This can afford a diver the opportunity to hunt large fish of a given species where a fish may not be as focused on avoiding the diver. There is the moral issue of knowing you are taking advantage of the fish, but that comes down to the individual diver and what they are comfortable with. Other species tend to show up around other spawns as well because the spawn acts as chum in the water.

Moon Phase

Moon phase is a common consideration for fish behavior. It often dictates when some species spawn. The moon also impacts tides and currents. Tides and currents are an under appreciated element of fish behavior. Fish tend to be more active the stronger the current and the more water that is moving. Fish tend to move up current because of the nutrients that are moving into their area. Strong currents defiantly can make for challenging dive conditions, but they do usually afford more opportunities for shooting fish.

Thermoclines 

A thermocline is a dramatic difference in water temperature. This can impact how bait fish and other species behave. Often times fish will sit just above or just below the thermocline. This means you can plan to hunt a species by identifying how they are going to act on that day. Typically the thermoclines get colder as you get deeper, so you may be able to identify if the given species prefers warmer or colder water and target them in the window they prefer. There can also be dramatic differences in visibility between two thermoclines. Water temperature is defiantly a driving factor in how certain species behave.