Also applies to Mermen!

You are what you think you are. Self-confidence is essential in the nerve-racking hours before competing. This confidence comes from hard work, sweat and tears in training and relentless practice. My triathlete heroine Chrissie Wellington said that 'you don't become a champion, you act like one, everyday'.

She also said that 'there are no limits'. It's taken me a while for this one to sink in. The only thing that limits us is a belief that there are limits. I still see other people's records as limits. I see the pool walls as limits! So this is my next challenge - step by step advancing my own progress, exploring what my body is capable of.

Dream It - Believe It - Achieve It

Mermaids need to undulate their backs to swim, like a dolphin. That means our backs must be flexible and strong. Yogis believe that the quality of the spine reflects our age - so keep young by maintaining a supple spine! Remember that the spine is made of three parts - the lumbar (lower), thoracic (middle) and cervical (upper) spine. The upper portions must allow movement of the body to flow between the chest and core. Most office workers and car drivers suffer from tight upper and/or lower backs so these exercises are beneficial for us all in daily life too.

Often forgotten, our feet are the key to the whip-like kick at the end of the mermaid stroke, and for keeping our tail hydrodynamic. Unless you've been a competitive swimmer since childhood you'll probably have stiff feet and/or ankles. It's worth adding stretches to your yoga practice that move the feet in both directions. Sitting cross-legged regularly will also help.

The engine of the dolphin kick is the core - our abdominal muscles, obliques, lower back and pelvic floor. Always add core exercises to your yoga practice and/or gym session to ensure this key body stabiliser is given a regular workout. Don't necessarily aim for a 'six pack' as this is only a superficial indicator of strength. Real core power comes from the deeper muscles in and around the stomach.

It goes without saying that a mermaid needs to spend lots of time in the water - 'til your fingers prune!

Mermaids have 'aquaticity' - a feeling of being at home and comfortable in water. If this isn't you yet, then take it step by step by enjoying swimming and drills in the pool or in open water. But remember to never hold your breath alone - get some training and swim with a buddy.

Holding your breath means eventually coming up against an intense need to breathe. Our body tells us this by sensing rising CO2 and signalling via an involuntary contraction of the diaphragm. Training involves challenging this signal, and the thought that comes with it. It's about becoming comfortable with discomfort.

We can practice this on the mat in challenging poses that give an opportunity to relax and soften instead of stiffen and lose focus. Pigeon pose is a great example.

On Sunday 6th July 2014 Rebecca set a new UK record in Dynamic apnea (with monofin) of 179m in Stockport at Life Leisure Grand Central swimming pool. This was organised by Steve Millard of Apneists UK. Judges Dave Tranfield and Gary Lowe. Many thanks to everyone who helped out on the day.

The yoga and breathing exercises Rebecca uses as part of her freedive training can be found in the OMdiver online programme here

Freediving is all about body awareness so there isn't as much scope for gadgets as there is in other sports. Dive computers are obvious assets to have for depth training to measure depth, speed of descent and ascent. As a competitive diver in the pool I've found this watch to be a handy equivalent for specific and cross-training.

The Pool-MateHR measures your laps in the pool (as long as you're swimming), stroke speed, rate, length and efficiency. This is really useful for tracking your cross-training fitness or doing breath-hold surface swimming. The watch knows you're swimming by the movement of your arms, so recognises front-crawl, breast-stroke, back-stroke and fly.  Unfortunately it doesn't recognise monofin/dolphin swim or the modified underwater breast-stroke we perform for Dynamic No Fins (DNF) but it will continue to record heart rate regardless.

The plot below shows my heart rate during a maximum Dynamic swim using the monofin in a 50m pool. You need to click the watch to start so I normally do this 30 seconds before my final breath so as not to disrupt my sense of relaxation. You can see where the dive starts (approximately) by the red arrow. I switch off the watch after three recovery breaths and surface protocol, so there is a short lag time. The graph also shows my heart rate recovery following the dive. The first minute after the dive my lactic acid levels are high and my body is paying back the oxygen debt, which explains the slightly high heart rate at first.

What I find interesting here is how the dive reflex kicks in to slow down my heart rate, all the way down to 39 bpm. The step change you see about a third of the way in also appears in other plots of similar dives. I'm not quite sure what this is yet - feel free to share your thoughts.

When you use the Pool-MateHR you need to record your cool-down surface swim otherwise it doesn't log the session. A freedive can be tracked as a set (although standard swim data won't be available, only heart rate), the pause function used for recovery and while taking equipment off. I then record at least one more set of surface swimming for cool-down.

Other swim plots have shown some heart rate blips at the wall turns, and a high starting heart rate. Both of these insights give me aspects of my dive to work on to stay relaxed so as to smooth out the heart rate profile and get the most efficient swim I can.

In cross-training the Pool-MateHR has shown over the last 3 months that my front crawl technique is improving, which is great news as I do a lot of open water swimming in the summer. I also discovered that the most efficient breathing and stroke for me is actually bilateral every 5 strokes rather than 3. But when I do reduced breathing sets to every 7 strokes then I start to struggle!

Here's a typical view using the Pool-Mate programme. The swim sets in white contain efficiency and stroke data; in between I do monofin technique drills where just the heart rate is recorded (in pink). Spot the drill sets where I held my breath...?

All in all I find the Pool-MateHR a useful tool if your budget doesn't extend to the top-end triathlon watches (£250+) and if your focus is on swimming. I will share more insights as I continue to use this watch, for example in Dynamic No Fins swims and Static Apnea.

For more details on the Pool-MateHR go to www.swimovate.com

It's surprising how much a three minute swim takes out of you. I slept for nine hours, very heavily, but thankfully woke up feeling fresh. Round two of early morning yoga, breathing exercises and porridge. I'm not one for starving myself before static, I love my food too much!

My static preparation involved a longer guided relaxation than for dynamics - I'm usually close to snoozing by the end of a 30 minute session. Once I'd suited up I spent five minutes with my legs up the wall (a yoga pose known as viparita karani) to help slow my heart rate down. Rebecca then helped me through my in-water warm-up of two holds and then a long final breathe-up before my competition performance. We hadn't worked together before so were both a little nervous that things would go to plan. A typed out list goes a long way to ease your coach's job so that they know exactly what to do and when.

My warm-up went OK but I knew my holds had been shorter than normal as it seemed an age to wait before my max attempt. I was grateful for wearing a thick wetsuit as even a kiddies swimming pool gets cold after twenty minutes of minimal movement. With three minutes to go, Rebecca slowly floated me in front of the judges ready for the competition.

I'd asked Rebecca to tap me at one minute intervals and then start talking to me at three minutes, telling me the time at intervals so I knew how long I'd held. If she did tap me I didn't feel it through my suit, so after several minutes I started wondering whether I should just wave my finger to say I'm OK. Thankfully it didn't worry me at all, in fact it amused me so I felt pleasantly distracted! I then heard a mumble, which I took to be three minutes, not being able to hear clearly through the water and hood. It wasn't until four minutes when I placed my hands on the wall that I heard a bit better, and was pleased to hear I was well into four minutes and still feeling relatively comfortable. Static is not my favourite discipline, so I often come up early out of boredom and discomfort. This time though I knew that a decent static time would put me in a good position amongst the ladies for a possible podium place.

At five minutes I felt good as I'd done a few holds of around 5:10 in training and knew I was still in safe territory. So I told myself to 'relax, relax' for just a few more moments, eventually coming up at 5:27 with a new personal best and enormous smile!

Two dives down and one to go. I enjoyed a nutritious lunch catching up with my Bristol club mates, having missed some of their performances while preparing myself. I'd chosen to go early in the static so I could have a few hours to sleep over lunchtime, but unfortunately the hustle and bustle of the competition got in the way... my own fault! I was interviewed by Allie Crawford for FREEDIVE magazine, and then met the local MP and shadow health secretary. By the time I rested down in a quiet corner for a snooze the dynamics had already begun and became a new distraction.

I knuckled down to my original plan, despite being tempted to skip the stretching and relaxation as I felt fine and full of enthusiasm after my PB static. It's so important to be able to focus on yourself amongst the noise and activities going on around.

So I took myself back through a guided relaxation, suited up and rested before my buddy Andy came over to take me to my lane for the final swim. Unfortunately there was commotion in the lane immediately before my top with a competitor blacking out and being rescued. Again I just had to keep my head down and focus on my breath to avoid being freaked out. I also felt tired, so so tired. Andy reminded me that all my mono attempts had been late on Monday nights at our pool in Bristol, so this should feel like home.

My first length was 53 seconds, slower than my normal 45 seconds in training. 50 - 100m was almost 58 seconds and my third length was just over a minute. I think a few of my friends on the surface started to worry, but for me it felt fine - I didn't realise I was going slowly but I guess my body was weary.

I'd done around 155m in training so my plan was to try to replicate that dive and surface just after my third turn. I needed a few strong words and mantras to get myself to that point as many negative thoughts of tiredness and giving up crept into my mind. The apnea sprint training I'd done came to fruition at this point as I'd got accustomed to just putting my head down to keep on flapping.

The rest of the evening went in a blur. My head was spinning with the realisation that I'd won not only the UK ladies title but also the overall female competition. And in front of so many friends and excellent competitors, it was truly humbling.

I felt proud that my hard work, judgement and sacrifices I'd had to make had all paid off.
And so grateful to the people who helped me get there - coach and personal trainers, safety divers, advisors and supportive friends and family.

Thankfully I'd won a new Aquasphere wetsuit to replace my pool suit that was hanging together with Blackwitch glue! And for the international prize I also picked up a pair of carbon fibre Fins4U Pure Evolution bi-fins. What great sponsors!

After the prize presentation we all piled to the pub to gorge on pizza and beer - two of the foods I'd missed most during the austere weeks leading up to the competition eating leafy greens and sprouts! Everyone was in good spirits, celebrating our performances and laughing at funny moments and pictures taken over the weekend. Regardless of how well or badly our swims went, there's always something to keep working on to get better, and lessons to take away to stay positive.

Last stop is home to share some champagne with my Mum, which we couldn't finish as I'm such a weary, light-weight freediver! And finally a chance to contact my boyfriend in Morocco who was celebrating my win with friends and beer overlooking the surf in Agadir.

My bed felt so good that night :-)

Last weekend I reached the pinnacle of my training cycle - the Great Northern pool freediving championships had begun! I've never really trained seriously for sport before, at least not to the point of dropping a day at work and investing time and money in hours of practice. And so unlike a seasoned pro I got a bit nervous about the thought of all that investment tested in two to three minutes for the dynamics and a little longer in static. Of course this kind of perspective is unhelpful as well as untrue. Any performance is only a measure of where you are at now - a benchmark. A different view is to see the practice as the championship and the championship as practice. My training had gone spectacularly well - reaching personal bests in the last two weeks before competition was a great confidence boost. I was already a champion regardless of the result :-)

My nervous fidgeting came on a few days earlier. I'd taken three days off work as a buffer from potential office stress but found it quite hard to settle. I'm not a natural relaxer, needing a helping hand from relaxing activities like a hot bath, massage or yoga. Yin yoga has been a blessing to me recently in two ways - the deep physical release and in bringing my yoga to a snail's pace. Fast, flowing yoga is not helpful for nervous conditions - it can fan the flames of excitement or fear. Long-held poses for over an hour or more is for me the best cure for nerves. And while you wait and soften into each pose you learn more and more about yourself.

Waking up on Saturday morning I felt relatively chilled. My day started with pranayama, which can only be done on an empty stomach, and yoga sun salutations. As Dynamic No Fins (DNF) is the most physical of disciplines it requires some looseness in the body, particularly in the hips. So my preparatory yoga is flowing, encouraging my body to open up after the coma of sleep.

I pay attention to what I eat and drink in the days leading up to a competition. No caffeine, alcohol or meat, plenty of vegetables and loading up on beetroot. I’m a big fan of sprouting seeds so I had three layers of sprouts growing in preparation to give me a nutritious, alkaline boost before each performance. And breakfast of choice on the big day is always porridge.

In the hour before my swim I limbered up using a few seated yoga poses and then rested, using a guided relaxation to help focus my attention inside rather than what's going on around me. I was sad not to see my friends perform but it’s too distracting. The few times I have previously lost focus and looked up during preparation have coincided with seeing someone blackout, and that can take you to a negative place, so I know it’s not worth it.

Five minutes before my start (known as a ‘top’), I made my way to the lane and prepared my cap and mask. I slipped into the water with three minutes to go. I focused on the cooling sensation of water around my legs and against my hands. My heart started racing a little so I turned my attention to my breath and tried to relax. Of course anyone who has competed knows that last minute is nerve-racking. I kept my thoughts positive with phrases I'd tested in advance. And I tried not to accept the anxiety, instead told myself that this little bit of excitement will disappear as soon as I hit the water.

Research suggests that four out of five of us (80%) will experience back pain at some time in our lives. Almost half of adults have experienced this in the last year. Yoga is shown to assist in the easing of chronic back pain and rehabilitation.

Although I don't suffer from lower back problems, I've experienced significant discomfort in my upper back and have tried several practices to ease stiffness for my sport and day to day life.

What is working for me is yoga, sports massage and using a foam roller. Below are a few poses I would suggest you try to prevent back stiffness from occurring, or to (carefully) ease existing discomfort.

Please remember to check with your doctor before beginning these exercises if you have had, or currently experience, back pain, discomfort or degenerative conditions. Rest in child's pose after each pose shown.

Cat stretch - Rest on all fours, with hands under your shoulders and knees under your hips. Breathe IN tilt your pelvis so the spine curves downwards, lift your head, gaze directly ahead. Breathe OUT engage abdominal muscles and press your spine upwards towards the ceiling. Drop your head to look at the floor. Repeat for 5 breath cycles.

Locust pose - Lie on your belly, arms by your sides with palms facing down. Breathe IN lift your head and shoulders only. Breathe OUT release down. Repeat x3. Then rest your forehead down and lift the legs - single times and the double x3. Add both together - breathe IN lift head, shoulders, arms and legs off the floor into a banana shape. Hold for 2 - 3 breaths and then release.

Lying spinal twist - Lie on your back with knees bent, arms out to the sides making a T shape at shoulder height, palms facing up. Breathe OUT and take your knees over to the right, turning your head to the left. Hold for 5 breaths or more. Then repeat to the left. Head turns to the right.

Plough pose - lift your knees to your chest. Take your hands down to the floor and push gently to lift your hips off the floor. Extend your legs overhead. Keep your hands on the floor or support the lower back/hips. use pillows or blocks behind your head to rest your feet on if they don't touch the floor. Slowly roll out of the pose after 5 - 10 breaths, using your hands on the mat as a brake. Rest on your back.

Bridge pose - Lie with bent knees, feet hip-width apart. Arms by your sides with palms down. Breathe IN lift up your hips peeling your spine off the floor. Breathe OUT release your back onto the floor one vertebrae at a time, engaging your abdominals and pelvic floor to control this movement downwards. Precision and control will pay off for the spine and core muscles, don't rush.

One of the most widely believed myths about meditation is that you need to clear your mind to do it - and therefore if your mind is busy you can’t be meditating ‘properly’. It’s a sad fact that this tends to put many people off what is in truth a far simpler and more deeply affecting practice than most of us realise.

I practice meditation because it allows me to sit slightly outside of myself and look in at what’s going on with me - mentally, emotionally and physically. I normally don’t try to get my mind to do anything other than what it’s doing. If my mind is whirring with excitement or worry then I may give it a helping hand to calm down by focusing my attention on breathing.

I try to sit for at least 10 minutes a day because it sometimes takes a good 5 minutes or so to settle into position and allow my mind to slowly settle, like sediment sinking in a glass of water. Once I’m settled I just watch. I try to observe without judging or responding to my mind’s activity, but sometimes that’s hard. When I sense my mind has drifted off, I bring it gently back into view and we repeat the watching - over and over. And really that’s it. I’ve rarely experienced a ‘clear’ mind, but a few times my mind has settled so much that all I can sense is my heart beat.

Yoga describes a number of stages in approaching meditation. There is Pratyahara where we withdraw our senses from outside. You can cover or close your eyes, and put fingers into your ears to draw your sight and hearing inwards. From there we add a focal point - perhaps the breath or a mantra. This is Dharana and helps to still the mind as it has one focus. This is where mindfulness practice, meditation’s more accessible cousin, comes in - absorbing our mind into the body and breath. From this stillness we can then move into meditation itself - watching ourselves in Dhyana. The aim of yoga is to still mental chatter. The aim of meditation is to see who we really are when the mind, and particularly our ego, has stilled.

I experience a similar process in freediving. I close my eyes and focus on my breath to draw myself inwards in preparation for a dive. As soon as I’m underwater it’s quiet and still. I feel present in my body as I’m swimming and so experience less of that observing status compared to meditation.

But in static apnea, when I lie face down in the water, my meditation practice comes to the fore. When the urge to breath comes along I try to identify it as a thought and give it a label, such as ‘need to breathe’. I can then consciously ask myself ‘Do I need to breathe?’. For some time that answer can be no, and I try to let go of the thought and label as the urge subsides. And this is repeated over and over. Obviously a point comes when the answer is ‘Yes!’ and its time to come out of the breath-hold and return to the land of breathing.

Despite the discomfort of moving through the urges to breathe, I always feel stilled after practising statics, just as I do in meditation. I’ve certainly learnt a lot about myself by meditating and freediving. I believe we can often reach mental and emotional stillness, and self-awareness, by going through discomfort than trying to avoid it.

Learn meditation and other yoga techniques for diving on a luxury weekend retreat in April - read more here

or try the online programme

I'm now five months into a six month training programme for my next competition in March. It seems like I've been training forever but one look at the freediving wheel reminds me that much of that was foundational and I'm now in a period of highly specialised workouts with an end in sight. My coach Steve Millard will say there is never an end, only a benchmark before you move on to the next goal!

Over these past months I've worked to improve my aerobic ability with long steady runs. I've interspersed this with interval apnea sprints and hill runs to improve my lactate threshold. Physiological testing in December 2013 gave me a fitness benchmark which I hope to revisit this summer to see how I'm doing. Thanks to Ben Cox for advising me in cardio training and arranging the test. Thanks To Marjon sports college in Plymouth for hosting us.

Some freedivers will say that fitness isn't important (and they tend to be static specialists), but my view is that an efficient cardiovascular system is important for all breath-holds even though your VO2min might be a more useful measure of apnoeic ability than VO2max. Highly fit individuals will have a low resting heart rate so can start the breath-hold from a much lower base rate. For dynamic disciplines it pays to be fit, strong and flexible to swim efficiently.

Alongside cardiovascular training I've included strength and conditioning with Ben Andrews, my personal trainer. This addresses my physical weaknesses (which last summer led to some time off to correct) and builds up the specific muscles for dynamic apnea. This includes the arm pull and kicks of breast stroke and core strength for monofinning. Although I've never boxed in my life, Ben took me through some high intensity boxing exercises that have become my favourites... punchbags are great stress-relief! A 10 week personal training programme helped me gain a 15% increase in stroke efficiency - the challenge has been to maintain this.

The group instructors at Bannatyne Health & Fitness in Redland, Bristol have helped me grind through 'pure abs', 'body conditioning' and pilates classes. Having a pool to practice technique has been a blessing, although I am now the local weirdo with the front snorkel!

Adding breath-hold tolerance to this makes for a busy training schedule. I generally have one day off a week with a rest week every 4 - 6 weeks where I just do what I fancy (often its a jog round the harbour). I try to mix wet and dry CO2 and O2 training to break the monotony. I've previously written about my difficulty in becoming 'comfortable with discomfort' when it comes to the urge to breathe. Although I love the big swims, I'm a reluctant athlete when it comes to the tough tables and pyramid swims behind the scenes! 

This has been far easier when I'm positive about my training and ability. A recent physical and mental 'slump' resulted in me losing a lot of ground in my apnoeic tolerance which doesn't help to build your confidence when it's most needed. Thankfully it comes back quickly with some rest and time to refocus.

Over-training with a programme like this is a constant risk. I've kept a detailed journal, regularly measured my waking heart rate and remained mindful of my mood and energy levels, but I fell into the same trap as many athletes when it comes to allowing enough rest. It's such a challenge because you get trapped into thinking that a few missed sessions could mean the difference between a medal or record, and none. Or a few metres or seconds less than you're capable of.

The truth is we don't really know what we're capable of. But I do know that I'm able to perform my best when I'm feeling positive and rested. I've taken some tips from Canadian triathlete and yoga teacher Sage Rountree in how to effectively recover from training and performances so as to bounce back for the nest session.
I've been very lucky to receive regular sports massage from Ben Andrews and often watch TV rolling up and down a foam cylinder!

A large part of recovery is in what we eat and drink between each session. I'm effectively a vegetarian but have found it increasingly difficult to eat enough protein to sustain a heavy training workload. Thankfully I studied freedive nutrition for my AIDA instructor course so I'm an expert in this area now. Although this didn't stop me poisoning myself with sprouted beans this week! I've developed a minor obsession with beetroot and spirulina so my kitchen often looks like a Jackson Pollock painting on juicing day!

I'm a fan of Vega nutritional and recovery drinks although they are expensive and difficult to get hold of in the UK. I swear that my diet, along with my yoga and fitness training, has kept me injury and illness free since October - I still haven't caught the cold bug that has been doing the rounds at work for months.

As a yoga practitioner I use a range of techniques for physical recovery including dynamic postures and sequences for warming up, restorative poses for reducing the impact of lactic training at late night pool sessions and yin yoga once a week for spinal flexibility. I'm now ramping up my meditation periods for mental quiet and using longer guided meditations for deep relaxation.

So I'm five weeks out from the Big Weekend now... my main goals are to remain injury free (especially from daily bike rides through Bristol city centre!) and positive about my ability. I remind myself that it is truly about the journey and not about the result. In yoga we study the art of detachment - our ability to put in the effort of practice whilst letting go of the need to succeed.

If you're interested in learning more about how I train for freediving then please get in touch as I may have a course or online programme to suit you. Contact me at rcoales@gmail.com

I think I’ve found the perfect dry workout for swim training, especially for No Fins freediving where a strong catch and pull of the arms is a key element.

There is a right and wrong way to row however, as I found out from a personal trainer at my local gym.

Rowing works all the major muscle groups in the legs, arms, back, abdominals and chest and gets the heart rate up.

The explosive press of the feet helps to build strength for pushing off the wall. The pull by the arms for building up the lats, chest and biceps for the arm stroke.

Rowing is a pushing activity, not pulling as you might think. At the start of the 'catch' phase (crouched close in to the wheel) the power comes from low down in the body, the large muscles in the legs. Its not until you push back and the legs are nearly straight that the arms get involved. By the last part of the active push you should be just past upright, keep your back straight and core engaged.

During the recovery phase let the hands move back with the handle first, don't bend your knees until the hands are at shin position, as you then return to the starting crouch position. This is the mistake many people make, they push out and in with the legs.

Steady rowing can give an aerobic workout, whereas interval rowing with high intensity bursts, interspersed with easy rest periods, can give an anaerobic workout.