A long way down and holding on

BY SIMON EDWARDS

Imagine this: you have dived 72 metres under water, without breathing apparatus. The last breath you took was more than two minutes ago.

As you turn to begin your ascent, your thumb catches the lanyard on your nose-clip, ripping off the apparatus sealing your nostrils. Water floods your sinuses and you fight to ensure it doesn't get into your throat.

Coughing underwater is disastrous.

It's a long way up to the surface and air.

Kerian Hibbs remembers this training mishap as his most "scary" episode since he jumped into free diving four years ago. How he dealt with it is also why he loves this unusual sport.

"I had to find a level of focus that I'd never found before. I couldn't allow any distractions, any panic. I just had to dig in and deal with it."

Hibbs, 38, is ranked seventh in the world in constant weight no-fin freediving. Constant weight means whatever weights you wear to get you down quickly, you also have to bring back up with you.

He can hold his breath underwater for 6 1/2 minutes. He enjoys the "self-challenge" of pushing himself to do even better.

"It sounds so cliche but you learn all about yourself, your body. It extends your perceptions of what is possible; the belief system in yourself goes up exponentially."

He says that spills over into other aspects of life.

Hibbs and two other New Zealanders are preparing to attend world teams freediving championships in Okinawa, Japan, at the end of June. On the way, Hibbs aims to get to the Mediterranean Cup in Greece, where he'll be the only Kiwi competing.

He says the "on-paper" credentials of the NZ trio show they should beat the "kings" of the sport from France and Czechoslovakia "hands down", but a previous experience at the 2008 world championships in Egypt showed it can all be different under competition pressure.

Hibbs' rise in this going under sport has been rapid. The founder of Avalon-based web-host company i-SERVE, he says he was a competitive swimmer as a child but that's pretty much the extent of his in-the-water sport involvement.

In 2005, soon after his second go at the Coast to Coast run, kayak, cycle gutbuster, he saw a TV programme featuring Ant Williams attempting a no-breath swimming world record. As a "hyperactive" kind of person himself, the calmness required for long dives "fascinated me".

A little later, by sheer coincidence, Williams was the sports psychologist on a TV show about sailing that Hibbs was involved in. "I pestered the guy to take me diving."

Hibbs says he soon discovered he had a real aptitude for it. After training, and on one of his first serious attempts at a long breath hold, he managed five minutes.

Hibbs says any non-smoker with some instruction and practice can stay underwater for two minutes. He would know: he now runs classes for beginners and advanced divers.

He says it's about harnessing the mammalian dive reflex that is inherent in all of us. It's the same reflex that compels a baby submerged in water to instinctively hold its breath.

Re-engage the reflex, enhance it with training, and you can stay a long time underwater.

High fitness helps, with special concentration on anaerobic exercise. A normal fit person's heartbeat is 50-60 beats a minute; in diving mode Hibbs' drops to below 30.

Capillaries and veins in the legs and other extremities contract, and oxygen in the blood is shifted to core body organs  heart, brain, spleen. The rest of the battle is in the diver's head.

"It's a strange place to find yourself. You have to clear your mind of everything, but be hyper-conscious about the things that matter regarding the dive."

Hibbs talks about disengaging the right side of the brain and shutting down the reflex to breathe, but leaving the left "detail oriented" side of the brain switched on.

In 2007 while he was still a newcomer to the sport, Hibbs broke a New Zealand record by swimming 201m with fin without breath at his training venue Naenae Pool. He was only the 10th man in recorded history to do this.

Two others at the same meet did even better  Wellingtonian David Mullins set an astounding 244m new world record.

That was also the year Hibbs really got into diving, as opposed to swimming, without breath. He was at Dean's Blue Hole in the Bahamas, a funnel-shaped 200m "drop" in a beautiful cove without currents, much favoured by divers. In his first attempt wearing a fin he reached 75m. The world record just two years earlier had been 68m.

The next year he set an 81m mark, and with no previous attempt, 46m without fin. He recounts with relish how fellow competitors raised eyebrows at his "meteoric" progress. Those efforts qualified him for the world indoor champs in Denmark and outdoor champs in the Bahamas last year.

He "bombed" in Denmark, with two "black outs" in qualifying rounds. This doesn't mean he lost consciousness. For a freediving attempt to count, the diver must break the surface, remove goggles and nose clip, signal "OK" with a hand and coherently say "I'm OK". Hibbs timed it wrong: "I was too close to the edge."

For a freediver, the difference between loss of motor control and a successful long dive can be half a second.

Things went much better at Dean's Blue Hole. Hibbs dove to 75m with fin and a superb personal best 72m without fin. At those championships, Napier's William Trubridge set a without fin world record of 90m.

It's why Hibbs is feeling so confident about competing in the teams Worlds at Okinawa in late June. The Kiwi contingent comprises double gold medal winner Guy Brew, a static apnoea specialist who has held his breath under water for nine minutes in competition, depth specialist Trubridge, "and me, I'm the all-rounder".

Hibbs says he's grateful to all the people who helped him achieve his goals, not least dive buddy Sam Hauwaho  a "phenomenal" spear fisherman, who has dived for three minutes, resurfaced for a minute or two, then gone back under for 3min 8sec. "I don't know many divers who can do that," says Hibbs. Staff at Naenae pool are also "fantastic". What would really help is sponsorship for the Greece and Japan trip; airfares alone are $5,500.

If you're still not impressed with the feats of these divers, consider Hibbs' description of what it's like coming up from the bottom after a long dive: "Try walking up stairs, five or six storeys  with no breath. Just make sure someone's with you if you try it!"

- Hutt News