Stéphane, really good to have you back on the Freedive Café.

You know, it’s been seven years since we did our last episode. Yeah, the time passed so fast. It’s crazy.

Seven years. It’s kind of crazy, huh? But I have good news.

My English is increased. Okay, great. So for those of you who are listening, Stéphane first appeared on episode five of the Freedive Café podcast.

That was in 2017. I had just started. And I’m listening to that and honestly, the sound quality and even the sound of my voice and everything, it’s quite hard to listen to sometimes.

But the content of the interview was very nice. And it’s nice to come back to some of the first

guests on the podcast and see how they have evolved and developed over the years. What I’ve noticed about you, Stéphane, is that you have been continuing to improve and continuing to get slowly and steadily deeper.

And I’m really interested to hear about the journey that you’ve been on in the last seven years. Before we get on to the subject of your evolution and deep diving, maybe you can just tell us a little bit about where you are now. You’re in Tenerife, I think, huh?

Initially, I moved to Tenerife a few years ago after a long life in training in the lake. And I increased a lot of progression from ANSI. And after, I’m going to Dominica.

I’m going to Dominica during one year and a half. And now I’m really back to Tenerife. There’s a lot of moving, but a lot of experience too.

And experimentation, of course. And I learned a lot these last three years like crazy. Yeah.

So I know you’ve spent quite a lot of time in Dominica. You said a year and a half. And before that, I was listening to the old interview and I was curious to know if you were still diving in the lake, because I guess you were diving in that lake for 20 years or something like that.

Yeah, exactly. I will be back on the lake sometime, maybe when I’m back in ANSI, because ANSI is more close from Tenerife. And also opportunity to refine the sensation, because I know dive on the lake during a lot of time and during a long time.

And I’m happy. I’m happy to move. All the time is a different experience and progression.

And tell us about Dominica. How has it been living there and diving there? Everyone hears it’s an amazing place.

Is it really as amazing as they say? Yeah, for me, it’s number one in the world for the condition of training, for the condition for performance, specifically because no current all the year, all the time. And the bay is beautiful.

The island is beautiful. People are beautiful. It’s a very powerful place, I think.

And also to be very focused on the deep dives. And it’s a very good point or so to be focused for that. And I love it.

I love this nature. And why did you decide to leave Dominica then? Initially, I’m going to Dominica because I need to live another experience, also to maybe experiment other things and my progression on the depth, because I want to explore the focussing on the depth during one for X time.

I don’t know. And now I’m leaving back to Tenerife for professional reason, family or so, because my girlfriend, I need to have the proximity with family and me professionally for conferences and sponsorship. It’s very important also to be more close to friends.

And also pool, because now I realise the importance of the hypoxia in my training because I explore the depth really deep and with a lot of repetitions. And now I conclude the importance to maintain the pool training and hypoxia is a new objective and also to change my training. That’s very interesting.

In the last interview that we did, you mentioned hypoxia being your weak point several times when we spoke. Let’s come back to that a little bit later. But like you say, you’ve been doing a lot of exploration recently in depth.

The main thing that actually reminded me to get in touch with you and continue this conversation was that I saw one of the posts on your Instagram that you had made about your diving in 2023, that you had done 21 dives to 120 metres and 30 dives to 118 metres and 102 dives deeper than 100 metres in one year. Is that correct? Yeah.

Yeah, it’s correct. It’s correct. Okay.

So, this is kind of crazy because it’s almost 100 metre dive or more than 100 metre dive every three days. That’s kind of an insane volume for any freediver, even the top level elite freedivers. I mean, how do you manage to sustain this kind of diving all through the year?

Initially, I work a lot with the volumetric training and physically and everything because from young, I do a lot of volume of training. I developed this capacity to untrainability and after, I can incorporate that in the depth now. This repetition, it’s possible because I introduced also variable weights.

The variable weights is possibility for me to go a bit deeper, a bit more relaxed and with less stress than constant weight. It’s also an opportunity to maintain the gym and physical training behind because if you maintain all the physics, it’s very difficult to maintain constant weights all the time. Variable weight is a good option when you have the leg destroyed.

If you are sore or if you’re tired, it’s an opportunity to be going deeper and to maintain the deep adaptations. Also, mainly it’s good for constant weight, I think, because we open the door of the new depth and mentally it’s better for constant weight when you go back with the fins. Even in the last interview, you said that your favourite disciplines were monofin and variable weight.

You’re still a huge fan of variable weight and that’s how you’re able to do so much deep volume. Yes, I would like to practise variable weight head up, but for the moment, it’s head down on the line. It’s just a solution for me to maintain and to go deep because if I do one discipline, I’m boring after and also it’s very exigent for the mind and physics.

Variable weight is a solution to take more pleasure deep dives. I guess also that you’ve been living in Dominica for a year and a half and completely focused on depth diving. Tell us a little bit about a typical week in Dominica for training.

How many times would you dive depth and what other kind of training were you doing outside of the water? When you were diving, what would your sessions look like from week to week? Depends on where I am on the season, but in the winter, it’s more intense.

Also, when I go back to the new cycle because I incorporate, of course, training and gym, cardio and everything, but generally, I do my deep dive in the morning. In the afternoon, I do the gym or with cardio or epoxy exercise and static because I don’t have a pool of 25 metres or more, but we have a bath in the surfers spring and there’s a beautiful place to do a static and I can maintain my epoxy like that. The day after normally is more soft.

I maintain maybe a static or zero things just to rest. After, I go back to the intense day. Generally, I do one intense day, one day more off or just a static.

The day after, it’s more intense. Generally, it’s constant weight on the Monday because I have two days off the weekend and I’m more fresh to do constant weight. After, I finish by valuable weight at the end of the week because I’m more tired on the leg.

I do two sessions of gym on the week, but in the middle of the week, I reduce a lot of physics to have more recovery because it’s very exhausting and specifically for deep dive because I not take oxygen also after my dive and because I get scary about it for lungs. If I breathe oxygen, it can generate inflammation of lungs and I hesitate to take it, but finally, it works if I manage well my recovery. Yeah, yeah.

That’s an interesting point about the oxygen. I remember I spoke to a specialist in lung ultrasound and other lung things and Bezosilva. He was trying to make us aware that oxygen is actually very toxic.

If we apply it to the lung, especially if the lung is maybe bleeding or has some edoema or some plasma coming into the lung, some injury in the lung, then it could actually be quite bad for the lungs, right? Yeah. I try to find balance.

If I not dive really close to my max performance and if my lungs is okay, I can take oxygen, but for the desaturation was okay finally. Initially, I a bit scary about, but progressively, I take more confidence because I’m really clear and I have nothing after, but the oxygen is really close to me in case if I feel something or symptoms, I can do directly to the depth to recompress myself with oxygen because I had an experience in DCS three years ago in vertical blue, just before the vertical blue. I’m really lucky at this moment.

I can tell about that later. I don’t know, but it was a crazy experience. After that, I’m being careful.

Tell us about this experience with DCS that you had at vertical blue. You can explain now. In vertical blue, just before I do a volume training, I do some passive exercise, some stop at 50 metres for training.

I don’t know if I do a deep dive the day before. After, I do a snorkelling at 10 metres, but I completely forget the importance of 10 metres because 10 metres, just a repetition of 10 metres, you generate also variability of volume with a long dive, like more than three minutes. I think it’s not really a good idea because after I do just 75 metres, two hours after, I accumulate a lot of dive and I take a bit risk, I think.

But finally, it was okay. I feel well. I sleep.

The day after, I not take a day off, to take three days off after. The day after, I do 95, not really deep for me, but the objective initially is to take three days off after that. But 95 is too much dive because I did three days consecutively training with a lot of variability, and the accumulation was not good.

I arrive on the beach. I’m close to Stephen Runding and Alice Modolo. I feel a very strange sensation, like I feel like in the screen.

I see my hand like very strange, and I realise the problem nervously and to connect with myself and to have memory also. When people talk to me, I rehash every time. After that, I take directly, I take my mask and go into the oxygen, but it’s not really enough depth.

We developed a protocol later because Alice contacted the doctor and William, and we decided to do a protocol of the compression. We’re going with oxygen, deeper, just not long, and after we’re back slowly on surface. After that, I have zero symptoms.

The symptoms disappear. We developed that in this method, and I think in the future, it’s really care for freediving because now the performance increase every year, and we see more and more people to do DCS, and the hyperbaric treatment is too far from the competition or from different sport. At this point, we need to take a decision to maybe have a possibility for the athletes to have decompression, but I think in the future, we need to develop that with the hyperbaric doctor.

For the moment, it’s experimental, but in the future, it will be important because it’s funny. The life is crazy. After this experience, I have three.

I see different accidents after that. In one year, I supervised and I helped to manage the DCS of other people, and a lot of them follow me. It’s funny.

Maybe it’s a universal law. I do a CTX one time, and now I manage for the other. Well, that’s very interesting, and of course, when you see the kind of depth that you’re diving at and the volume of those deep dives, it just goes to show how careful we have to be to be very, very conscious of what you said, maybe doing a couple of days with a little bit high volume, and then even the snorkelling can be the thing that pushes you over the edge.

You really needed to have a day off after that, but you still did a 95-metre dive, and it might not be such a super deep dive for you, but it can be a big problem. The baddest experience in my

DCS is not unmarried. It’s completely unmarried because I do too much.

I do too much during three days. It’s completely different than deep dive because if I do a deep dive, I’m sure I take minimum 48 hours to recovery, and finally, I have less risk than dive really deep and to have a recovery than to manage snorkelling or safety accumulation with a deep dive. Yes, it’s easier to get DCS with lots of accumulated shallower dives than one deep dive that you really need to recover from.

Like you say, it sounds like there’s a lot to be developed there and even researched into what is the best way to offer the possibility to manage this trauma on the site, getting the diver back into the water before you, because it could be several hours before you can get someone to a decompression chamber, and there could be some issue with traffic or transport or something like that. And every minute counts. I saw that, you know, remember last year, not last year, but the last time we spoke, you were saying that you did, already seven years ago, you had already done 120 metres in variable weight, and I think now you’ve added 5 metres or 121 metres, so I think you’ve added 4 metres to your variable weight and 10 metres?

Yeah, I did one study two weeks ago. Okay, well, congratulations. I’m still working on your Instagram post from the end of the year.

And you also made obviously huge improvements in your constant weight. I mean, you’re doing 120, what is your? One on the training, yeah, on the training.

So that’s a huge dive. And of course, when you’re at this level, it’s every metre is getting more and more difficult to add to your personal best. So why did you not go deeper in variable weight?

Do you think you could have gone deeper? Or is equalisation a limit to you now at this point too? I just precise a little things about what you told about my progression, because during four years, I not progress between 17, yeah, from 17 to 20, 2020.

It was really difficult for me to progress. And because I don’t have any constants on the deep dives. And after I’m back to Tenerife, and when I’m going to Tenerife and after Dominica, I maintain the deep dive all year.

And I increase the progression. Right. The difference with the variable weight is when I do a variable weight is at the line, it’s not on the sled.

And when I go up the line and I go down, head down, the tension on the chest is huge because I maintain the line until maybe 50 or 80 metres. And it’s great to tension and head down. And the difference is not a lot, maybe just 15 seconds less than constant weight or 20.

And the difference is not huge. Yeah, it’s not really huge. It’s for that I feel my length.
At 130, my limit is hypoxia and length. OK. Because adaptation is more easy in the head up than

the head down to access anymore.

Maybe if I practise head up, I can go very deep. Some people say we can put 15 or 20 metres plus, but I don’t know. I don’t know because I never experiment in sled.

Really, the variable weight, you use it mainly as a tool, as a training, as an adjunct to your constant weight training. So they’re quite similar in that sense. Yeah, it’s really similar.

That a head down variable weight is not that different to a constant weight. Yeah, it’s a tool for me to progress in constant weight first. So you said that between 2017, when we last spoke in 2020, you didn’t really have any progression.

Did you have problems in your personal life that you couldn’t find the time to train? Or was the way that you were training a problem? The problem was the time to be adapted to deep dives.

Initially, I do a lot of full exercise in the lake. I’m very professional about full exercise and reverse back and passive exercise, but it’s not enough to go deep. And initially, I don’t have a lot of enough money to travel along more than two or three months.

It’s for that I reduced my time before the competition or before Vertical Blue. I go in just one month before, but it’s not really enough because all the time, every two months, I stopped the deep dive repetition to be back in the country. At this point, I can’t progress more because I feel the same limit on the depth and concentrate.

It’s also a lot of stressful. It’s very stressful because one month before the Vertical Blue example, I dive a lot. And the time is very short.

And I pass by passive exercise and full exercise to full lunges at 110. And it’s very intense for the body. And after that, I realised the importance to practise all the year.

So in a sense, COVID was a good thing for you then? Yeah. Yeah.

I realised at this moment, it’s the moment to move because also the energy is not… I’m not feeling really well in France at this moment. And I take the decision to move quickly to be more focused on my dive.

Yeah. Let’s say in the last seven years, apart from the frequency of your training, what have been the biggest changes that you have made to your training methodology in these last seven years? The planification.

Having a good plan before you start training. In 2020, I decided to develop a board, special board. On the Excel.

And I developed that during two months to have my algorithm and to have my tab and to planificate all my trainings. And it’s like now my baby because it’s a very good tool. Now I can manage my training really well.

And I know where I go. And from this moment, it’s changed everything. It’s changed everything because I manage well my recovery, my statistic, my gym programme, depth and everything.

I’m a little bit confused about the word planificate. Do you mean that you have a schedule, like a better scheduling system?

[Speaker 2]

Yeah.

[Speaker 1]

And I developed a board, like a board or a tableau. I don’t know what to say in English. Like a physical board?

Yeah, a physical board. That you put on the wall? Yeah, on the Excel. In the office, back office. Ah, okay. In the spreadsheet.
Ah, you said sheet. Yeah, like on the computer. Yes.
Spreadsheet. Yes, I understand. Yes.

Okay, good. I’m happy to hear that. And I developed that really seriously.

And now I share with my coaching because I coach some athletes. And it’s very helpful for me to share now this experience. Yeah, I also do the same thing.

I have a spreadsheet for my coach, for my schedule, for my log. And also for my students and coachees as well. It’s absolutely essential to me.

I can’t believe that I had years where I didn’t use something like that. If you have the spreadsheet, if you have the board, and you have your schedule there, you don’t have to think so much about what you’re going to do, let’s say. Exactly, because it was my problem.

Initially, I had a lot of thinking and it was not stopped. Because I think too much initially from a young age. And this sheet is a very good opportunity for me to be more relaxed.

And to be more focused. Because on the wake up the morning, I know what I need to do. And before it’s a mess, completely a mess.

Because you wake up, you say, oh, yesterday I do a gym. If I do that, maybe it’s not work. Ah, yes, but I can do a static.

Oh, I have an opportunity to train tomorrow in dynamic. And it’s not possible. It’s not professional.

And it’s not possible to increase the progression like that. I would say living in Dahab, I think

that’s probably the number one problem that I see in the freedivers who want to dive deep and want to progress. Is that they kind of wake up each day and they decide, you know, okay, today I’m going to do cool.

Today I’m going to do depth. Oh, today I’m going to go to a party. You know, today I’m going to eat pizza.

And then somebody new comes to town, it should be a rest day. But then they say, ah, you know what the hell, I go diving in the morning. And then maybe they go snorkelling in the afternoon.

And it’s just if you want to make real progress, you kind of have to like make some sacrifices and live more like an athlete with a plan and a schedule. Yeah, exactly. And it’s very interesting because your plan after increase with your experience, and you know how many days you need to recovery and to manage the recovery because the most important things of training is the recovery.

And you know how it’s very interesting or so to anticipate because normally one year ago, we can know when is the world championship. It’s not the case, but that six, seven months now we know. And it’s easy after to planificate because if you have the date of the performance after by anticipation, you know what you do the week before and the week before and the week before.

And if you start by the winter, you can join together in the middle in spring and you can know more precisely where you are and at what time and when. And I can also know when I dive deep in four months because and when is my flight or when type of stretching I will do at this moment. Before it’s impossible for me to anticipate that one year ago.

And now for me, I realised finally it’s easy. Yeah, absolutely. So this is the importance of living a little bit like a professional athlete.

I want to ask you about the passive exhale dives. You do a lot of passive exhale training. You go very deep on passive exhale.

If you have to explain to somebody the benefits of passive exhale diving, how would you explain that? Alrighty, guys, let’s just take a little minute’s pause to hear from Ted Harty about freediving training secrets.

[Speaker 2]

Hello, Freedive Cafe listeners. There are a lot of awesome reasons to tune into the Freedive Cafe podcast, one of which is to improve your own freediving performance by gleaning pearls of wisdom from some of the best in our sport. Another way to dive deeper and feel more comfortable when you’re down there is to actually implement a training plan.

So what are you currently doing to improve your freediving performance and abilities? When I

ask most people this, they say, well, you know, Ted, I go diving whenever I can, but it’s hard because of the spouse, the kids, and the job. Let’s be clear.

Diving whenever you can is not a training plan. And that’s why I created Freediving Training Secrets. It’s my newest online course where I’ll put you on a six-week training programme you can do from home without having to go to the pool or the ocean.

Each week, you’ll unlock a new video where I’ll tell you exactly what to do, why you’re doing it, and what to focus on during the exercises. You’ll be happy to know that the traditional O2 and CO2 tables didn’t even make it into my top 10 dry land training exercises. If I thought they were awesome, I’d use them.

You’ll notice that as you go from week to week, you’ll be building on what you did the previous week and unlocking new exercises so you won’t be stuck doing the same thing over and over again. To learn more about the programme, visit freedivingtrainingsecrets.com or click the link in the show notes. Dive safe out there.

It’s not even that hard.
[Speaker 1]
Thanks, Ted. All right. Let’s get back to Stéphane.

I think in every tool, you have extreme practise and intelligent practise. And for the PASIDEX N and FRC, it’s very important to have intelligent practise and because it can be too much sometimes, it’s very important to increase that progressively and to be very focused on the sensation. But if you maintain PASIDEX N and FRC with the volume, you can progress a lot for equalise, for lungs adaptations, for flexibility, or also for the trainability because it’s a possibility to repeat a lot of dive without risk to do DCS.

And that is a really good point, I think, and a really good training. You can repeat a lot of dive in PASIDEX N without risk. And for me, it was a really good best for progress.

Also because I don’t have the sea close to me initially in the lake. But now I have depth and finally it’s enough. Sometimes I do some passive Excel, but now it’s just for fun or to maintain.

But if you have the depth all the time, it’s not necessary to do passive and full Excel, I think. But for people moving a lot or travel a lot in different places can be very good. I increased my PB in full Excel this year.

I do 52 in full Excel. Okay, okay. So when you do a full Excel, you do a full Excel and then you leave just enough air to fill your mouth fill and then do 52 metres.

Yeah, I take hair on my lips on the surface just for the mouth fill. I return and I reverse back until two metres depth. And I wait a few seconds to continue reverse back at three metres and after I go.

The idea is to have the big, big mouth fill at three metres and after to go down. But that’s not a normal thing after a few dives because you need to prepare the tissue also during the session before. Yeah, that’s already a pretty huge dive on full Excel.

But you would say that now that you have regular access to depth that you don’t do very much passive Excel or full Excel dives in your training. Yeah, because I realised the deep dive is enough to maintain every topic for the lungs and everything because you have partial pressure also long exposition and on the dive. Now, I remember you told me in the last interview that one of the most important experiences for you had been having a big squeeze which you had at 72 metres.

How has your experience with squeeze been in these last seven years? Do you still squeeze? Do you squeeze often?

Do you squeeze rarely or do you not squeeze at all anymore? No, initially I’d squeeze because I don’t have the time to train deep these last years. But from the moment I take the decision to move close to the sea and to have time, I take time to be adapt.

And I think the risk is to reduce the travel or just to have one month only to dive deep and the less experience feeling also because if you don’t have a lot of repetition and volume on the depth, you not realise the sensation, you not feel the sensation in when you need to stop or when you just need to repeat before to go deeper. And I think that has changed. That has changed.

And also to have time because if you live close to the sea, it’s better because you can dive just a bit shallower than your PB and just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat right a few times. And after when you feel really ready, you can increase the depth by two metres. And this is very less stressful.

And I remember when I had this difficult to train between the lake and travel in depth before the competition. I remember Thibaut, Thibaut Guyn. He told me he dived a lot and he repeat a lot.

And at this moment, I realised also it’s very inspiring and it’s give me also the way, okay, it’s possible to progress really well like that and to feel more things. Stephan, tell us about your experience with narcosis. If you’re doing so many dives to 110, 115, 120 metres, do you struggle with narcosis or is that not a problem for you?

It’s better and better and better after a few repetitions. Right. Because the risk of narcosis is when you don’t have a lot of time to repeat the deep dive.

We say the same things in every topic. But yeah, to repeat the dive every two days, every three days, the adaptation of narcosis is a bit better in heavy dives. And also I’m more sensitive of the perception.

I have the capacity to be in mindfulness with the narcosis. And sometimes I say, okay, well, today the narcosis is stronger. I’m difficult to focus on the swimming.

Okay, take care, be careful, focussing. I talk like myself to manage it. It’s like a camera or a GoPro.

And I have an invisible camera. And I have more consciousness on the night. But sometimes it can be more strong and less.

And also hydration. I have a lot of influence and the recovery also because the nervous system is very important to managing the narcosis. Yeah, I’m the same.

I also have like a little voice, a little talking man in my head when I’m coming up from a dive with narcosis who is trying to remind me to look at the line. You’re doing a free dive. You have to remember, be careful, focus, concentrate.

So I’m very happy to have that guy there. The last time that we spoke, we spoke a lot about the mind. And I know you’ve been working with the mind and controlling the mind a lot.

You said one thing that I find really, really fantastic. You said, if you want to go deep, you have to not only accept the pressure, you have to accept yourself, which I think was a very nice. At the time you were telling me about that you had someone, you had a coach, Loic, I believe, who was your mind coach.

And we spoke about him. Have you found new ways, new strategies, or new techniques to work with the mind in these last years? Mindfulness.

Not new. It’s not new. I think it’s just practise.

Practise mindfulness. Because it’s the only thing, I think, to really connect by yourself. And repeat, of course, because if you repeat a lot of dives, you accumulate a lot of habits.

And if you accumulate the habits plus the mindfulness ability, you are very well. You are really well. And mindfulness, for me, mindfulness, I try to practise more mindfulness.

But this moment is not because too much things to manage. Moving and coaching and teaching and training. But maybe next week will be better for that.

I try to increase my mindfulness on walking and meditation and the nature. And to practise this exercise and visualisation also. But that has helped me a lot.

Because every time I practise, I continue to increase my capacity. And I can detect that by the narcosis because the narcosis can be very huge after 120 metres. But my mindfulness increases also and I can manage the narcosis by that.

Do you practise meditation in the sense that you have a time in the day when you sit down to

do meditation? Or are you practising mindfulness also or only in the sense that you are being mindful at all times? The best is to do both.

But the most powerful one is static meditation on the nature. Like for example, just to hear a song or to fix a point in the front or just to have in contemplation. And to observe and to look the thinking.

When the thinking go away, you say, okay, you are here and you’re back. And just you play with that. And more you play with that and you see like a game, you will increase.

You mentioned that in the last interview that you had, you felt like your hypoxic tolerance was one of your main weaknesses. And you mentioned at the start of this interview that you still feel like you really have to focus on hypoxia. What do you think is the best way to do that?

If you can’t dive deep every day, it seems like you think that doing static is also a great complementary training for deep diving because of the potential to become more hypoxic. Yeah, I think it is a point to progress on hypoxia. But after one year of practising static without dynamic, I feel the durability and the memory of the hypoxia capacity, I think it’s better in dynamic than static.

That is for me, that is my sensation. If I practise only static after a few weeks, I lose it. But if I practise with dynamic, I incorporate more deeply and longer on my body.

I think, yeah. My probably idea is to test to say, maybe if I just do static, it’s enough with depth. But after one year, I can say it’s not enough.

We need both, yeah. The last time that I spoke to Alexey, he really thinks that no fins is kind of the secret to developing hypoxic tolerance because the no fins dives are so physically demanding and so oxygen demanding. That makes sense.

Making sure that you train, making sure to train, even if no fins is not your main focus, but to at least be training it regularly could be a really good way to keep your hypoxic tolerance up. Do you think that’s correct? Yeah, I think it makes sense.

It makes sense clearly because your metabolism works with everything, with the top of the body and the legs. It’s not necessary to practise all the time in depth, but if you have the possibility to do also in the dynamic, no fins on the pool, it can be good. We can see that with a champion of dynamic.

Guillaume is very focused on no fins all the time on the training, Guillaume Baudela. When he put the monofin, he break everything. I see that a lot of time also with Alexey Duvivier a few years ago in the world championship and Arthur Guerambori.

It’s very interesting. It’s good because I love it, the no fins in the pool. It gives me more power to practise.

Thank you, Alexey. Do you not feel like turning your attention to CNF? I did CNF a few years ago.

I did close to 77, I think, on the training. Okay, well, that’s pretty good. And I think I have the ability to do no fins and I like it, but after a few repetitions, I feel too much lactic.

But no, the last 20, 30 metres in no fins for me is a heavy one. But maybe, yes. I think if I practise more on the pool, I will appreciate more on the depth.

That’s maybe the case. As for that, probably I will not do no fins this last year. But now I have the pool access in Tenerife and maybe next year I will contest.

But I do also sometimes free immersion, no fins. Yeah, we’ll see. Well, that’s the nice thing about freediving is that we have time to change our focus from year to year.

We can change the focus on the different disciplines. And at some point, I think everyone has to accept that no fins, because a lot of people are too lazy to do no fins. But eventually we have to do it.

Last time we talked about some issues with the freediving organisations. We talked about that you thought the surface protocol was too easy and there were too many blackouts and LMCs. And I don’t want to go into too much discussion about what’s wrong with the organisations, because I think it’s clear to everyone that there are serious problems with the organisations.

But the biggest issue in the last couple of years has been the emergence of the doping scandal in freediving. How has this affected you personally? Yeah, we come in this fantastic topic.

It’s affected me a lot. It’s affected me a lot because I work really hard. And I realised also that it’s strange because we realised a lot of strange things a few years ago.

And we know before it’s an impact on the performance and we don’t have the capacity to control everybody. And I’m really sad about this because if I’m rich, I want to invest in the control. I want to be controlled.

If I can be controlled every week, I will be happy. I will be happy because we need that. We need more professional control everywhere and also to incorporate good things and to go in a good way.

But the manipulation is so easy now. The people use communication a lot to justify different positions. It’s really dangerous for the sport.

It’s dangerous also for the life because some people take a lot of risks and they can die. Because at the point when you have these results, it’s really dangerous. Also, we are spectators to the championship and we’ll see what happens and the dangerous things also for the Oedema.

And also, this philosophy is sharing in the students and the students know also the doping, it’s

possible. Some other athletes decide they have difficulty to progress and they decide to take this way. And for me, it’s very, very, very difficult to accept it.

And I take the decision. I take a decision to stop everything with AIDA. I’m focused on CMAS for different points, not only doping, also for the sport.

Because the Olympic Committee, the direct link is the CMAS and to officialise and to develop seriously the control anti-doping is by CMAS. Because you have only one federation, only one federation can have, by sports, can have obligation for the WADA. And you can say, any federation can say, I respect the WADA code, but it’s not an obligation.

And at this point, I think it’s the place to do everything to maybe also for the mafia, we can say. Because if they don’t have any obligation, you can do everything inside. And for me, that is dangerous.

And to protect our sport, it’s so important to take a choose. Because now, that is my theory and my philosophy. And if you continue to put a coin on the machine, you participate to the doping.

And the big athletes need to take a decision now. And if we don’t do that, it’s dangerous for our sport. And I don’t know where we go.

Yeah, yeah. I completely understand what you mean. And I have so much respect for you, Stefan, because I can see from following you through the years, I can see that you work so hard, you put so much dedication into the sport to go one metre deeper, then one metre deeper, then one metre deeper.

And you’ve been diving now, I think, for 27 years. Is that correct? Maybe I started the competition in 2007, but I practised before, yeah.

Yeah, so a really hell of a long time. And it’s about hard work. It’s about dedication.

And it’s about exploration and discovery of what you can do with your own body and your own mind without taking shortcuts. So I really appreciate that philosophy of yours. OK, let’s ask these desert island questions for the Patreon supporters.

This is the fun little section that we do towards the end of the interview. Let’s just pull up the questions here. Oh, yeah.

OK, Stefan, describe your ideal morning routine. This section of the podcast, Desert Island Questions, is a little addition we put on for the listening pleasure of the Patreon supporters. It’s about eight, nine questions.

I ask the guests fun questions, things like if you could take three books with you to a desert island, what would they be? If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be? If you could meet one famous person from history, who would that be?

Questions like this. If you want to hear the answers, you can consider supporting the show and supporting me on this free diving journey by going to patreon.com slash freedivecafe. OK, thank you for answering those questions, Stefan, for the Patreon guys.

And I just want to ask you one more question or maybe two more short questions. You’ve been in this board for such a long time now. What keeps you motivated to continue to go deep?

The introspection. To dive inside. Because for me, the freediving and the performance is a tool to explore inside and to increase every day myself, but to progress with myself every day.

And spiritually, it’s an exploration every day. And I love this sport for that because the depth is so powerful to experiment the spiritual way and spiritual experience. And that is my first motivation.

And the competition is just a place where you play, it’s a game to check if you manage well your mindset, your energy. And if you are on the good way, you realise a beautiful result. But the objective is not the result or medal.

Medal is good. It’s funny, you know, but it’s not the objective. The most important is the way and the spiritual way.

And I think it’s the most important in life. And freediving gave me this gift. Amazing.

Very beautiful words. That’s a nice philosophy that you have there. Yeah, Stéphane Toureau, it’s been amazing to have you back on the Freedive Café podcast.

After seven years, you went from guest five to guest, I think maybe 156. So really nice to have you come back and tell us about your progression and evolution through the years. It was a pleasure.

Yeah, I hope you have a great rest of your day over there in Tenerife. Really happy to share with better English now. Thank you.

Thank you for this invite. That was Stéphane Toureau. Absolutely amazing to see Stéphane and the way he approaches his diving, his ethos, his philosophy, the reasons he dives and his steady progress and development through the years.

Very inspiring and motivational for me. If you would like to keep up to date with what I’m doing, I’m mostly over on Instagram at freediveandthrive. The main mothership is freediveandthrive.com where you can find all the podcasts, all the information about freediving courses and coaching and very few blog articles, but who knows, maybe one day there will be more. Also transcripts of the episodes, some of them are there. And if you would like to get in touch with me, you can do so through the Instagram account or you can email me at donny.freediveandthrive.com. All right, guys, I’m going to go and get ready for training.

Have an amazing rest of your day and until next time, dive safe.