Back to the very interesting interview with freediver Pierre Frolla on Friday April 24 on Instagram.

  • Safety in apnea:

When climbing, it is essential to stay longer. In apnea, it is the same principle but we did not think of it directly. Before we got there we unfortunately had to lose people.

It was not so much the freediver who risked his life during training or competitions but the 8 scuba divers present for safety. So we thought about another solution: to lengthen it, to make sure that it can go up as quickly as possible by creating a counterweight. To find out what was going on deep down, we started using sounders that weren't very well developed at the time. Live cameras only arrived 4-5 years ago.

Now we have a security that has improved over time. It has taken 20 years to take advantage of the seriousness of an amateur sport and to professionalize it is not that long after all.

In competition you have a live camera at the bottom as well as an underwater drone which follows the freediver. If there is a problem, people know it and trigger the counterweight at that time. Freedivers train without this device because it is too expensive.

  • On his practice of padel :

When I practice padel, it's to get out of the water, to do a sharing activity. We work in pairs and we are only good if there are two of us. There is the understanding, the respect for his partner. We play on the fatigue of the other, on the ability at certain difficult times to recover. People who win are mature people, who manage their energy, who know how to analyze their opponents.

The most determining factor in freediving is the ability to never give up.

  • On the breath essential factor:

In all sports, the important thing is to breathe. We must empty the air that we have in our lungs using the diaphragm so as to let out the air rich in CO2. We can therefore bring in more oxygen. We suffocate by definition because we have a high curve for increasing the partial pressure of CO2. To lower it we must not take more air, we must blow to bring out the stale air that we have in our body.

  • On the oceanwing:

We use the downdrafts to be able to go to the bottom of the sea and thus have fun in the canyons or even approach large marine animals such as sperm whales and whales.

There are only 5 combinations for practicing Ocean Swing, 3 functional ones including mine. They will not be sold.

  • On the story of his wife and diving

My wife, who is Lorraine, and not at all from the sea world at the base, fell in love with this world. She wanted to try diving, but had an ear problem that prevented her. The doctors were formal: she could never dive but she didn't want to accept it. One day we discovered a young doctor who had developed a special system to allow compensation. He developed a very specific training process, my wife did it, and today she descends more than 40 meters!

  • On their underwater marriage

In order to celebrate, I asked my wife to marry ... submarine! Our underwater witness was Prince Albert, the priest Marcel Ginestet married us underwater. There were 70 guests so we had to organize a diving direction, with a dive sheet. It was 13 meters away, everyone had to be in a bottle, even freedivers, it was the game! It went around the world and we are still talking about it 6 or 7 years later.

  • On the padel for couples

No, I do not play with my wife, I am very loyal, I only play with Christian Collange! (laughs)

  • An anecdote about its waterfalls

Where I was most fortunate: at the time, Studio Canal asked me to be responsible for coaching and casting actors to play freedivers with Caterina Moreno, whom I had to train in freediving . I had fun playing comedy and the production ended up casting me! So I was able to bring my wife and freediving friends back to the movie. And even Prince Albert, when the prod did not know he would come!

 

Find other anecdotes / The + / the answers to the questions / the INSIDE in the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrlKAO8zYfc&t=1404s

Xan is a fan of padel. But also rugby! And his posts are just as punchy. Physical trainer of several padel, he unearths atypical posts or deals with topical subjects. It also gives you some tips to develop your physique for the padel. Clearly, he imposes his offensive style as on the field of padel !

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