Column Week 24:

Earlier I have written an comment about the CMAS discipline known as "The Cube". In the meantime reports came through the internet from Italy and although the amount of black-outs did somewhat fit my ideas about it I still was interested in the ideas behind the cube.

During a Dutch AIDA competition I heard from one freediver that the Freediving committee of the French speaking Belgian CMAS Federation, LIFRAS, would organize a competition in La Gombe, Belgium the next weekend.

I had heard the theories from both sides about the dangers of depth diving and "The Cube". I also had hear all kind of warnings when someone of one of the federations would try the others discipline disciplinary actions could be taken. For me that didn't matter really. The only way to really learn the risks and merits in the discussion were to do at least once each others disciplines. Knowing enough of the AIDA disciplines, I chose to give it a try and contact the committee.

It took some several e-mails, but nevertheless, I found myself going south at the fifth of June. Again by train I travel through Liége and finally the Belgian city of Esneux where a road would let me to the quarry of La Gombe. I didn't really know what to expect, but brought all my gear with me and just see what would happen.

About four o'clock the other freedivers arrived. Not knowing what to expect, I was a bit surprised by the warm welcome. One of the divers explained that today would be just a normal training day, where at the end the Cube would be tried. After meeting the other divers, and inspection of my medical certifications, we soon went downstairs to changing clothes.

To cut things down a little, the training existed of condition training and several dives. For me a guided dive was given where I could visit the several objects and somewhat learn the quarry better.

After about 50 minutes, it was time to dive the cube. With several safety freedivers on spot, one after another freediver went down and started to dive around the cube. None of the divers suffered from a black-out or loss of motor control. Finally it was my turn and I dove down and started swimming at 15 meters depth. Not totally unprepared, I had tried to designate the best distance by doing a maximal dynamic the day before, and terminated my dive after 45 meters at 15 meters. Arriving at the surface, I found myself exactly out of breath I would have been after a maximal dynamic.

Looking back at the experience, I thing that knowing your limits is much more important with "The Cube" then with the AIDA depth disciplines. Often, equalizing is a limiting factor in deep diving. Well trained freedivers with long dynamic distances are thus les likely to suffer from BO or LMC in depth diving. On the other kind of the discussion, the increasing depth does cause other phenomena as bloodshift, and deep water black-out to occur.

With "The Cube" this limitation is not there providing some part of security. The shallow depths make deep diving accidents less likely, but the lack of equalization as a limiting factor make it more likely that novice and too enthusiastic divers would black-out at the end of the dive.

Sometimes, it has been argued that freediving overall isn't a real sport. Competitive freediving has the unique property to have a limit. If you go to far, you will lose consciousness. This is quite a different limitation, compared with sports as swimming or athletics, where endurance and muscle strength is much more the main limitation. Due this limitation, you often can not just try your best, but have limited yourself by, for example, announcing your achievement before competition.

With "The Cube", no such thing is officially needed. However, it seems that in avoiding a black-out, or loss of motor control, a limitation of distance based upon the maximal dynamic performance seems to be the answer.

How this relates to the competitive spirit that seems to be behind "The Cube" is a bit difficult for me to understand. In either way, perhaps "The Cube" has more in common with the AIDA depth disciplines as both of the two organizations would like to accept. With this in mind, am quite happy with the good response I got from the divers in La Gombe. I just whish that a good relationship between both AIDA and CMAS divers in the water, could lead to also better understanding and accepting at more higher levels.

Rik Rösken