Author: rokur

According to Dr. Win Wenger, author of 48 books including How To Increase Your Intelligence and The Einstein Factor, we can all gain 10 or more IQ points if we accumulate 20 hours of held-breath underwater swimming in doses of 20-180 seconds at a time over a 3 week period. Including better span of attention, better span of awareness, better awareness of the interrelatedness of things and of ideas and/or perceptions, and better ability to win arguments and disputes. How can we not love this theory, especially when he stresses that this has to be truly underwater – not just holding…

I’m not totally sure where this is, but the video description says FEB Hrádek, and other videos by MrSmahy mention www.feb.cz, which is the East Bohemia Freediver club in the Czech Republic. Hrádek means ‘small fort’ in Czech, there is a map here on their site mentioning Hradec close to the center of the map. I love how they park their slippers on the ice :-)

Norway’s Aleksander Hetland just after his Istanbul 2009 LEN European Short Course Championships win in the men’s 50 meter breaststroke. Hetland’s time was 26.19, ahead of Italy’s Alessandro Terrin in 26.24 and Serbia’s Caba Siladji in 26.31. Tongue-in-cheek guy is Slovenia’s Matjaz Markic, defending champion from Rijeka 2008, here 5th in 26.42. Hetland by the way wrote a nice piece on here on his website earlier this week, on “Swimming Success and the 20-mile March’, about how even sprinters like him have to put in a consistent effort. Everybody can train well or even world class when they’re at their…

Kayaking about 1.5 miles off the coast of Maui, these people saw and heard many whales, before a large male humpback whale popped up for a breath about 30 feet away and swam a circle around them. Camerawork is a bit dodgy, as the camera man decided to take in the moment, rather than think about the video. That’s OK ! :-) Humpback Encounter from Ohana Films on Vimeo.

This is a short behind the scenes clip of a shoot done by Pete Webb mid January with Ollie Armfiled and his sea swimming club. Beautiful. 4º Sea Swimmers from Pete Webb on Vimeo.

Yesterday, Great Britain’s swimming legend Duncan Goodhew visited a school in Longton, England, showing the children there his gold and bronze medals from the 1980 Olympic Games, and sharing his success story to encourage them to keep active. “I have always believed in the value of sport. I was born dyslexic and really struggled in life, but sport changed that.” Read article here on This is Staffordshire

No spoilers here, you have to watch the video (or look it up)

As a major global partner of the 2012 London Olympics, Procter & Gamble is sponsoring not only the entire Australian team, but also Eamon Sullivan, Emily Seebohm and Sophie Edington as ambassadors for Gillette, Pantene and Oral-B respectively. [blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/Eamon_Sullivan/status/164544711040839680″] Explaining its involvement with the Olympics, Maile Carnegie, Managing Director of P&G Australia and New Zealand says: “While we are not in the business of sports, P&G is in the business of helping mums . . . Every Olympic athlete has a mum and mums are with their children every step of the way, nurturing and encouraging them.” P&G…

“Svimjihøllin í Gundadali” in Tórshavn, Faroe Islands ready for the inaugural annual dual meet between Faroe Islands and Iceland. Only a 25 meter pool, but nicely color-coordinated with lane ropes in Faroese colors and everything.

Maria-Teresa Solomons demonstrating the Uddiyana Bandha exercise in the video below, an abdominal tonification and purging exercise used in yoga for hundreds of years, recently adopted by freedivers to improve the elimination of air from the lungs, enabling the ribcage to flex and compress more at extreme pressures at depth. Don’t know if pool swimmers can use it for anything, other than the obvious WTF-effect. Via freedivers.net