Holding Your Breath for 7 Minutes & Swimming 218 Meters Without Coming Up for Air

Sure, you've seen him on shows like CSI and Gilmore Girls. But today's guest isn't just another actor. He can do some amazing things you can't. Very specific things, albeit obscure. Like hold his breath for a full seven minutes. Or swim 218 meters underwater along the bottom of a pool without coming up for air — not a single breath. Welcome to the mind-blowing world of Freediving, explained through the lens of one of the best in the sport — Australian National Record Holding Champion Tanc Sade. One of the things I love about the podcast is the excuse to meet compelling people doing amazing things outside the mainstream — things I would ordinarily never come across in my daily life and yet find utterly compelling. Freediving certainly fits the bill — a sport that couldn't be more different from endurance athletics and yet in certain respects still shares a commonality. Although the pursuit of excellence in any sport (as in life) require a strong mental game, Freediving requires unparallelled mental & emotional preparation. Learning to control the flexibility of not just your body or your thoughts but even your metabolic process through advanced meditation techniques. Getting there is the fascinating part, and Tanc shows us how he does it, and why. And that's just the beginning. No spoilers. Just sit back. Listen. And let Tanc blow your mind. In the interim — and to just paint the picture for you about what we are talking about here — have a look at Tanc's 218-meter Australian national record-setting effort – an event called “Dynamic Apnea”: NOTE: Tanc is a professional. You are not. So no matter how inspired you may be by this interview, please DO NOT attempt your own half-baked unsupervised freediving experiment at home — any type of breath hold work unsupervised can cause death. If you are interested in learning more about the sport, research freediving courses and/or clubs in your locale and undertake proper instruction from someone skilled in this discipline. And if you have additional questions, reach out Tanc on Facebook and he would be happy to advise and guide you in the right direction. Thanks! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:07Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Before we begin today, I just wanted to take a quick moment to thank you for all the support that you've shown me and shown the podcast. When I started this show back in December, I had no idea that it would develop the audience that it has, and it warms my heart to get all the crazy, amazing feedback from you guys who have been enjoying listening. So if you've been enjoying the show, tell a friend, keep listening, and know that I appreciate it very, very much. If you want to stay on top of the latest podcast episodes, if you want to get information about the latest in nutrition, if you want to know when our new products are coming

• 1:48Rich Roll?

  out, like the t-shirts that we have coming up, then go to richroll.com and subscribe to my newsletter if you haven't done so already. All right, thank you, guys. Let's get on to the show.

• 2:01Rich Roll?

  Welcome to episode 49 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Tank Saad.

• 2:19Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody, it's Rich Roll here. Welcome to the show. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast. What do we do here? Well, I am an ultra endurance triathlete. I am an author of the number one Amazon bestselling book, Finding Ultra. I'm the host of your show here. I'm a family guy, married, I got four kids, and I love to swim, bike, run, be outside, stay fit, on a plant-based diet. On this show, what I try to do is bring to you some of the most interesting minds and personalities in health, wellness, and fitness. A lot of plant-based people, but a lot of different kinds of people too, that do all different kinds of interesting things, a lot of whom are people you may not have ever heard of

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  that I love to bring on the show, so we can learn new things about new pursuits, new ways of living, new, new kinds of sports, all different kinds of stuff. But the kind of consistent theme is paradigm-busting minds and personalities, people who are on the cutting edge of living their life passionately, according to their own rules. So I've had doctors, I've had nutritionists, I've had world-class athletes, I've had entrepreneurs, all different kinds of people. And today is a guest who certainly fits the bill of being unique, compelling, and different. His name is Tank Said, and he is an Australian actor, but he's also a freediver. He's the Australian national champion in freediving.

• 3:49Rich Roll?

  And what is freediving? Well, I will admit that I knew very little about this sport. I had seen video footage of freedivers in the ocean who dived down as deep as they, as they can go to set depth records. And that's certainly one part, one aspect of this sport. But there's a whole other... A component to this sport that I knew nothing about, which is swimming underwater for distance, or just simply holding your breath underwater in a static position in a competition format. And Tank is a guy who does his competitions in the pool. He's the Australian national record holder for swimming underwater with a fin, a mono fin, which is like a mermaid tail, and we talk all about that in the episode.

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  But he can swim 218 meters underwater without breathing. He can also hold his breath in a static position in the pool for upwards of seven minutes. So it's certainly a unique talent and a certain kind of athleticism that's very different from the endurance athlete world or the strength world. It's something that requires a tremendous amount of mental focus and a discipline in which meditation, calming your body, using your mind to control the pace of your metabolism becomes paramount to success.

• 5:15Rich Roll?

  So it's less about strength and kind of training in the traditional context that we think about, and more about how to use your mind to propel your body beyond what you think is capable. And it's a fascinating new world that we get to explore and discover today, so I can't wait to share with you this interview with a very, very compelling and fascinating guy. Before we get into it today, a couple little notes. I'm going to be in Tucson on September 21st as part of the Healthy You Network. Tucson, come out and see me speak, come on. It's going to be me, it's going to be Dr. Michael Greger, who's been on the show before, we love him.

• 6:00Rich Roll?

  Colleen Patrick Goudreau, who's the compassionate cook, she's going to be there as well. So if you want to learn more, go to HealthyYouNetwork.com. And if you're in Tucson, I think they have billboards up around town for the event, which is pretty funny. So anyway, check it out, hope to meet you and see you there. Also, I'm going to be in Washington DC, my hometown, coming up the following weekend on September 28th. As part of the DC Veg Fest, if you want to learn more about that, go to DC Veg Fest com. I'm speaking on Saturday afternoon, I believe, so that should be a good time. And I'm looking forward to getting back to DC, hanging out with my parents, maybe seeing a couple of old friends. So, good times, right?

• 6:44Rich Roll?

  What else? My Mind Body Green course. I have a whole course on plant-based nutrition at MindBodyGreen.com. It's on the homepage. You can find it there. It's three and a half hours of video content, broken up into five to 10-minute little chunks, each addressing a specific topic that is relevant to switching over to a plant-powered lifestyle. It's been great. The feedback's been amazing. People are really enjoying it. And there's an online community there where you can raise your concerns, ask your questions, and Julie and I jump in. We answer them. The community gets in there and supports each other. And it's been really cool to see that blossom. People are really enjoying it. And I'm really

• 7:26Rich Roll?

  proud of it. The production value's really high, and I think we covered all the bases. So whether you're brand new to eating a plant-based diet, you're just plant curious, you want to learn more, it's a great place to start. But if you've been eating plant-based for a long time, maybe run into some obstacles, or you have questions about what's the best way to eat this way when I'm traveling, or what do I eat before my workout, or after my workout, or what are the smoothies that you like, or what are some of the superfoods you like, and why is it that you think this is such a good way of eating and living? All those things are addressed in the course. So, check it out. What else? Amazon, the Amazon banner ad. Thank you, guys, who have been using the Amazon banner

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  ad to support the show. It's a great way to do so, and it doesn't cost you anything. So, at Richroll.com, on the blog page, on the podcast page, you will see a little Amazon banner. It might be a little bit hard to find. We're working on a website redesign to make it a little bit easier. But if you're going to buy something on Amazon, just go there, click that little banner ad first. It takes you to Amazon, get what you're going to get, and it doesn't cost you one cent extra. But Amazon throws us a little money, and that helps us. Pick up some new equipment and keep the bandwidth flowing, pay for the expenses of the podcast. I'm actually talking into a brand new mic, into a brand new data recorder. And that's because you guys have been using the Amazon banner ad, which has allowed us

• 8:54Rich Roll?

  to get this new equipment, raise the production value, keep the ship going. So, thank you for that. I've gotten a lot of emails from people who say, "Well, I live in the United Kingdom. I live in Europe. I live here. I live there. I don't live in the United States and I want to use the Amazon banner ad, but it's for US only." We're aware of that. We're in the middle of, like I said, doing a little bit of a website redesign and we're going to configure everything. So, no matter where you live, you can use that Amazon banner ad and support the show. So, thanks for raising that issue. We are on top of it. You can also donate to the show. There's a donate button. So, you can, if you're feeling so inclined, you can throw us a few bucks on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a one-time basis. It's up to you how much. And thank you so much for the people that have been

• 9:39Rich Roll?

  doing that. That is really amazing. I mean, the show will always be free, no matter what. And the fact that people would reach into their pocketbooks and throw us a little bit of money to keep us going because they're supporting what we're doing, that's amazing, right? And that, when I get that, when I see that, I realize that this really is a movement. You know, this is, people are looking for new ways of living. They're tired of the lies. They're tired of the, all the sort of misconceptions and all of the kind of advertising messages that they're bombarded with, that are confusing about diet and nutrition and lifestyle. And I'm just trying to bring things straight to you guys, let you guys draw your own inferences about the information that I'm bringing to you. Take what works

• 10:24Rich Roll?

  for you, discard the rest. But my only goal is that all of what I'm bringing to you is going to help you unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. Because to me, health starts with what you put in your mouth and how you move your body, of course. But that's just the beginning. That takes you on a journey that allows you to expand your life exponentially. What are you going to do with all this new energy? What are you going to do with this new body, this new, good feeling that you have from treating your body right? You know, how you exert yourself and where you focus that energy is really important. And I think in order to do that right, you gotta get the best information so that you can get in touch with yourself, find out what makes you tick.

• 11:09Rich Roll?

  And start expressing more of that.

• 11:18Rich Roll?

  So that's it. Let's get on to the show. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Tank, save.

• 11:29Rich Roll?

  Ray Rock?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I am indeed.

• 11:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, thanks for taking the time.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Ah, thanks for having me.

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  So, uh, our mutual friend Asher, how do you know Asher?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Uh, I know him from the Aussie contingency out here in LA.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  The Aussie contingent is pretty tight out here, isn't it?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  It is. I think, um, I think it's always good to be around fellow Aussies. We have a certain sense of humor. It's perhaps a little, little rude, a little bit more crass, so.

• 11:54Rich Roll?

  I have a joke. Uh, I've been, I started this podcast in December and I've got, I think this is the 49th, 50th episode or something like that. And I literally, it seems like every other person I've interviewed is either from New Zealand or Australia.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  That's funny.

• 12:10Rich Roll?

  So, uh, you're continuing the trend, man.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm honored to be a part of it.

• 12:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man, thanks. And it's, it's, it's cool to be back in, in my old neighborhood. I used to live, like I told you before we were recording, I lived at, um, Marine and Fourth, right around the corner here. So I love this neighborhood.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, Santa Monica's great. Um, I was quite fortunate to find this place when I first got here. So, uh, being an Aussie, I like to be right close to the beach. So it's great.

• 12:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How long have you been here?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  I've been here almost eight years now.

• 12:37Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. Nice, man. And, uh, and what's going on right now with the acting? Are you working right now or auditioning or what's going on?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, actually I just auditioned today for a, um, a pilot that's being shot in Costa Rica with John Malkovich.

• 12:50Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:52Rich Roll?

  Malkovich is, he's gonna do TV.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  He's doing TV.

• 12:54Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  He's, um, it's from the creators of, um, God, what's that show on HBO?

• 13:00Rich Roll?

  Which one?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  The big one, the big.

• 13:02Rich Roll?

  Boardwalk Empire?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. Thorns, Crown.

• 13:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, Game of Thrones.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Game of Thrones, that's it. Yeah, and he's playing Blackbeard, and then I'm doing a movie at the end of this month out in Vegas for 22 days.

• 13:15Rich Roll?

  Oh, nice.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  I'm not sure I can handle Vegas for 22 days.

• 13:18Rich Roll?

  That's a long time, man.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:20Rich Roll?

  You know, I don't know, I think that would not be healthy for me.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:24Rich Roll?

  Cool, and do you know, uh, do you know Dan McPherson?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Uh, I have, I've actually met him a couple of times down in Venice on Abbot Kinney. He seems like a really nice guy.

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's cool. I think he just went back to Australia.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Oh, did he?

• 13:35Rich Roll?

  But, uh, anyway, yeah, the tight Aussie contingent of

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:40Rich Roll?

  actors slash athletes.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have, um, we have a mutual friend, Mark Stabina, who played, um, international rugby. So keeping that, that athletic kind of circle going.

• 13:51Rich Roll?

  Nice, man. I like that. I like the, I like, I love, I'm obsessed with creative people and artists. And I love the intersection of sport and artistry. And I think that, you know, your sport is, it's so unique and it's so different. And I, I think it lends itself to that kind of, different kind of approach that we're going to get into. Particularly like the mental approach to it, which I think is probably really unique and, and extraordinary in your sport, compared to others, you know, in, in terms of performance. I mean, I think that it would seem like the mental aspect of what you do really takes paramount importance. Whereas with other athletes, it's like, yeah, yeah, I know I need to visualize, or I should do this, or I should do that.

• 14:33Rich Roll?

  But it kind of gets second shrift, you know?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I'm, I mean, I would go so far as saying that, that probably 60 to 70% of, um, the performance in this sport is mental.

• 14:45Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  And the difference between a good day and a really, really, really bad day is purely mental.

• 14:53Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  I mean, the discrepancy. You know, you could, you could lose two thirds of your performance if your head's not right. And I don't really think, I can't really think of many other sports to be like that, probably golf.

• 15:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would see it's similar to that. It would be like playing golf, but holding your breath.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Playing golf in a tremendous amount of pain.

• 15:15Rich Roll?

  I'm excited to talk to you about this because I, I know very, very little about this sport. And it was fascinating to kind of watch some of the videos and some of the stuff that, that you sent over to me to take a look at beforehand. And although I know, you know, close to nothing about, about freediving, I do know quite a bit about monofin swimming. I've had some experience with that.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 15:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I went to, this is a long time ago. I have a background as a swimmer and I was a swimmer in college and, and, you know, some years after I retired, there was a, a little movement in the United States to put together a fin swimming team.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:51Rich Roll?

  And it was started by the guy who founded Finis.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:55Rich Roll?

  And this was before Finis was Finis. It was like literally out of his garage. He was just started this company and he had been traveling around Europe and was a swimmer, you know, and he had been a collegiate swimmer. John Mix is his name. And, and he stumbled upon a fin swimming meet somewhere in like Eastern Europe. I don't know where it was or I don't know where he was, but it could have been Russia, it could have been anywhere. And he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe how fast these guys were swimming and he couldn't believe that there was even a sport. It's like literally competitive swimming, except you have a monofin on, you know?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, girlfriend of mine in Australia, she's Italian, she's, she's currently ranked third in the world.

• 16:31Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  So it's huge in, in Europe.

• 16:34Rich Roll?

  It's weird because from my understanding, yeah, in Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Eastern Bloc countries, when you're very young, they sort of identify whether you're going to be more proficient in regular swimming or in fin swimming. And they divide you accordingly. And they develop these swimmers that are very specific to the underwater fin swimming discipline. And I had the opportunity to go to the world championships in Bud, in, outside of Budapest, it was in Dunia Shvaros. And we had a team, it was a bunch of former college swimmers, but we had like Pablo Morales was on the team and Jenny Thompson, like both Olympic medalists, Olympic gold medalists.

• 17:17Rich Roll?

  And we just went and got our asses kicked. I mean, like, we didn't know what we were doing. We were there to have fun, but we did like train with the fin and we tried to learn like, how do you do this?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:27Rich Roll?

  It's a very, very different discipline, swimming underwater with a fin. And you know, we had the the center mount snorkel.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:34Rich Roll?

  We never did the the apnea. Well, they have the apnea, the 50, 50 meters underwater. And then they have the ones with the the breathing apparatus where you hold the the the tube, you know, the what do you, the oxygen tank in front of you.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  And you swim like 1500 meters underwater without breaking the surface.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:52Rich Roll?

  So it was crazy, but I just remember being at this meet and being amazed at how good some of these swimmers were who I'd never heard of. And when they, for example, when they do the 50 meters, they dive in off the blocks like a regular swim meet with the fin on. And then there's just this massive like tidal wave, looks like a little tsunami that goes down the pool and just drenches all the officials at the far end. And these guys are doing, I don't know the times offhand, but it was some ridiculous number, like 11 seconds or something like that to go 50 meters underwater.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're quick.

• 18:23Rich Roll?

  So, so it's cool. And, uh, you know, we went and we did that meet and it was a good time, but it never, obviously it never took off in the US. No one's ever really heard of it. But is that, so I guess that's a, in Australia, there are people that do that, though.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are people with fin swim in Australia. And anyone who comes from a fin swimming background has a big advantage when it comes to dynamic apnea. The current world record holder, Alexei and his mother Natalia both came from fin swimming backgrounds.

• 18:52Rich Roll?

  Hmm, interesting. Are they from Russia?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are.

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  I think I, I think that's one of the, how old is that guy now?

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Uh, Alexei's young. He's probably 30, I think. I don't even know if he's 30.

• 19:03Rich Roll?

  Different guy.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  His mom is in her 50s.

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  Uh huh, interesting. I mean, I remember I met this one guy who was a Russian champion and, you know, he could do, I don't know if you've seen those videos where they're, they're like underwater in the ocean, you swim up from like 10 meters down and you break the surface with your entire body.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, yeah.

• 19:19Rich Roll?

  You breach, yeah, like that.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  That's phenomenal.

• 19:21Rich Roll?

  Which you have to be, it looks easy, but you have to be incredibly strong to do that.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Very, very strong.

• 19:27Rich Roll?

  And I thought his name was Alexi, but I could be wrong. Anyway, it's probably a different guy. But anyway, it's fascinating, little weird kind of subculture sport that,

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:36Rich Roll?

  you know, people in America have no exposure to whatsoever. And then you go to these foreign countries and it's like, it's all about that.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then you have the ocean fin swimming,

• 19:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  you know, like 20 kilometer races.

• 19:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know about that.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, front snorkel, open water, 20 Ks.

• 19:52Rich Roll?

  Really?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Probably about 15 miles, would you say?

• 19:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:58Rich Roll?

  That's interesting.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  That's a long time.

• 20:00Rich Roll?

  And the discipline is very, I mean, you realize when you're training with this fin, how important your hydrodynamics are. You have to learn how to be incredibly streamlined underwater, which you have a great streamline, by the way.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 20:14Rich Roll?

  We're impressed with your streamlined ability. And, and people think that you're kicking and you're using your leg muscles, but it's really not that at all. You, it's a very kind of subtle undulation where you're, you're pressing down with your chest almost. And it's, it's very much a core exercise more than anything else.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd probably say it's probably 70, 80% from your core.

• 20:37Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  You know, like from your torso. And, I mean, you'd get lactic incredibly quickly if you just use your knees and use your legs rather.

• 20:44Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, those muscles are so big and they, they're actually not that efficient at propelling you forward.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  No, absolutely not. And you also have problems with hydrodynamics when you start bending at the knees.

• 20:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Cause you're just hitting a big front of water. So you want to keep that as straight as possible.

• 20:58Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, when you watch a dolphin swim, there isn't that much motion.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:02Rich Roll?

  It's a very, very tiny subtle motion, but incredible forward propulsion, the way they move.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  I guess that's why they call it a dolphin kick.

• 21:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they did. That's right. And when I was, I swam in college in the, it was the late eighties and that was the very beginning of experimentation with the underwater dolphin kick. And it was the first time where people were starting to realize that they could actually go faster if they stand underwater.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 21:26Rich Roll?

  With people with really solid, proficient underwater dolphining. And, and the rules allowed you, there was not, there was no provision in, in international swimming rule. That said, you had to break the surface at a particular time.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 21:41Rich Roll?

  People were really pushing the envelope and especially the backstrokes. So there was a whole contingent of backstrokes, and this is like around 1988, who got incredibly good at swimming underwater. And at the Seoul Olympics, most of the final field in the hunter backstroke was underwater the entire time.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 21:58Rich Roll?

  David Berkoff, a teammate of mine, Sean Murphy, a bunch of guys who were just incredibly, incredibly fast underwater and some of the butterflies too. And then they ultimately ended up changing the rules.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:11Rich Roll?

  You had to break the surface at 15 meters. You can't stay underwater because the world records were like dropping like crazy and it was becoming a completely different sport.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  I'd really like to see that, actually.

• 22:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm sure there's videos of that on YouTube.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  That was at the Seoul Olympics or prior?

• 22:24Rich Roll?

  Seoul Olympics, yeah, was where it really kind of like was on the world stage. There was a guy named David Berkoff, who I can't remember whether he had the world record in the hunter backstroke. He definitely had the American record at one point. And he was really the first one to just really take it to the hilt. And he was a student at Harvard at the time, amazingly talented swimmer. And he would go further and faster than anybody. It was crazy to watch.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  I know there's this video floating around recently, a college swimmer did the 50 meter backstroke and he did the entire thing underwater and he got DQ'd, but you know.

• 23:00Rich Roll?

  He just wanted to see how fast he could go.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  I think it was like 20 seconds or something.

• 23:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not surprised. Yeah, I mean, I'm not, yeah, I'm not surprised. I mean, that's why they changed the rule. So for people that don't know, like 20 seconds for, was it 50 meters or yards?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  50, 50 meters.

• 23:14Rich Roll?

  50 meters, that's really fast.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was like 20s, maybe a couple of seconds quicker.

• 23:20Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right, right. So, yeah, so it's interesting. And yet, you know, what you do is very different. It's not about going, seeing how fast you can go. It's about, it's all about conservation. So why don't you, I want to get into the story about how this all started for you. I know you've told it a million times, but you're gonna have to tell it. And, but explain to people kind of what this discipline is.

• 23:46Rich Roll?

  Or just give a primer on freediving in general and the different kind of aspects of it. Because I think when people think of freediving, they think of people that dive straight down in the ocean.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:58Rich Roll?

  And how that's different from the pool competitions that you do.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Right, well, so freediving is basically broken up into two areas. There's depth, which is always in the ocean, and then there's pool. And so in depth, you have constant weight, which is swimming down with a monofin as far as you can go. And then you have constant weight, no fins, which is the same thing, but without fins.

• 24:22Rich Roll?

  Constant weight means, what does that mean?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Constant weight means that whatever weight you take down, you have to bring back up. So that becomes the challenge of, well, if I'm going to wear any lead, how much is it going to be? And usually, most divers wear very minimal lead, because what happens is that depth, you compress, your lungs compress basically to the size of a grapefruit. So while you're buoyant on the surface, you're incredibly negative at depth. So at depth, you've then got to lug that weight back up.

• 24:48Rich Roll?

  The idea behind bringing lead with you is to help you submerge more quickly.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Exactly, because what happens is in the first 20-odd meters, you're quite buoyant. And you really have to fight against that buoyancy to get down. And then when you get to about 30 meters plus, you can actually go into a sink phase, where you can just stop swimming altogether and you'll just drop a meter, you know, probably every second and a half.

• 25:14Rich Roll?

  So it's how much energy you're going to expend in that first 30 meters to get to that point, right?

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. So the way most people go about now is they wear very minimal lead, probably as much to negate the buoyancy of the wetsuit.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  And the bigger the lungs, the more oxygen you pack, the more buoyant you're going to be at the surface.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  So yeah, so there are a couple of disciplines in depth. There's constant weight with fin, without fin. Then there's free immersion, where you pull yourself down a line. And then there's variable weight, where you go down on a sled, and then you have to free swim back up. They're the four main disciplines in depth. And then when you go to pool, you then again have the dynamic, what's called dynamic apnea. And that's where you can wear fins or a monofin. And then you have dynamic no fins, which is, as it, as it sounds, it's, it's basically like a modified breaststroke.

• 26:10Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  And then you have a static breath hold, which is you just, you just sit there underwater and you hold your breath as long as you can.

• 26:18Rich Roll?

  Just like you're eight years old and you're at the pool with your friends, right?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Except, and, and that static discipline is, is the most challenging mentally because you have no, no distractions. You know, there's no swimming, there's no worrying about technique, there's no focusing on turns or anything like that.

• 26:35Rich Roll?

  And can you put like a lead weight on your, on your lap so you just sit at the bottom to hold you down?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  You actually just float on the surface.

• 26:41Rich Roll?

  Ah, okay.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Um, face down, face down, yeah. Um, so yeah, no lead required in static breath holds.

• 26:48Rich Roll?

  If you're floating face down, how do they know when you blackout?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a good point you raised. What happens is, is you'll, you'll have a surface coach who will be in the water with you. And, and while you're face down, the, I mean, the, the first, their first, um, thing they got to do is they got to make sure you don't float away. So, so they just basically hold you there and they, they use their hands very, very delicately. To the point where you don't even know that they're touching you. Um, and they keep you within close proximity of the wall because if you have to come up quickly, you can grab onto something.

• 27:17Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  We talk about that a little bit more later. Um, and then what they do is they, they will talk you through your performance. And some people like a lot of chatter. Um, when I'm coaching, I, I tend to chat a lot to the person to keep them distracted. I'll, I'll, I'll remind them to relax, relax certain muscles, you know, relax your shoulders and your jaw and everything's okay. And this is the tough bit, so let's just work through this. And then, um, at a certain point, depending on the ability of the athlete or their personal preferences, you'll ask them for a signal. So for me, for example, I I get my first signal at six minutes. So at six minutes, most people probably start earlier. So say, for example, two and a half minutes, the coach will say signal.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  And then what you'll do is you'll just move your finger. Um, and then that that'll let them know that you're still conscious.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  And are they telling you how much time or are you looking at a clock or something?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  That's that's up to you. Um, I don't like to know, so I don't get my first. I I only know when I'm at six minutes that, okay, I'm at six minutes now. Um, a lot of guys will probably start getting calls at two, three minutes. So, you know, it'd be like three minutes signal, three thirty, four, four thirty, five. Um, and then when I get to six, I want them quite regularly. Like I I'll get them every fifteen seconds.

• 28:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Um, and the that's the that's where you're riding that line of making sure you come up conscious. Um, versus blacking out. If you do blackout, then it's an automatic disqualification and you get zero points.

• 28:45Rich Roll?

  Right, because I would imagine if they didn't have that rule, then everyone would just go to blackout on purpose.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it's a it's a safety measure to keep, you know. And then when you come up, it's not as simple as just coming up. There's there's very strict safety protocol that you have to adhere to. And if you don't, you get disqualified. And that is you have fifteen seconds, um, once your airway breaks the surface, to remove all facial equipment. So that could be either a mask or goggles and a nose clip.

• 29:11Rich Roll?

  Do you have to do that yourself, unaided?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  No one can touch you. If if anyone touches you, you're immediately disqualified.

• 29:16Rich Roll?

  I got it.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Um, so you have to remove your facial equipment. Then you have to make the okay signal.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  And then

• 29:24Rich Roll?

  And the facial equipment is just goggles or a mat and a nose plug?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 29:29Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Um, make the okay signal and then you have to say, I'm okay. The only other acceptable response is I am okay.

• 29:36Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Um, if you say anything out of that, if you do that out of order, if you leave your nose clip on, um, if you take longer than fifteen seconds, you're immediately disqualified.

• 29:46Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  So at the end of a seven minute breath hold or two hundred and what meter dive. You're really skirting on the edge of, you know, how conscious you are.

• 29:57Rich Roll?

  So you have to make a conscious decision that your time is up because you have to allot for the energy it's going to take for you to go through that, that, that sort of checklist of things you have to do.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 30:07Rich Roll?

  If you're too close to the edge, you're not going to make it through that without blacking out, right?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you'll see, and, and a lot of people just don't have the mental capacity at that point, and, and they're not blacking out, but they might rush it, they might forget their nose clip on, um, they could do a whole number of things, you know, um, it, it can be challenging for foreigners, actually, because I have to say it in English, and so sometimes I'll come up and they'll say.

• 30:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? No matter where you are, it has to be in English?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  I'm good, you know, that's a DQ. Um, so yeah, it's about finding that point where, you know, it's one of those rare sports where you, you want to take it to 99%, because 101% is, you know, blacking out or getting disqualified.

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  Right, interesting. Yeah, it's like the only sport where you're not trying to go 100%.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Exactly, and that, that is, uh, that is in part strategy and it's in part mental capacity.

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, and just to, to put it into perspective, so your, your longest, what's it called again, when you just, it's dynamic?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Static, static is.

• 31:03Rich Roll?

  Static, okay.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Just a breath hold. Um, my personal best is, uh, 705, um, but I don't compete in that discipline, so.

• 31:11Rich Roll?

  Right, and what, what would be, what's the world record for that?

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Um, the world record is 10 minutes 55.

• 31:17Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  And that was, that was a few years ago, um, by Stefan Misfoth.

• 31:24Rich Roll?

  Who's, where, where is?

• 31:25Speaker 01

  He's French.

• 31:26Rich Roll?

  So, a French guy?

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but just at the world championships in Serbia, um, the, the top three places hit nine minutes, or nine minutes or just under, I think nine, eight fifty, seven, eight fifty or something.

• 31:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  So that gives you a comparison of really where that one guy was compared to everyone else, but anything, I would say, a seven minute breath hold is respectable, and eight minute breath hold is really in the top echelon, and then anything above eight and a half is exceptional.

• 31:55Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, and how much, we're going to get into the particulars of it, but how much of it do you think is genetic predisposition, somebody just is naturally gifted with tremendous lung capacity or something like that, and how much of it can be impacted by training?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  I would say.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  I would say probably half and half.

• 32:16Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Um, you know, some people just have incredibly large lungs. Um, but I'm, I'm not exactly sure, but probably the average capacity would be six liters for an adult male. And you have freedivers out there who have eight, eight and a half liter lungs.

• 32:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  So you have that and then there's a, there's a, a thing called packing, which freedivers do at, at the elite level. And that's where you physically use your tongue to piston more air into your mouth. Once you've, um, taken in a maximum breath.

• 32:46Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  So what, what that's like is, that's essentially, um, it'd be like blowing more air into a balloon. So that you're expanding your lungs beyond their physical limits.

• 32:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, from, from air that might be higher up in your, your sort of up in your mouth or something? Or how, what do you mean? Oh, you mean in training, learning how to do that?

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what, what, what we do is we take a full breath of air and then we, if you can imagine, use our tongue to push air. So we open our mouth and use our tongue to push air down our throat and then block off our throat. And then we'll take another breath, push, you know, it's like.

• 33:22Rich Roll?

  Oh, I see. So you're, you're creating like a high pressure chamber in your lungs.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:26Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's amazing.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  The top guys in the world would probably pack between two and four liters.

• 33:31Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  That, and that's, you know, there are a handful of guys who can do that. So they could take their lungs from, you know, eight liters to 11 liters.

• 33:38Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Um, so which is almost double the capacity of a, you know, the average person.

• 33:43Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and when you're in the midst of the event, are you holding it the whole time or are you slowly releasing?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  No, you hold it.

• 33:49Rich Roll?

  You hold it the entire time.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  And that, and that predominantly has to do with carbon dioxide.

• 33:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Um, but then, um, the constant, uh, wait, no fins, world record holder, William Trubridge, who's a Kiwi. He has, um, very average sized lungs. I, I think his lungs are around six liters. But he has phenomenal technique and he, he has a, a fantastic mental capacity. So, you know, y- yes, it's a, it's a great advantage, but nothing beats hard work and training and, um. You know, fixing your mental capacity and pain tolerance as well.

• 34:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think on the on the sort of mental capacity aspect of it, you know, you read these stories. I love reading about sort of the eastern mystics and you always read these stories about these yogis who learn how to control their metabolism through just, you know, like, super intense meditation practice and experience where they literally can lower their heart rate, lower their blood pressure, and, you know, basically dial down their metabolic rate to almost nothing. Like, I remember, I talked about this in my book, but there was a guy, there was a TV show in the in in America in the 1970s called That's Incredible, and I remember watching it as a kid, and there was a guy called the Yogi Koodoo, who was like this, you know, celebrity yogi dude or whatever, and he folded himself

• 35:07Rich Roll?

  up into like a lucite box that was like tiny, like, you know, they showed him, they showed him like, furl himself into this tiny little box, and they put it at the bottom of the pool, and they put a weight on it, and he was down there for like, I don't know how long it was, but it was a really long time, and they, they were like, measuring his heart rate and all that kind of stuff. And literally, he was like in this, like, close to dead state where he wasn't using any oxygen, you know. So I would imagine, like, the competitive edge really comes in with your ability to like, tap into that aspect of it, which is, you know, that I would imagine requires years and years and years of learning how to use your consciousness or your mind to control your biological processes in your body.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And that's something we work on a lot with meditation, and, and you know, most freedivers do, do a lot of yoga as well. And, and there's also something called the mammalian dive reflex, and that's this thing that, when you submerge yourself in water, and, and a lot of it's about your eyelids touching the water, but, or just your face in general, especially if the water's a bit colder. After a short period of time, your metabolic rate diminishes. It slows down and your heart rate drops. And that'll happen to anyone.

• 36:20Rich Roll?

  Just naturally.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, just naturally. I mean, if we measured, if we got you on the side of the pool and we got you to do a breath hold, or if we just had you sitting there and we measured your heart rate. And then if we put you face down in the water with nothing on your face and you did the same thing, you'll find your heart rate drops after a couple of minutes.

• 36:36Rich Roll?

  That's, what is that attributable to? Just some sort of, you know, Darwinian thing that evolved over time?

• 36:42Speaker 01

  You know, we came out of the ocean and so we still have that. You know, and that's the same thing that seals and whales.

• 36:47Rich Roll?

  Fascinating.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  All that stuff. Yeah. I mean, in a, in a breath hold, there are some athletes whose, you know, resting heart rate would be about 60, but they'll get four minutes into a breath hold and they'll find it down to about 15.

• 36:58Rich Roll?

  Wow, 15.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, 15, 20, yeah.

• 37:01Rich Roll?

  15, that's amazing.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:04Rich Roll?

  Wow. All right, so let's get to your, your discipline, which is, what is it? Dynamic pool with the fin, like what do you call it exactly?

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, the monofin. Yeah. And that's basically where it's just one big fin, which looks sort of like a mermaid tail. And you, you stick your feet in it and it's incredibly uncomfortable.

• 37:21Rich Roll?

  Really tight on your feet.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Really super tight because you, you don't want to lose any of your efficiency in the fin. It's sort of, I guess it would be the same as ski boots or something like that.

• 37:31Rich Roll?

  Right. The fin really becomes an extension of your, your legs.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. And you want to use all of that surface area to maximize your propulsion in the water. You know, you kind of start from your upper torso and you, you kind of create this rhythm where all of it, including your legs and the monofin, propels you through the water.

• 37:49Rich Roll?

  And are there regulations about how stiff the fin should be? Or is that a personal preference? Because I know they come from really stiff.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:55Rich Roll?

  Like in, in fin swimming, it's the sprinters want to use a really stiff fin and the distance swimmers will use one that has a lot more give to it.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, and that's personal preference. There's some, I kind of have a medium stiffness fin. And then there's Dave Mullins, who is a former world record holder and quite possibly will be again in the next couple of days.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  You know, he has an incredibly soft fin. It's, it's almost like butter. And this is a behemoth of a man. I think he's like six foot five or something. And he's got these trunks, his legs, but I mean, he just has phenomenal technique. So the tendency is the better your technique, the softer the fin.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  But yeah, so I hold the Australian national record in dynamic apnea, which is 218 meters.

• 38:38Rich Roll?

  Right. And just to explain it in very elementary terms, you swim underwater in a 50 meter pool. And the idea is to see how far you can go without taking a breath.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, and that's it. And so

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  218?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  18 meters.

• 38:52Rich Roll?

  218.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Which is probably a little over two and a third lengths of a football field.

• 38:59Rich Roll?

  Right. It's, it's four, four lengths and a quarter of a 50 meter pool. Or almost nine lengths of a 25 yard pool, or probably nine and change on a typical high school 25 yard pool in the United States.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  I know eight lengths is 180 meters, so probably be 10.

• 39:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  25 yards. Yeah. Most pools in America are 25 yards.

• 39:24Rich Roll?

  Right. With 225 yards is nine lengths. But then converting it to meters, yeah, it's probably almost 10.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have to do the math all the time because I know I'm chasing records. So it's like 22.86 meters equals 25 yards.

• 39:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:40Rich Roll?

  Where do you, which pool do you use down here just to train?

• 39:43Speaker 01

  I train in Culver City.

• 39:45Rich Roll?

  Oh, at the plunge?

• 39:45Speaker 01

  At the plunge. They're, they're a fantastic pool and Diego down there helps us out a lot and makes sure that we're taken care of and.

• 39:51Rich Roll?

  That's really the only pool around here that stays open at 50 meters most of the time or has liberal hours about that. Like the one, uh, Santa Monica College is only 50 meters, like a couple mornings a week, like

• 40:01Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 40:02Rich Roll?

  Really too. I think you have to go really early in the morning.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 40:05Rich Roll?

  And they let you use the monofin? Like most pools don't let you use a monofin?

• 40:08Speaker 01

  No, they wouldn't. No, no.

• 40:09Rich Roll?

  It's dangerous. I mean, they're sharp. You can really injure somebody if you're like lap swimming with other swimmers with it.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Right. Well, we, we're on the bottom. So, I mean, I almost, I've probably brushed someone once in the last 12 months. And, um, and they've got rubberized sides now. So they're, they're a lot easier. I mean, it's, it'd just be like brushing up against someone.

• 40:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  But yeah, if you're on the surface, then you know, they're, they're quite wide and you're taking up quite a bit of room. But because we're on the bottom of the pool. You know, people just think we're a novelty.

• 40:39Rich Roll?

  Like, yeah, what is that?

• 40:41Speaker 01

  What's that? Oh, my God.

• 40:43Rich Roll?

  It's the merman.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, for people don't know that, I mean, the fin really is about, it's almost three feet wide and at its base, I mean, it really is like a mermaid tail.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:54Rich Roll?

  All right, so 218 meters. Let's go, let's, let's back up to how this whole crazy journey began and then we can get into the details of that because it's a, it's a pretty funny story.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, I grew up spearfishing, which is essentially freediving with a spear gun. And so I had done that since I was about 15 and I-

• 41:17Rich Roll?

  In Sydney, is that where you grew up?

• 41:18Speaker 01

  In Australia, yeah, yeah, on the, on the east coast of Australia. And, you know, we're quite spoiled over there, the water's warm, it's, it's clear and there's a lot of fish. And when I moved out here, I was like, oh, God, no, I don't want to, I don't want to be spearfishing in LA. So I kind of held off on it for a while and then eventually I got in there and the water's freezing, it's, you know, it's 52 degrees, it's 10 foot of visibility.

• 41:42Rich Roll?

  People have this idea that, oh, you know, sunny Southern California, the ocean.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Baywatch.

• 41:46Rich Roll?

  The ocean is never really that warm here.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Baywatch killed it for everyone.

• 41:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'd done that and I was doing that out here for a couple of years and then I was, I was at a pub in Venice one night and there was a couple of cute girls and some of my mates wanted to kind of, you know, mosey on over. So we did and I was talking to this girl and, and, you know, we started chatting and she said she was a freediver and I said, oh, well, so am I. And she said, oh, really? And she said, well, where do you compete? And I said, compete? No, you know, I just spearfish. And she said, oh, I'm a competitive freediver. And I said, oh, so what do you do? And she said, well, we train in a pool. And I was like, what? You train in a pool? Just, that just defies everything about sport. And she said, yeah, yeah, no, we, we train in the pool and, and you should come training one day. And I said, well, I said, well, how do you train?

• 42:34Speaker 01

  And she said, oh, well, we do these, you know, we do these oxygen tables and, oh, it's an oxygen table. And so she said, yeah, and she pulled out her iPhone and she had this app which goes through a series of breath holds. And I said, all right, well, let's do one. You know, it's about one o'clock in the morning.

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  How many beers did you have in you at this point?

• 42:52Speaker 01

  I actually don't drink.

• 42:53Rich Roll?

  You know, okay, good.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  I don't drink. So I knew I had a leg up on her, but I was thinking, there's no way I'm letting a girl beat me. It's just not happening. I don't care how, you know, what she is. And so we do this um warm up. She called it a warm up and it was a two forty five minute breath hold, which I'm sure I had done in the past, but it's not something I'd actually sat there and figured out. So I was like, oh, bugger. Um, so we're there, we're there at the bar, you know, she's got two or three girls to her left. I've got two or three guys to my right and everyone's like cheering us on. And um, and uh, and unbeknownst to me, she'd been sick um previous, previous couple of days. So, you know, I had a bit of an advantage and, and she, she wimped at it about two minutes or something. And, and I was like, I am not stopping this. So, you know, my, my manhood was on the line. So I got to the two forty five and she's like, right, you know, you can come train with us.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  And, and so that was that. And um, she uh, she went off to the Bahamas for a couple of weeks to do a competition. And then she came back and it was winter and it was cold. There was no fish. And, you know, I rang her up and said, hey, what are you doing? And, and so, yeah, I, I went out there and I started training with them and I just had a, you know, a natural propensity to do it. So.

• 44:00Rich Roll?

  Right. So it was just a fit from the beginning. How long ago was that?

• 44:04Speaker 01

  That was two years ago now.

• 44:07Rich Roll?

  Right. Only two years. So, and then, and you set the Australian record a year ago, right?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:11Rich Roll?

  So really it was only a year from

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:14Rich Roll?

  commencement to national record holder.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  A year, a very full on year. Yeah.

• 44:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How old are you now?

• 44:20Speaker 01

  I'm thirty three. I just turned thirty three. But I, the second time, I didn't have a monofin, so I was just swimming in my spearfishing fins. And she said, um, she said, are you getting really good at this? You really should get a monofin. And I was like, I am not spending seven hundred dollars for a monofin, which I'm never gonna use.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  And she said, uh, you should borrow Ben's. Unbeknownst to me, Jenna and Ben were both on the US national team. I didn't realize how good they were. And uh,

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  How many people are doing it in the United States?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  It is growing um exponentially. And in the last two years, it's grown a lot. Um, there are.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Good question. Um, when you tally up freedivers who freedive in the ocean, competitive pool, ocean and spearfishing, there's probably a couple of thousand.

• 45:06Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:08Rich Roll?

  In the United States or worldwide? Oh wow, that's a lot. I would not have thought that. I would have said, you know, maybe a hundred.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, probably, probably a hundred that, that are, you know, competitive.

• 45:20Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  But definitely in the ocean. I mean, people out there freediving between Hawaii, Florida.

• 45:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  And SoCal. Um, you know, a lot of spear fishermen out there.

• 45:38Rich Roll?

  And what was it about doing it in the pool versus doing it for depth in the ocean that appealed to you? I mean, did you consider the depth option?

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. And, and there's, there's been talks about me doing depth. Um, the first issue is a lack of sponsorship. You can't do depth in the US.

• 45:57Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  So you're either going to the Bahamas, the Mediterranean or Dubai. So it becomes prohibitively expensive. When you take into account flights and accommodation and, you know, competition fees and that sort of thing. Um, whereas the pool, I can train any day I want, you know, for a couple of bucks. Um, and there's a pool 15 minutes from me.

• 46:15Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  So that's, that's a way that I can train all year round. And I really have a love of the ocean and, you know, I love spearfishing and I love bringing, bringing fish home for the family. Um, and obviously, you know, it's sustainable and it's, it's the most sustainable way of, of consuming food. So it's really important to us that, that I do that. And I, you know, I'm very careful about what I buy in the store and that sort of thing. So. And yeah, so generally when I'm out in the ocean, I want to be doing something that's just for me and it's not competitive. And I mean, free, everyone has a love hate relationship with freediving because it is such a stressful sport.

• 46:53Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Um, and you just kind of get so amped up, um, that it's nice to have a break and just have fun in the ocean.

• 46:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  I may, you know, a lot of people have been trying to get me into depth because it's, from everything people have told me, it's, um,

• 47:08Speaker 01

  it's much more pleasant. It's much more, um, it's less taxing mentally.

• 47:13Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Um, and, and you get narcosis. So that's, that's, that's a lot less painful too.

• 47:19Rich Roll?

  Tell me what that is.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  It's sort of like, I mean, I've never taken drugs, but from what I can ascertain, it's kind of like being stoned. You know, severe cases of narcosis, you'll start hallucinating. But.

• 47:38Rich Roll?

  But it's a result of lack of oxygen?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  It's no, it's pressure at depth.

• 47:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, I see.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  So, I mean, narcosis, from what I understand, and depth is not my specialty, kicks in, you know, varies for different people, but usually around seventy meters.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  What's that times three, about two hundred and thirty feet? And so, with the compression on your lungs, it becomes less painful because your contractions aren't as strong.

• 48:02Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Against the limitations.

• 48:03Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right, right.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  And also mentally, if you're diving, you know, say for example, you're diving to fifty or a hundred meters, you know, you go down to a hundred and then there is no option but to come back up. So it's, it's very simple, really, you don't have a choice, you just have to come back up. Whereas when you're competing in the pool, if you're having a bad day or it hurts too much, you're only three or eight feet from the surface.

• 48:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  So it's very easy to quit. And, you know, that happens a lot in the pool. And because you don't have the compression on your lungs, then it becomes much more painful. And the pain doesn't diminish. And you're also constantly swimming, whereas in depth, you have that free ride from, you know, thirty meters down.

• 48:48Rich Roll?

  Right, right. That's interesting, the pressure on your body makes it less painful.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's, you know, that's what everyone tells me. And, but the challenge with depth is there's a, there's the technical physiological aspect of having to equalize, because you only have so much air in your mouth to use to clear your station tubes. So once you get to a certain depth, you have to find reserves of air in order to clear your ears.

• 49:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  And so what people do is they do this, this thing called reverse packing. And that's where they use their diaphragm to squeeze air up. And into their mouth so that they can clear their ears. And that is the limiting factor for probably maybe sixty, seventy percent of freedivers is that they can't clear their ears. And that is also the greatest injury is perforated eardrums.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Because they'll ride their ears too far and then they'll perforate.

• 49:44Rich Roll?

  Right. And how do you, I mean, how do you develop the ability to control your diaphragm in that way? Like, it seems like, you know, how do you even begin to learn how to manipulate that like in that way? Like, it's such a bizarre, specific thing to learn, you know? How do you even approach that?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Exactly. And you're speaking to someone who has absolutely no idea of how to do that. I mean, I've been told conceptually how it's done. And I've, there are ways that you can try to attempt it without going to depth. And that's called on an exhale. So what happens is if you, if you blow the air out of your lungs and you, and you dive to ten, fifteen feet, you'll actually emulate diving to two hundred feet. Because you don't have the air in your lungs and so you're having to pull that up.

• 50:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  And I've tried that a couple of times and it's been an abysmal failure.

• 50:34Rich Roll?

  Right, wow.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:35Rich Roll?

  That's crazy. So, so, um, so you realize that you have this proficiency and you want to give it a go and you end up hiring a coach, right? To train you for the, to, to train you? I mean, I want to, I want to know about like what the preparation is like and what the daily kind of training routine looks like for something like this.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  So I just, I was doing a lot of, well, I was getting a lot of advice from the guys on the US team.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  And, and then it was just the beauty of the internet. You know, I was reading up, I was getting as much literature as I could. And, um, and then I was just training the pool and I was making steady gains. So I didn't really have to do anything at that point because I was still making big gains. You know, I started off with probably a hundred meter dynamic and then, and that was in bi fins. And then I put on a mono fin. I, I think at that point, my best was a hundred and twenty-five meters with bi fins, traditional fins. And then Jenna said, well, you really need to put on mono. So I borrowed Ben's. And the first time I did it, I had no idea what I was doing and I did a hundred and ten meters. And then the second time I went for a max. I did one hundred and seventy five, which at the time was a US record.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  And that's when I went, oh, okay. Well, this is fun.

• 51:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  You know, whenever you're doing well at something, it's always immediately fun.

• 51:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's not so hard.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 51:54Rich Roll?

  Well, the difference between like spearfishing bifins and a monofin is night and day.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And it's a completely different set of muscles and I didn't know what those muscles were or how to use them.

• 52:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  So then I spent the best part of six months just training technique and really drilling my dolphin kick. And that's where I started working with Wayne Judge, who's an Australian coach. Um, and, and, you know, one of the, one of the premier coaches going around. And we just started talking online.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  I knew some people at Sydney freedivers and, and Wayne at the time was living in Gladstone, which is this really small town in, in kind of mid northern Queensland. And, and we worked online and, you know, he's, he never charged me a cent. He just did it out of the love of the sport and, and was excited about a new up and coming Australian. And so what we would do is he'd give me training drills and I'd go off and do them. Always spotted. This is a sport where you always have someone on deck watching you.

• 52:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Because, you know, you could blackout at any, any moment's notice. So, you know, I, I just trained with one of the guys on the team and I would have these drills and I'd go down there with, you know, a drill. And then once a week I would have someone video me with a GoPro underwater doing a couple of fifties. And I'd upload it and I'd send it to him and he'd critique my, my, my technique. Yeah. So, you know, it could be something as little as, you know, the fore aft position of my hand. You know, or your, your fingers are pointed too high or they're too low or, you know, you need more flexibility in your shoulders. You're not streamlined enough. So, you know, then it was about three hours a week of doing flexibility work in the gym just to try and really,

• 53:34Speaker 01

  you know, get hyper, hyper mobile. And I think women have.

• 53:38Rich Roll?

  But not doing a lot of strength work, just.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  No, I did no strength work. Yeah, I actually.

• 53:43Rich Roll?

  No, I would think that doing some solid core work would be of benefit.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, do, do, do five kilometers of kickboard work.

• 53:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Uh, and you'll get that core strength.

• 53:53Rich Roll?

  I've done that. I know what that's like.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, you know, that'll give you core strength. But I was, I mean, I'd, I'd, you know, done a lot of weight training growing up and that was. That was purely for vanity, you know, and for my acting career and that sort of thing. And I stopped weight training because, you know, I really wanted to get as flexible as possible. And I didn't want any excess muscle because that would consume more oxygen.

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  So I quit the weight training and I do some weight training now in the preseason. But then probably a month out from a competition, I'll, I'll stop that.

• 54:25Rich Roll?

  Right. And then, and when you're going to the pool, is it always, you know, at the bottom of the pool, holding your breath or are you doing traditional swim sets and regular kind of swimming and like aerobic kind of work?

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Early on in the season, it's all aerobic. It's all on the surface. It's all kickboard work. It's all technique work. I might do some CO2 tables, which is, and I'm a terrible swimmer, by the way, when it comes to, you know, freestyle and that sort of thing. But, but what I'll do is I'll do, you know, maybe, maybe 1,200 meters freestyle. And what I'll do is on the, on the, say on the first hundred, I'll breathe every fourth stroke. And then on the second, every sixth, and then on the eighth, and on the 12th, and then on the 14th, and then I'll come back down again. And for, you know, the freestylers probably take two or three breaths on a 50.

• 55:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  And, you know, do it in 25 strokes or something. I'm, I'm not that guy. So halfway through it, I've got a, a very strong headache from CO2 overload. So I'll do that preseason, early season.

• 55:27Rich Roll?

  But to do that kind of like hypoxic work where you're, you know, you're, you're staggering the time or the number of strokes in between breaths and kind of getting your lungs to, you know, acclimate to that. I mean, has that been established to be something that can improve your capacity to hold your breath in these distances? Like, is there an equation where that actually, like, I'm trying to understand what the kind of things you do are, like how they translate into being able to hold your breath longer?

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Right. That, that is CO2 tolerance work. So basically what happens physiologically is when you hold your breath and then you get that urge to breathe, that has nothing to do with the amount of oxygen in your body. That is CO2 that's building up in your system. And so you've got to think of CO2 as kind of like a fuel gauge. So when it gets to a certain level, it just goes to that, you know, that warning light, you're getting empty.

• 56:22Rich Roll?

  So some kind of mental trigger happens where it says you need to breathe right now, even though you actually really don't need to.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's a safety mechanism. It's a, it's a, you know, it's the fight or flight. It's a survival mechanism. So, you know, I've done tests in hospitals where, in research labs, where they will increase the amount of CO2 that I'm breathing, but they'll keep the oxygen level at the same rate. So I'm essentially just breathing normal air, but they're increasing the level of CO2. And what happens is all of a sudden I'm out of breath.

• 56:51Rich Roll?

  It's like living in Los Angeles.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that. Yeah, exactly.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:57Rich Roll?

  It's good training here for what you do, right?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So CO2 tolerance work is getting used to the discomfort of having high levels of CO2 in your system. So it's kind of like pain tolerance work.

• 57:06Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  It has, as far as I know, and there's still, freediving is something we're learning about, you know, a lot. And new stuff comes out, you know, every couple of months.

• 57:16Rich Roll?

  But as you become more acclimated to that, like, let's say, a higher percentage of CO2 in your system, do you, sort of like when you get stronger in the weight room, then a heavy weight doesn't feel heavy anymore? Does that physics sort of go away? Whereas, you know, oh, now it doesn't feel like anything, even though I have all this CO2, I'm not experiencing that discomfort.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. I mean, you still experience it, but it diminishes.

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  Right, I got you.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  A lot of freediving is that, so you start a swim and then it gets incredibly difficult. Um, and you're getting big contractions and it's really hurting. And it's about overcoming that fight or flight thing mentally. And then it tends to get easier because you kind of settle into a groove. And then, you know, the last stretch of the swim is just, it's a lot of CO2. I mean, different people experience it differently.

• 58:03Rich Roll?

  So when you, when you go, for example, 218 meters, at what point do you first start to experience that kind of sympathetic nervous system discomfort?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  I have my first contraction just before the 50. So that's like that first involuntary.

• 58:16Rich Roll?

  50 meters already.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, like that. Um, and that's kind of like your, your dive reflex kicking in. It's called MRI. MDR. Um, and then at around about, and this seems to happen for most people at around about seventy five meters, and this happens whether you do a one twenty swim or whether you do a two fifty swim. Um, at about seventy five meters, you want to quit. And I mean, I've worked with so many athletes who would just come up at seventy five, like on the, on the meter. You know, it's something that happens.

• 58:48Rich Roll?

  That's not that far.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 58:50Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's not far at all. I mean, I don't, you're going a lot slower, but I mean, you know, I can go a hundred meters with a monofin underwater and they'll be dealing, go hard. So you guys are going really slow. It's all about conservation.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's that time, I think, it's that time underwater. When you get to about seventy five and you think, oh, you know what? This isn't my day. Do I want to go through and endure the rest of this pain? And I have that pretty much every swim. And then it's about mentally overcoming that obstacle. And for me, it lasts from around, you know, seventy five, eighty meters till about a hundred and twenty, hundred and twenty five. Without doubt, seventy five to one twenty five is my hardest point of the swim.

• 59:28Rich Roll?

  Interesting, because that's only halfway and then you break through.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  It's not even halfway, yeah.

• 59:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right, right.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's about a third into it's when it starts getting. And then when I get to about one twenty five, it starts to get easier because I have that mental carrot of going, well, the one fifty mark is only twenty meters in front of me.

• 59:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  And then I get to one fifty and I make the turn and that's when it starts to get painful. That's when it's, for me, it's, you know, and other people don't experience any pain, but I do. And, you know, from about one, it's actually quite distracting, the pain, you know, one fifty is like, oh God, you know, here we go. And from about one seventy five, I'm so focused on accepting the pain that, you know, two hundred comes and goes and then it's pushing on. And, I mean, I've done, I've done greater distances in training. I just haven't had the opportunity to.

• 1:00:17Rich Roll?

  How do you, uh, how do you decide how hard to push off the wall? I mean, that's got to be like trying to find the right amount, because if you push off too lightly, you're not getting enough inertia and you're going to have to use the fin to generate that forward propulsion. But if you push off too hard, you're going anaerobic.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  And you're talking about all the things that is freediving. It's about finding the optimum range of your efficiency. And some people. Um, go a bit quicker and then other people go slower. I mean, the French are notoriously quick. It's almost like they're racing. And then you get the Kiwis and Dave Mullins, who we were talking about earlier, who's notoriously slow. Um, you know, I do, I do fifty meters around about the forty seven second mark, which tends to be on the slower side. Um, most of the US team do them, you know, low forties. And then you get someone like Mullins, who's like mid fifties. Um, so yeah, it's about finding your range and where your efficiency is. And I probably spent, you know, six, twelve months figuring

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  out where I was. I was around about the fifty second mark. And then I thought that that is a bit quick. I need to, a bit slow. I need to pick it up a bit.

• 1:01:24Rich Roll?

  Have you ever tried to just go really hard and see how far you could go before you like block, like go fast?

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  I mean, I've done hundred meter sprints. Um, but, you know, I've gone as quick as forty four seconds for a two hundred, forty four a lap. And yeah, I just found that harder than to take the extra three seconds a lap.

• 1:01:43Rich Roll?

  Right. And does anybody do a flip turn? Or is it all grabbing the wall?

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, some guys do. There's, man, there's, there's as many turns as there are freedivers.

• 1:01:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  There's the flip turn. There's the, where they come in, I'm trying to describe it on a podcast. They kind of rotate ninety degrees.

• 1:02:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, pivot their body. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  So that they're no longer, they're facing the side of the pool. And then as they come around, they'll come into a flip turn. Then there are guys who don't kick off the wall at all. They'll come into the wall and they'll just use, they'll fold up their, their legs and they'll just push off with one arm and turn around. Yeah. And then I do this hybrid where I use, I touch the wall to, to do the initial pivot and then I'll use my feet to gently kick off the wall. And if I can hold a tight streamline, then just off a gentle push, I'll get a good, you know, six meters.

• 1:02:33Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Does anybody swim on their back?

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm gonna say no, but there is one guy who, uh, at one point set a US record with lap, who did the oddest thing. He did, I think he said it in a twenty five meter pool. I'm not sure. I think it was twenty five. He did twenty five on his front and did a half flip turn, I guess, and then did twenty five on his back. And then did a half flip turn, did twenty five on his front. And it just made me dizzy watching it.

• 1:03:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  But he's the only guy I know.

• 1:03:01Rich Roll?

  But I think for some people, doing it on your back, there's, it's, it's more efficient.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, when I do surface work, I can do the dolphin kick much easier on my back than I can on my front.

• 1:03:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  And again, a lot of that is flexibility in the pelvis. And if you've been doing that since a very young age, you're gonna have much better flexibility. Women tend to have a better flexibility as well. But for me, who started it two years ago, something I work on a lot. A lot of my training is about technique.

• 1:03:30Rich Roll?

  Right. So you're doing pool work, you're doing kickboard work, technique work, flexibility, yoga. And what is the meditation aspect of it look like on a daily basis?

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  I do most of my meditation first thing in the morning. And a lot of that incorporates relaxation, visualization.

• 1:03:53Rich Roll?

  Is there a specific technique that you do or that you've learned to do? Or you just found your own?

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  I've found my own, like over the time, I've done lots of different types of meditation. From basic relaxation work to, you know, when I was working in the theater to...

• 1:04:08Rich Roll?

  What? Oh, no, it's fine.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:04:11Rich Roll?

  Airplanes flying over. These mics pick it up. It's fine if they do. I do it at home, like the kids come in, there's motorcycles, Ryan, just don't worry about it.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  So yeah, when it comes to relaxation, I do a kind of hybrid of a few different things. A lot of it's about relaxation and working with the breath to slow down my metabolic rate and also to lower my heart rate. And then I do a lot of stuff which kind of incorporates

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  just accepting the state that my body's in.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  It's kind of perhaps a little difficult to explain, but you know, when you're going through different mental aspects, you know, it's about accepting.

• 1:04:54Rich Roll?

  Surrendering to what is.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  You know, that's a great way of saying it. Yeah, surrendering.

• 1:04:59Rich Roll?

  As Eckhart Tolle would say, I guess.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, God, it was a long time since I read his book. Yeah, and that's exactly what it is, is just accepting the state you're in and whatever thoughts that are coming in and just letting them come and go. You know, letting those negative thoughts come and go, and we all have them. And you know, a friend of mine says that the water never lies. And there isn't a more truthful statement because when you are under and you are under, you know, my swims take around about three and a half minutes. A lot of thoughts come and go in those three and a half minutes. And a lot of the meditation I do is about accepting those thoughts and letting them come and go and not listening to them.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  And and then there's, you know, the TM work I do and um and then there's a visualization. And that's where I mentally go through the swim from five minutes before until a minute after it's ended.

• 1:05:54Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  And I meticulously go through every single detail of the swim, including making mistakes in the swim, including those negative thoughts that come in at seventy five meters.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  You know, overcoming things that I'm doing wrong, you know. My technique tends to start going when I'm in that pain. So, you know, when I'm visualizing that swim, when I get to about a hundred and sixty odd meters, I start thinking about my technique and and it's about positive, positive thoughts rather than negative ones. So, you know, while you're in the swim, you know, it's it's quite normal for someone to say, oh, damn, you know, my kick's off or, you know, that was a bad kick or no, you know, I stuffed up that turn. And, you know, it's all about just skipping that thought and going to, okay, Tank, let's let's fix the next kick. Then that's a better kick. Come on. Yeah, that's good. Let's try and do that again. All right. And that wasn't so bad, but that's all right. Let's try another one. And.

• 1:06:49Rich Roll?

  Releasing uh releasing like releasing the judgment upon yourself.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:06:54Rich Roll?

  And and the visualization being so refined and specific and rehearsed so that by the time you're doing the event, it's a foregone conclusion.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:07:04Rich Roll?

  I would imagine it's pretty similar in your acting too. I mean, to kind of visualizing, you know, the rehearsal process or visualizing how you're gonna, you know, sort of embody this different persona or what have you to actually, you know, walk in the shoes of another human being and then have it become part of you.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  That's a great point, actually. I never I never really thought about that. But, do you know, as an actor, from a from a very early age, you're working on really exercising the muscle of imagination and getting it as vivid and as detailed as possible, especially working in the theater. So, you know, I never thought about that because that, I would say, is probably my greatest strength, is my mental aspect of the sport because I'm still learning an incredible amount. So there's a there's a high level of inexperience and there's also my techniques, you know, average at best.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  But, you know, I'm known for not quitting and and pushing through, you know, regardless of how bad the swim is or whether I'm, you know, competing injured or sick or whatever. And I've actually had to change in the last six months, the way I do my visualization, because as you said, I've always done it to the point where I've, I've put a, a, a finite limit on it. So, um, the, the no fins record is a hundred and seventy five meters.

• 1:08:19Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  And at the nationals this year, I, I had visualized that swim so many times in my head to go to a hundred and seventy six meters and then to come up. And at about one forty, I just kind of went into autopilot and I'd started to involuntarily lose air. And that's the first sign of severe hypoxia.

• 1:08:42Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Um, which doesn't ordinarily happen for me at one forty, but I just, I didn't really think of it. And so because I'd mentally done the swim so many times in my head, I had just pushed on anyway. And at one seventy two meters, and I really should have come up at probably about one sixty, I'd blacked out underwater. And, you know, that's just, that's just really interesting in the sense that how, how much visualization can have a play on your performance.

• 1:09:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  And that's fine if you're a marathon runner or a golfer or whatever. But, you know, so now when I visualize my swims, I, I leave them open ended. Um, you know, I probably visualize a no fin swim to a hundred forty, a hundred fifty.

• 1:09:20Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  And then just leave it.

• 1:09:22Rich Roll?

  Right. Interesting. I mean, I talk about meditation quite a bit on the podcast and I, I truly, truly believe that it is sort of the, the, the greatest kind of unexplored territory for improving your athletic performance. Like it just doesn't get the attention it deserves. And it's, it snaps into crystal clear focus in a sport like yours. But, um, because it's, I don't think there's anybody who could perform at your level without being very, very proficient and practiced and, and devoted to a meditation practice. Like it has, you know, anybody at your level has got to be doing that all the time, but you don't really see it so much in other sports. And I love that idea of.

• 1:10:05Rich Roll?

  Learning to feel the negative thoughts that pop up and having this sort of wherewithal to dismiss them. And it begs the question of your sort of higher consciousness versus your lower thinking mind that's running a tape or whatever, and being able to distinguish between those two things. Because innately, or by default, I'll just assume that I am my thoughts, no matter where they're coming from. Well, if I'm thinking this, then it must be so, or that must be where I'm coming from. But to be able to kind of stop in mid thought and say, oh, that's interesting that that's coming up, but I'm going to choose to move away from that and move in this other direction, to literally bifurcate these things and say, these are two different things. Like, I'm sort of this higher consciousness

• 1:10:49Rich Roll?

  looking down upon, you know, this lower entity that's trying to push me in a negative direction, and I'm going to make a different choice, you know? And that doesn't come naturally, you know, that only comes through practice.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. I, most freedivers tend to not do big swims or max efforts very often, and some will only save them for the race event. Whereas, because I'm aware of my inexperience and have not doing that many competitions, I tend to do a lot of big swims. And, you know, I probably did 20 swims of 200 meters plus. And what I learned from that was regardless of how I was feeling, it had very little effect to do with my performance.

• 1:11:36Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  My worst, my absolute worst swim to date mentally was the first time I cracked the Australian national record.

• 1:11:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  In training, in training. I'd quit the sport halfway through the swim. I'd said, I'm not getting any better. That's okay. You're not getting any better. The more you train, the worse you feel. You can let this go. Just finish this swim, and then we can walk away from this sport for a month or two, and then we can come back. And... And that was a big eye opener for me that said that what I'm thinking on a subconscious level or a conscious level has nothing to do with my performance. And and that's why I was doing so many of those big swims because in those swims I was making mistakes, none of them were perfect and I could still pull out a two hundred. I mean, I remember one swim, I did two eighteen, this was before I went for that record attempt.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  And I stuffed up the turn so bad at two hundred that I ended up in the next lane. And I had to come back around under the lane rope.

• 1:12:35Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  And go to two eighteen. And that's when I got a level of confidence that I'd never had before. And I get those from making mistakes.

• 1:12:42Rich Roll?

  That could have been a two twenty four swim or something like that.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I've since done that. I've since, you know, done two thirty swims.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  So, yeah, that's a really good point you make. I think, you know, for me, I spend in training, I probably spend forty percent of my time doing meditation and mental work, forty percent pool and strength, and then the other twenty is flexibility.

• 1:13:06Rich Roll?

  Right. And you go to yoga for the flexibility or is that like gym work?

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  I do, I do a combination of stuff. I do some very light yoga. I have some shoulder problems, so I'm careful with the harder stuff. I work with some people at Equinox who do therapy ball work. So the first probably fifteen minutes of the hour class is using the massage therapy balls to really break down tissue and open up your flexibility. And then the last forty minutes is like a real stretchy kind of program rather than strength based. There's a little bit of strength in there. But and then I'll just go to the gym and, you know, get out on the mat and I'll bring out the roller and I'll, you know, roll out for ten fifteen minutes and then I'll do a whole series of stretches, you know, starting from.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  My ankles, ankles, you know, flexibility right up to my shoulders and, you know, my, my pecs and.

• 1:14:04Rich Roll?

  Right. And do you ever do hypoxic breathing exercises, like dry land, hyperventilation stuff?

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Um, we don't do any hyperventilation. That's like the, the worst thing for freedom. And that's the first thing I say to anyone is we never, never, never, never, never hyperventilate.

• 1:14:19Rich Roll?

  Why is that?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Because that, remember we were talking about the CO2 and how that's kind of like an indicator of, of, um, of, of, you know, that urge to breathe.

• 1:14:29Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  So when you hyperventilate, you unnaturally lower the level of CO2 in your system. So it takes out that warning light. So, um, you, people tend to finish their swims in a lot worse shape and that's how you blackout. Um, because you don't see the signals coming. So if you don't hyperventilate, you tend to be much sharper at the end. Um, and, and, you know, no, no ocean spear fishermen, you know, now ventilate, hyperventilate. Whereas in the past, it was a big thing.

• 1:14:57Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Yeah. So before your event, I was envisioning like you're, you know, trying to get as much oxygen into your system and then you go under. Like that's what swimmers do a little bit, you know? So what? You just get super calm and just take one breath and go under and that's it?

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. I just do really small tidal breathing, like as if you were sleeping, that, that amount of breath.

• 1:15:17Rich Roll?

  But you're ultimately trying to fill your lungs up as much as possible, right? So you have to be taking this tremendously huge breath, right?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's the one breath that I take.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  I got you.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  But before that, the minutes before that, there's no hyperventilation.

• 1:15:28Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  Um, so yeah, I do, I do dry land work. I do, um, what are called oxygen and CO2 tables. And that's, an O2 table is basically where you increase the, the breath hold. So you could start with, say, a three and a half minute breath hold, have two minute recovery, four minute breath hold, two minute recovery.

• 1:15:49Rich Roll?

  So it's like an interval workout, except you're just sitting there holding your breath.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. Laying on my bed, hoping I don't put my pants in pain. Um, and then the CO2 work is you, you're.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Your breath hold remains constant, but your recovery diminishes.

• 1:16:05Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  So what you're doing is you're keeping your O2 levels up.

• 1:16:07Rich Roll?

  You're accumulating the CO2 and you're, I gotcha.

• 1:16:09Speaker 01

  Bingo. Yeah. So the last, you know, the last probably three breath holds I do will be, you know, four and a half minutes, but I'll get 15 seconds to breathe. So it'd be four and a half, 15 seconds, four and a half, 15 seconds, four and a half.

• 1:16:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  Um, and then, you know, similar stuff on the bike, on a, on a, in the gym, you know, I go to Equinox in Santa Monica and, you know, just go down there and, um, you know, get on the, usually the seated bike. I like that one more. So I don't have to expend as much energy and, you know, just do a minute breath holds, two minute breath holds.

• 1:16:38Rich Roll?

  While you're pedaling.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  While you're pedaling. Yeah. You have to be a little bit more conservative when you're doing it on the bike, because if you do blackout, you know, one, one will be awfully embarrassing and two, you know, you could hurt yourself. Whereas if I'm laying on a yoga mat, then, you know, if I were to blackout, then it's fine. Nothing's going to happen to me.

• 1:17:01Rich Roll?

  And on the subject of blacking out, I mean, I watched the videos of, uh, of some of your efforts and, and there was one, uh, where you're, you finish up and you surface and your fingers are all kind of, you know, your, it looks like your, your hands turn into these claws, right? I mean, I've done, I've done hypoxic breathing work and that happens to my hands. Like that must be the opposite of that, being hyperoxygenated or something like where suddenly you, you're, you're, you have this involuntary thing where your muscles start to do strange things and you were shaking.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:31Rich Roll?

  And it was like you were trying to sort of compose yourself and get oxygen into your system. But what is, what is going on when that's happening?

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  So as the, throughout the swim, your oxygen obviously depletes and then you get to a point where your body will systematically start shutting down parts, different organs or, or whatever you don't need. And, and one of the first things to go is usually is the, um, your diaphragm, um, your digestive tract rather, because that, that consumes a lot of energy. So unfortunately, some guys in the sport have been known to have what we affectionately call a brown out.

• 1:18:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Which can happen, which can happen to marathon runners a lot or, or iron men and that sort of thing.

• 1:18:09Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Um, so at some point your body will say, okay, I need the reserve of oxygen to keep the vital organs going. So your body will just switch off and that's when you blackout. Now. On the way to that, you can experience.

• 1:18:25Rich Roll?

  Because your brain uses a lot of.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:18:27Rich Roll?

  A lot of oxygen, right?

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  So whatever's left is saying. It's kind of like thinking you're flying a plane and you're running out of fuel. And then so the pilot switches off two of the engines and just coasts on the other two. That's pretty much what's happening. And and something that can have is called LMC, which is an acronym for loss of motor control. And it's affectionately called Samba. And it's when you start involuntarily shaking. So you kind of, it looks like a bad dance. And so when you you can come up and there's a period of time before you get to reoxygenate your blood, because you can, you can take a breath and it's in your lungs, but then it needs to transfer from your lungs to your blood. And that's the kind of hairy, hairy kind of 10 seconds or so when you first come up.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  I employ a process called hook breathing, and it's something that was invented by US fighter pilots, I think in World War II, something just after World War II. What happens is when you, when you pull a certain amount of Gs in an aircraft, your blood pressure plummets. And what that was causing, that was causing pilots to blackout.

• 1:19:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  So they had to find an artificial way of, there's actually a great video of a guy doing it online in, in a simulator. So what you have to do is you have to artificially find a way to increase your blood pressure to maintain it at a certain level, because if it drops to a certain level, you will blackout. And so when I come up, there are two things I'm doing. One is I'm doing my best not to exhale a lot of oxy, a lot of CO2, because as soon as that CO2 drops, your body says, oh, okay, you're fine. And your, your blood pressure will do the same. And that's when you blackout.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  And the other thing I do is I do this thing called hook breathing, where it's you basically, you bear down a lot of pressure on your head and you can see it in the video. So it's really hard to describe, but it's almost like you're trying to blow out, but you keep your mouth closed. It's almost, it's almost just imagine if you're incredibly constipated and you're pushing really hard because you're doing it in your head. And that can, that can keep a, keep a black out.

• 1:20:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it elevates your blood pressure.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does, and it stops you from blacking out. And I, I will try not to do anything. You know, I have 15 seconds, so what I do is my technique is. When I come up from my swim, I'll throw my arms straight over the pool's edge. And I'll support myself by, by ramming my fists under my chin. So if I do blackout, if my head wants to drop, or if I am in a samba, um, I can keep my head elevated because one of the rules is, is if you have a head dip, if your, if your mouth dips below the surface, once you come up, that's an immediate blackout. That's immediate disqualification.

• 1:21:06Rich Roll?

  Even if you actually didn't blackout.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, if you can't, yes, yes.

• 1:21:10Rich Roll?

  Your head nods, right.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  If your head nods or, you know, you might come up and then accidentally kind of go back down again. Any of that stuff is a blackout, is a DQ. But what happens is a lot of people get these things called head nods. Um, and that's just a little momentara- momentary.

• 1:21:24Rich Roll?

  Momentarily.

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  Momentarily.

• 1:21:26Rich Roll?

  A momentary blackout.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, is momentarily a word?

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  Momentarily.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  Damn it, it is now.

• 1:21:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, it is.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Um, a momentary blackout.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Um, so yeah, so I get up and I brace myself. It's almost like I'm in a, in a, you know, a boxer's huddle, you know, when a boxer's tidy, kind of wraps himself around. So I do that around the gutter of the pool or around the lane rope. And then I do a couple of these hook breaths and then I start breathing. And that's, I will not take my arms off that side of the pool until I've had a good eight or nine seconds. Because I have had in swims past where I've rushed to my mask and just letting go of one, one hand. And then I've, I've kind of lost control and I've had a samba.

• 1:22:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Um, so yeah, that's what's going on there and.

• 1:22:12Rich Roll?

  I mean, is it like, you know, are the shades closing? Like it's dark around the corners and you have stars in your eyes and you're just trying to battle to not pass out? I mean, what's, what are you seeing and like, what are you experiencing when that's?

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  I'm seeing that at the end of my swim.

• 1:22:25Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  So at that point, I'm, I'm technically about to get into a blackout. So then it's like, get out of here and let's, you know, it's almost like skirting unconsciousness and then bringing it back around.

• 1:22:36Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Um, and I guess another way of describing it is to use another boxer's analogy is, is when you do get knocked out, you know, the, the decent boxer will, will suck up seven or eight seconds on the floor before he, you know, rushes to stand up, to soak it up. And it's that sort of thing. I'm, it's that sort of thing where I'm.

• 1:22:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Just milking my time and.

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  And do you ever have like some kind of like, have you ever had like a strange like, like, uh, what would you call it? Like a psychedelic experience? I mean, like, where does your consciousness go when you're in this like altered state? Like, you know, does time stop? Does it accelerate? Are you, you know, having weird kind of dreamlike thoughts? I mean, what is going on?

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, the, the last 50 meters tends to feel the quickest. And I think that's in part, I'm so distracted by the pain and keeping everything together. And, and a part of it is by the end of it, your, your mental capacity is diminishing. At least it is for me. Um, some people go into a euphoric state towards the end of their swim. And it feels so easy and then, then they're gone. And then they're blacked out. Those people are always blacking out.

• 1:23:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  Um, it's easier if you're having big warning bells, you know, like, oh, my video, my vision's starting to go, or, um, I'm losing focus. Um, or I'm seeing, you know, little speckly bits, or I'm getting tunnel vision, or my vision's going black and, black and white. So as soon as I start seeing those, another big thing for me is involuntary, um, air loss. So it gets to the point where I can't hold air in my mouth anymore. And I get these little tufts of air. Um, and you'll see that in that record swim where I was so gone. From about 208 or 210 meters on, I'm just losing constant stream of air. Um, but for me, black, it's, it's when you come to from a blackout. It's, it's like coming off morphine.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  It's the most euphoric feeling that I've ever felt. It's, it's a complete dreamlike state. I, I blacked out, uh, at the nationals. I was, I was, I had a big blackout at the nationals. And, um, when I, when I came to, I remember I felt like, you know, the experience when you, when you're waking up from a nice dream, but you haven't opened your eyes yet, but you know, you're, you're kind of coming to. It was that feeling where I just felt, oh, wow, this feels so lovely. And I opened my eyes and two guys were, were kind of holding me. And the first thing I said was, wow, I feel so dreamy.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  It was, it was quite funny.

• 1:25:04Rich Roll?

  They have, uh, they must have, you know, a pretty decent medical staff at these events. I mean, we got to talk a little bit about, I mean, I can imagine somebody listening to this going, well, this is insane. Like, you know, this guy's crazy. Like, this is just dangerous. Like, why is he even doing it? You know, like, can we speak to the sort of inherent dangers of this or?

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:25:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, how does that work?

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, blackouts look a lot worse than they are. When people see them, they tend to freak out a bit, especially to the uninitiated. But really, a blackout is pretty much the same as just passing out. The same feeling you get when you stand up too quickly and you feel hizzy. And, you know, most people have passed out at some point or another. In terms of impacts on your body, you know, physiologically, it's nothing. There's still plenty of oxygen in your body. And then, once you start breathing again, you're completely fine. And I've blacked out in the past and, you know, five minutes later, gone back into doing a, you know, a half hour warm down. So there's, you know, there tends to be a bit of misinformation going out there.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  I mean, the critical thing with freediving is there is absolutely nothing wrong with blacking out on the surface. If you blackout underwater and you're not being supervised, then you will drown.

• 1:26:22Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, if you're, if you're a depth diver and you're down, you know, 20 meters or something like that, and you experience that, that's a different animal altogether, I would imagine.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  It's not too dissimilar, because what happens at depth is, most people get what's called shallow water blackout. It's very rare, you know, I think like something like 95% of blackouts in depth happen in the top 10 meters.

• 1:26:45Rich Roll?

  Why, what is that attributable to?

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  I think, and don't quote me on this, but I think it's the shift in the blood in your body. The blood's re-entering the rest of your body, because the compression is, you know, the biggest pressure differential is in the top 15, 20 meters.

• 1:27:00Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  So, and a lot of depth divers will really slow down in the last 10 meters, to just kind of allow themselves to acclimate a little bit. So you have safety divers, you have a safety diver, usually, I think, I think there's one at 15 meters and there's one at 30. So what happens is, is you'll do your dive and then they'll time it so then they'll meet you at thirty on the way back up.

• 1:27:24Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  And then that guy will meet you and he will take you to fifteen. And then another guy will be there waiting for you at fifteen and he'll take you to the surface.

• 1:27:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  So if you do blackout, you know, it's just a matter of a guy sticking his hand under your chin to keep your mouth closed and bring you to the surface. There's this survival mechanism that we have that you, you're basically, your trachea shuts off so water cannot enter your lungs. So when you get to the surface, if you are blacked out, usually the, I mean, the only thing that happens is, is the safety diver will remind you to breathe. He'll say your name and he'll give you a light tap on the face and blow across your eyelids.

• 1:27:55Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  And that's just, you just need a, a enough to just remind you, hey, hey dude, you know, start breathing again.

• 1:28:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy that you have to be reminded to breathe.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially when you're a freediver because you spend so much time telling yourself, don't breathe, that you just, you need that, you know, and some people just blackout for a second and, and then that's fine. So, you know, as I said, there has never been in competition, a serious injury in freediving.

• 1:28:20Rich Roll?

  Is that right? Interesting.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, let alone a fatality. There's, and oh, and the last safety mechanism with depth is, is every diver is attached to a lanyard and the lanyard is attached to the rope. So if someone does blackout at depth, they have a last resort fail-safe mechanism of pulling them back up.

• 1:28:37Rich Roll?

  Yanking them up.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  Since the lanyard has been brought into freediving, it has never been employed once.

• 1:28:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. And how long, how long is it, how, I mean, how long has this sport been around?

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  I think world championships have now been going for twenty years.

• 1:28:51Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Um, but freediving has been around since the beginning of time, you know.

• 1:28:54Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  You go to the Japanese, hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

• 1:28:58Rich Roll?

  Right. So you just competed at, in Belgrade at the world championships, right?

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  Yes, I did.

• 1:29:03Rich Roll?

  Didn't exactly go the way you wanted it to?

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  No, and, you know, I think that's in part me being very hard on myself. It was my first world championships, you know, I think I surprised some people. I think I did better than, than a lot of people would have expected for someone who'd been doing the sport for eighteen months.

• 1:29:18Rich Roll?

  How, how many, are the world championships every four years or every two years or something?

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  Every two.

• 1:29:23Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  Every two. So I wanted, my goal was to make two, two finals. I was competing in the no fins and the dynamic, which is with the monofin. And then I missed out on the final in the no fins on a technicality. Um, which was just bad luck at the end of the day. Um, four of us equaled distance for the final spot in the final. And only three could get in.

• 1:29:50Rich Roll?

  So how, how many people did they take for the final?

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  It takes 16.

• 1:29:54Rich Roll?

  16 and did they do it? Is it in the same day? You, you do a preliminary in the, uh, it's a following, the following day?

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, so they do the three events on three days. And then there's a rest day and then the three events in the final.

• 1:30:06Rich Roll?

  I see. So the first three days are preliminary heats.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:30:09Rich Roll?

  Okay. And then when you say you qualify for the final, does everybody get, like, are there people going at the same time? Or you go individually?

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  Eight at a time.

• 1:30:17Rich Roll?

  Oh, eight at a time. So it's just like a swim meet.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, and that's, and, and basically I got equal, equal 14th, which, you know, I was just unlucky, basically. Um, to make the no fins final. So I was a bit disappointed with that. That was something I was really wanting to do. And a part of that was strategic because a lot of guys were blacking out on that first day. And so everyone had told me to swim conservatively.

• 1:30:40Rich Roll?

  It just sounds funny, like, oh, guys are blacking out. You know, like what other sport are you?

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  I, you know, I had heard that a third, a third of the guys in that first heat had blacked out. And this was my first world championships. I didn't know what to expect. And so a few people had said tank, swim conservatively.

• 1:30:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  And I was in the top eight for most of the day.

• 1:30:59Rich Roll?

  How many, how many people are vying for that top 16?

• 1:31:02Speaker 01

  140.

• 1:31:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow, that's a lot.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and one-

• 1:31:06Rich Roll?

  Were you swimming for Australia or for the United States?

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  Australia, yeah. And I swam a 155, which for me is a very conservative swim. I, I could swim 155, you know, two in the morning, after a night out. Um, that's a Serbian expression, by the way. I'd never heard that before, Serbia. Yes, I can do 155 at two in the morning. It's like, really? Why, why would you do that? Um, and, uh, and so, yeah, I was, I missed out on that final. But, you know, it was a learning lesson at the end of the day. If I'd done 160, I would have been in the final, so.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  The, I mean, the difference between seventeenth place and seventh place in no fins was eleven meters. It was nothing. It was a really tight field. And then in the dynamic final.

• 1:31:52Rich Roll?

  The winner, how far did he go?

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  In the heat, he did one seventy-eight, I think, in the prelim.

• 1:31:59Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  And then in the, in the final, he's the world champion. He did two hundred and eight.

• 1:32:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was gunning to do about one seventy-five, somewhere around there.

• 1:32:10Rich Roll?

  Two hundred and eight, two hundred, two hundred and eight meters underwater with no fins.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  No fins, yeah.

• 1:32:15Rich Roll?

  And explain the, the wetsuit thing, because it would seem to me, I was watching the videos. What is the explanation for wearing a wetsuit?

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  The wetsuit does two things. One is, you know, you've got to remember with, you're not swimming very fast. I mean, we're doing a meter a second, somewhere around there. Um, and your heart rate drops, so you actually get cold. Um, and so what you want to do is you want to maintain your core body temperature. Uh, by wearing a wetsuit so that you're not expending more oxygen in order to keep your body warm. You don't want to shiver or anything like that.

• 1:32:48Rich Roll?

  But you've got to be like kind of coming to the surface, like it's got to be lifting you to the surface a little bit, is it not?

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  It's more buoyant, but we wear a neck weight to counteract the buoyancy.

• 1:32:56Rich Roll?

  Okay, I didn't know that.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  I mean, we wear, we wear the neck weight to counteract mainly the buoyancy in our lungs. I mean, I wear

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  twelve, thirteen pounds around my neck.

• 1:33:07Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that I stay, you know, that's how I get that hydrodynamic.

• 1:33:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  By keeping my, my chest down with the lead, um, in the pool, that is. So, yeah, and then it's, um, it's about hydrodynamics. I mean, you, you know, I, I have, uh, two wetsuits. I have my comp wetsuit. And I have one that's tattered. I mean, it's filled with holes. And, um, and the difference.

• 1:33:30Rich Roll?

  That's just, that's an aquasphere.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, the aquasphere, aquasphere.

• 1:33:34Rich Roll?

  So that's, that's like a triathlon competition wetsuit, right?

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's what I use, yeah. And aquasphere. I love those suits. I think they're fantastic. Um, the difference in, in either having no suit or having what I call a drag suit, because it's just got tons of holes in it, and wearing my comp suit, which is exactly the same suit, um, is. Five seconds per 50 yards?

• 1:33:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I mean, it's so much more hydrodynamic versus, you know, the texture of your skin or

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:34:05Rich Roll?

  other kind of whatever you would wear that would create that kind of friction that's going to slow you down.

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then in the dynamic, I made the dynamic final. I did 209 meters in the prelim.

• 1:34:15Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  Again, was a conservative swim. I just, the idea is you want to save it for the big day.

• 1:34:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  And then I got a chest infection after that. And I did, I did a silly thing. I did 230 meters in the dynamic final, which was 12 meters beyond my own national record. And I blacked out as I came up to the surface. So, so, yeah, I would have, ideally would have liked to have done 220. I had put a marker down on the bottom of the pool at 220 and then two minutes before I had to pull it out. Um, so I didn't realize when I'd hit 220 and I, they had a halfway marker 225. So 225, I started to come up. And that's when I blacked out.

• 1:34:58Rich Roll?

  How long does it take you to recover after an effort? I mean, can you come back later that day or the next day? Or is it a couple of days? Or what do you experience in the aftermath of something like that in the hours that follow?

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  Um, in the aftermath of a blackout or just a swim?

• 1:35:13Rich Roll?

  Or just a hard effort to swim? Yeah. You're at the world championships. You've done your prelim. You know, you've swum conservatively, but I'm still would imagine it takes a lot out of you. I mean, are you, do you really need that extra day or two to recover? I mean, could you come back in the afternoon and do it again? I mean, how quickly does the body bounce back from something like that?

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  I mean, ideally you want, I like 24 hours. Um, but say in the US nationals, you have two disciplines in one day. So you'll have the static breath hold in the morning and then you could be up two hours again after that. And you'll have to do the no fins dynamic, the, yeah, the no fins dynamic. So, you know, if you're doing a seven minute breath hold in the morning and then having to back it up with a, you know, 150, 180 meter swim or whatever it is, then that's, you know, that's hard on the body. And I-

• 1:35:57Rich Roll?

  I mean, is it causing like micro tears in your lung tissue or things like that that you have to?

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  No, no, it's just, it's just that, it's just taxing the nervous system and, and your kidneys and, and whatnot. And just, you know, a blood toxicity. And, yeah, most people will- You know, tend to try and be a little bit conservative in one of the events.

• 1:36:16Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  Um, I haven't competed in statics yet, just because I've been focusing on dynamics. Um, and then, you know, by the next day, I'm totally fine. And I do a lot of drills in training where I'll do a really big swim and I'll follow it up five minutes later with another big swim and another big swim.

• 1:36:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  Just to kind of get used to that, that, you know, trying to emulate game day.

• 1:36:36Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right. All right, so, so the world championships were, was that this summer?

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  That was in July or something like that? Yeah, yeah, late June, early July in Serbia.

• 1:36:45Rich Roll?

  So what's going on now? Like, what's the next thing?

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  Well, there'll be a, I'm trying to see if I can get to a competition in Sydney at the end of the year. Um, I would like to have a crack at the No Fins National Record, which is one hundred seventy five. Um, so that's, that's kind of like my next goal. And then it's really looking to the US Nationals in April next year. And, you know, vying for a spot on the, the, the, the Australia team for the, the depth, um, team world championships.

• 1:37:13Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, do you have to go back to Australia and compete there to make their team?

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  No, I can do it anywhere in the world. Yeah, and, and it's just about my ranking and, you know, I fortunately have the, the number one ranking at the moment. So I automatically qualify.

• 1:37:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, I should really just harp on the safety aspects of the sport. Um, you know, it's, it's paramount that if you're interested in freediving, that you do a freediving course, I think, and that you surround yourself with other freedivers and join a club. Um, in the US, they're, you know, they're.

• 1:37:45Rich Roll?

  Is there like a, a main website people could go to if they're interested in learning more about this? Like a federation website or something?

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, uh, AIDA, which is A I for Indigo, D A for Alpha. So Alpha, Indigo, Delta, Alpha. I say this because nobody understands.

• 1:38:02Rich Roll?

  You're doing the military?

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  Nobody understands my Australian accent.

• 1:38:04Rich Roll?

  A I D A.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. If I spell my name, people think I'm saying T I N C.

• 1:38:09Rich Roll?

  Tank.

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, tink.

• 1:38:10Rich Roll?

  Tink.

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, um.

• 1:38:12Rich Roll?

  I love the fact that your name is Tank.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:16Rich Roll?

  That you do this. I mean, you can't script this stuff.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  No, yeah, it's, it was a terrible upbringing, I'll tell you what.

• 1:38:21Rich Roll?

  Is that, that's your God given name?

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was rough. But you know, if

• 1:38:25Rich Roll?

  You're playing rugby.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:27Rich Roll?

  Was there an expectation that that was the direction you were gonna go?

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  Most people assume I'm a lot bigger than I am when they hear about me. And then they're bitterly disappointed when they see that I'm this tiny diminutive figure.

• 1:38:38Rich Roll?

  You're the Australian Seth Meyers.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there you go.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  You can, I would say, you can either find me on Facebook and I will give you any information you want. And that's, you can find my name or there'll be a link on the, on your podcast. Or you can go to Southern California freedivers and we have a group there on Facebook.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  If you're in the US or just, you know, just go into Facebook and type in freedivers or Google freediving clubs and, you know, get along, meet the guys, do an induction, get some safety work done, understand everything about the sport that happens physiologically and, and what you need to do safety wise before you, you know, go out there and do something silly. And unfortunately, people do silly stuff. You know, they'll see us do stuff in the pool and then they'll go, oh, I can do this. And

• 1:39:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  You know, they'll, they'll start doing stuff.

• 1:39:28Rich Roll?

  I would imagine there's a lot of bravado and I can hold my breath longer than you and it's easy to get into trouble. And, I mean, does, does, uh, one last like kind of technical question. Does VO2 max have anything to do with it? Is that pertinent at all? Like if you, oh, I have huge VO2 max. That may mean you have some kind of huge endurance engine or capacity or, or the capacity to push yourself really hard. But I'm, I'm wondering whether that is even relevant at all.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  I don't think it is. I was a cyclist growing up.

• 1:39:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you were a mountain biker, right?

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, I kind of competed at a state and national level. So, you know, that was six days a week on the bike and I, you know, I think, you know, cyclists and rowers probably have the two biggest VO2s out of all the courts.

• 1:40:10Rich Roll?

  Cross-country skiers.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, cross-country skiers, yeah. And cardio is, is, is disadvantageous to freediving.

• 1:40:17Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  So I quit all cardio. I haven't done cardio in a year.

• 1:40:20Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  Which kind of makes me a bit edgy. But and that's just because I've had competition after competition after competition. And and you know, the good guys, they don't do that. They do cardio nine months a year and they want to peak at a certain time, usually the world championships or whatever. But I'm kind of learning so much.

• 1:40:35Rich Roll?

  Why is that like sort of, you know, why, why is doing cardio work? Like, why would it not be a disadvantage to get on your bike a couple of days a week? And like, you know, build the heart and the lungs that way a little bit?

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  Um, it seems counterintuitive and it certainly doesn't completely make sense to me. But the, the idea is, is that you become more efficient at burning oxygen. Because you have to replenish it quicker. Um, and it increases your metabolic rate.

• 1:41:02Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  So while most people want to do that, they want to burn more calories throughout the day by building muscle and doing cardio. Free divers want the exact opposite of that.

• 1:41:10Rich Roll?

  Right, so your training camp would be to, to take an extreme example. Rather than going and, you know, going out on your bike all day, you should probably, you'd be better off flying to India and going and sitting in a cave in the Himalayas with a, with a monk.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 1:41:25Rich Roll?

  Working on your breathing.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I, on a diet, dietary wise, I eat three meals a day and that's it. I never snack in between. Um, and I don't eat for six hours before an event because I want my stomach to be empty. I don't want it to be burning anything.

• 1:41:41Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Because that requires energy.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:41:44Rich Roll?

  So you're talking about just the tiniest amounts of, of, of energy expenditure become mission critical.

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, you know, you are swimming for three and a half plus minutes.

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  So you're doing an aerobic activity anaerobically.

• 1:41:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  So there's that, you know, the juxtaposition.

• 1:42:02Rich Roll?

  The tension between those two things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:04Speaker 01

  And then you have the lactic acid build up and, you know, it's, you know, just imagine doing squats, but holding your breath.

• 1:42:11Rich Roll?

  Holding your breath, doing it. Right, exactly. It's amazing, man. It's fascinating. Very, very, very cool.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  It's a fun sport.

• 1:42:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how, when you go down to the plunge, how many people show up to train with you?

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  Uh, it depends. It could be usually be up to like six.

• 1:42:28Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Up to six guys, a couple of guys from the US team. We have an Italian.

• 1:42:32Rich Roll?

  Is that an everyday thing or a couple of times a week?

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Well, no, a couple of times a week. I mean, I train, I tend to be in the pool for maybe four, five sessions a week.

• 1:42:42Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  Um, most of the other guys probably a little bit less.

• 1:42:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  Um, and I mean, most of that stuff I'm doing is stuff that, that, you know, surface work or, you know, stuff not on a breath hold.

• 1:42:54Rich Roll?

  And is this something you can continue to get better at as you age? Is there like, what is, I mean, are there guys in their 40s doing this?

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:00Rich Roll?

  Continue to improve?

• 1:43:01Speaker 01

  The, the, the female world champion is 50.

• 1:43:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, because your heart rate.

• 1:43:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not surprised actually. Yeah.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Cause metabolically you slow down as you get older.

• 1:43:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  So it's, yeah, if you, if you have a good base and you have good technique and you're used to training well and, you know, I think, I think this sport will absolutely blow up in the next five years as you get a lot of ex-swimmers coming over.

• 1:43:24Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  And that's what's starting to happen now. I mean, you get these Olympic swimmers and they're, they're gonna blow us out of the water.

• 1:43:29Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, just efficiency wise, they can put a monofin on and swim underwater, you know, and it doesn't, it doesn't have any kind of energy impact on them.

• 1:43:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:43:37Rich Roll?

  They're so accustomed to that and they're so strong at doing that and they've been doing it for so many years that, you know, by the time they hit a hundred meters, it's like they haven't even started.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, the hardest challenge with swimmers is getting them to slow down.

• 1:43:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine. Yeah.

• 1:43:51Speaker 01

  You try to get it, you try to get a breast stroke.

• 1:43:53Rich Roll?

  Like if we're gonna go 220 meters, let's get it done with already.

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  Try and get a breast stoker to do 50 meters in 50 seconds. He's just like, man, what are we doing?

• 1:44:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  Cause in, in the, in the no fins technique, we separate the arm and the leg stroke. And so it's an arm stroke and then it's a glide and then it's a leg stroke and then it's a glide. And then it's an arm stroke and then it's a glide.

• 1:44:14Rich Roll?

  So, oh, so you're, you're, so yeah, we didn't even get into that. So when you're, when you're, when you're not using the fin.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:20Rich Roll?

  You're still underwater, but you're doing kind of an underwater breast stroke?

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:23Rich Roll?

  I see. I got you.

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  It's the same, it's a modified stroke that a breast stoker would do off the push off the wall.

• 1:44:28Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  It's pretty much that. You see them do that big push off the wall.

• 1:44:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  And then they take one stroke and they, they pull their arms.

• 1:44:34Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  And they get that glide.

• 1:44:35Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  Um, but a lot of breast strikers will throw in a dolphin kick as well.

• 1:44:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they're not supposed to, but a lot of them get, you can kind of get away with a little bit of that.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't, we don't tend to do that, but I'll show you some videos of what it looks like. You can get an idea of it. Um, but yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's a whole nother kettle of fish, that one. Because you're spending so much time in the glide position. I mean, I covered 25 yards in two strokes.

• 1:45:00Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Um, so that's two kicks and two, two.

• 1:45:05Rich Roll?

  Two pulls, right?

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  Um, and yeah, it's.

• 1:45:10Rich Roll?

  That's gotta have a more anaerobic component to it than just being in the dolphin streamlined dolphin kick with the fin.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:20Rich Roll?

  Cause you're using your arms, you're using more muscles.

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. And, and you're, I find it harder to hold technique as the swim goes on because my arms, with breaststroke, it's much more finicky. You don't have the, you don't have a mono fin to have that margin of error, you know? I mean, when your technique goes in dolphin, dolphin kicking, just kick more with your quads and you still get that.

• 1:45:42Rich Roll?

  But if your arm strokes a little bit off and your, your arm slips through the water and you're not getting the pull that you need, you're looking, you know, that's a, that's a massive screw up.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And just imagine being in a tremendous amount of pain. Your chest is heaving, you're starting to lose your vision, your mental capacity is dropping. All of a sudden, your ampull is nothing like, at least for me, it's, I mean, you know, my first 50 I'll do in two, two and a half strokes. Um, by the time I'm at 150, I'm at three and a half, four strokes.

• 1:46:12Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  And then from 160, I'm going into like four, five strokes. You know, cause everything's just, and that's, that's just areas that I need to work in, you know, I'm not, I'm not as strong.

• 1:46:22Rich Roll?

  I'm getting uncomfortable just hearing about it. Like I'm starting to get like panicked.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  I'll show you some videos.

• 1:46:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I wanna see it. Alright, cool, man. Well, we, we gotta wrap it up, dude. I've taken up enough of your time, but um, this is fascinating. I learned a lot. Like I, yeah, like I said, I mean, I didn't, really didn't know that much about it. And um, there's so much more to it than I would have imagined. And uh, it's really cool, man. It would be cool to see the sport, you know, blow up a little bit more and.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:47Rich Roll?

  More people get into it. So if people want to find out more about it, they can go, what is it? A I D, what was it?

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  Ada will have more information.

• 1:46:55Rich Roll?

  A I D A dot com or?

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Uh, I could be, I would just Google it.

• 1:47:00Rich Roll?

  Google it, or just go, just go into Google and search free diving or whatever in your area if you want to learn more.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  Or just click on one of the links.

• 1:47:06Rich Roll?

  Tons of videos on YouTube, right?

• 1:47:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:47:08Rich Roll?

  Cool. And if people want to, um, kind of follow you and find out more about what you're doing, uh, you're at TankSade on Twitter. T A N C S A D E.

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:47:19Rich Roll?

  And you're on Facebook and all that.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Same name, yeah, exactly.

• 1:47:21Rich Roll?

  And of course, there's the Dysfunctional Bachelor.

• 1:47:24Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:47:25Rich Roll?

  We gotta talk about that.

• 1:47:26Speaker 01

  You've delved, you've delved deep, haven't you, mate?

• 1:47:28Rich Roll?

  Hey, I do, oh, it doesn't take much research to find that. All I had to do is go to your Facebook page and see your post, right?

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:35Rich Roll?

  So, the Dysfunctional Bachelor. I guess it's self-explanatory, right? But that's just your blog.

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tongue-in-cheek. It's kind of having a little bit of, a little bit of fun.

• 1:47:43Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. And, uh, and your film production company, Five Island Films.

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  Five Island Films, yeah. It's a little indie film production company that we set up a few years ago. Um, and we just kind of make little projects for art, really, and, you know, have a creative vision and try to tell stories that we want to tell that it's not necessarily generated by, you know, the dollars.

• 1:48:03Rich Roll?

  Right. And so, in addition to being an actor, you're a writer and director? And you did that project with Terrence Stamp?

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Yes, I did.

• 1:48:10Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, my very first film.

• 1:48:12Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's phenomenal. He's a, he's a great talent and it's really nice to have someone of that level of experience around.

• 1:48:18Rich Roll?

  Cool. So, are you gonna be writing and directing a feature?

• 1:48:21Speaker 01

  I'm working on a feature right now. Um, it's a drama. It's set in a, a small town in northern New England. Um, and, uh, yeah, I've been talking to some production companies about that and we're just, you know, going through the motions.

• 1:48:34Rich Roll?

  Right, cool. Alright, man. Well, stay in touch, man. I want to follow your journey. So, um, Tank, uh, needs your support. You've got great support from some sponsors. I know you're sponsored by, like, Two Times You, Aquasphere, Equinox, I think is helping you out too.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 1:48:51Rich Roll?

  But, uh, let's give this guy a shout out and help him out. And, um, if you go to the, uh, blog page on my website, I'm gonna put up a few videos so you can check out what he's doing and, uh, and, uh, get more interested in what's up, right?

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Thank you so much, mate. Appreciate it.

• 1:49:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for the time. It's been fascinating. Alright dude, peace. Plants.

• 1:51:17Rich Roll?

  The.