Digging deep to hit underwater heights

Steve Rice -

How relaxed would you be 50m below the water's surface while holding your breath ?

The answer is you need to be very relaxed to make a safe return, as free diver Jody Fisher will attest to.

"A lot of people see it as this adrenaline junkie sport and an extreme sport.

It's absolutely the opposite," she said. "You have to be really relaxed and fluid." Fisher, 24, and ranked No. 2 in the world for 2011, is the perfect example of achieving something when you put your mind to it.

She began free diving - a dual-discipline sport consisting of depth and pool diving, while unassisted and on one breath - in November last year and within 11 months broke eight national records and won two medals at free diving world championship events.

Fisher said the secret behind her success was yoga, a form of exercise she considers the most effective for free diving because it strengthens and flexes the diaphragm.

"You have to be so relaxed, so calm ...

With yoga it's not only the mental skills, it's testing your abdomen to be really flexible and really relaxed so that when you go down your body just bends and flexes instead of getting rigid."

The discipline of depth diving can be completed using a monofin - a single fin that makes the diver look like a mermaid.

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