Stop eyeballing your training

Pavel Tsatsouline’s approach to strength training reveals a fundamental principle that most athletes ignore: your body adapts to what actually happens, not what you think happened. In powerlifting, this means precise rest periods, exact rep counts, and controlled tempo. You don’t eyeball a 500-pound deadlift. You don’t “feel out” your recovery between sets.

Most freedivers should understand this. But they don’t.

Instead, they’re doing CO2 tables with their phone’s stopwatch app, guessing when their rest period ends, and wondering why their training feels inconsistent. They’ll hold their breath “until it feels hard,” then rest “until they feel ready.” That’s not training. That’s just showing up and hoping something good happens. Similar story for O2 tables, on which we wrote O2 Tables: The Most Misunderstood Tool in Freediving.

You don’t want to introduce variables that your body can’t adapt to systematically.

Training tools

Tools can help here, because they remove decision fatigue from your sessions. How?

First: Pre-programmed protocols. You don’t have to adapt mid session. You don’t have to calculate rest periods in your head while you’re hypoxic. The workout plan and the timer know the progression. You just follow it.

Second: Audio cues. When you’re deep in a breath-hold, visual cues are useless. You need clear audio signals for preparation, start, and stop. This isn’t about convenience-it’s about maintaining consistent stimulus without breaking focus.

Third: Session tracking. How did this week’s CO2 table compare to last week’s? Was your average hold time improving? Were you cutting rest periods short? Without data, you’re not improving systematically. You’re just repeating whatever happened to work last time.

Practical applications

Stop using generic stopwatch apps. They’re built for general timing, not freediving protocols. You end up managing the timer instead of focusing on the training.

Program your protocols in advance. Decide on your CO2 table progression before you start. Set your rest periods. Remove the guesswork. This is basic periodization-plan the work, then work the plan. (This connects directly to Progressive Training: Why Freedivers Need to Stop Winging It)

Track your sessions consistently. Not just personal bests. Average performance, consistency across sets, how you felt at specific time markers. Patterns emerge when you have data. Guesswork doesn’t create patterns.

Where structure actually matters

Look, you can build your own timer setup with multiple apps and spreadsheets. People trained effectively for decades before smartphones existed.

But this is exactly why Appneist’s integrated training timer matters. The protocols are already programmed. The progressions are built in. The session data tracks automatically. You’re not spending mental energy managing timing and calculations-you’re using that focus for the actual training.

Which is the point Pavel would make: your body responds to what actually happens, not what you intended to happen.

Stop guessing. Start timing. Let the precision do the work.