Why you keep stopping at the same wall

Freedivers regularly hit the same distances. 100m, 125m, 150m, and so on. We see athletes get stuck at these marks constantly. Not because their bodies fail, but because their minds do. The wall becomes not just a literal wall at the end of the pool, but a figurative one. A mental barrier with a number painted on it.

The wall isn’t where you think it is

Here’s what we see all the time: an athlete who can do 10 repetitions of 75m with 45 seconds rest. That’s serious work. That level of CO2 tolerance and fitness easily supports 150m, probably more.

Then they attempt a maximum dive. They surface at 100m, convinced they were seconds from blacking out.

Meanwhile, their training buddy who can barely manage 6×50m swims right past them to 125m. The difference isn’t physical capacity. It’s what’s happening between the ears.

One athlete we worked with kept hitting the 150m wall in DNF. No contractions until 100m (a real gift). Instead, the moment they passed 100m feeling fresh, their brain went straight to calculating: “I can definitely make 150.” Now they’re at 100m, thinking about a wall that’s 50 meters and another full minute away.

That’s a lot of time to talk yourself out of a dive.

Why late contractions make it worse

This is the cruel paradox of freediving. When contractions come early, you think “this is going to be a bad dive” and let go of expectations.

Those often become PB dives.

When contractions come late? You get excited.

“I’m at 100m and I feel great, I can definitely hit 150.”

And now you’ve just given yourself 50 meters of runway to completely psych yourself out.

The problem isn’t the distance. It’s that you started thinking about the outcome instead of staying in the dive. Your body was fine. Your mind projected into the future and panicked about something that hadn’t happened yet.

Turn at the wall, don’t surface at it

One strategy we use with athletes: stop surfacing at walls. Always turn mid-pool.

If your target is somewhere past 100m, don’t make 100m the endpoint. Turn there. Make it a waypoint, not a destination.

Here’s why this works: walls become anchors. If you always surface at 100m, your brain starts treating 100m as the finish line. It becomes automatic. You hit the wall, you come up. That pattern gets reinforced every single session until breaking it feels impossible.

But if you turn at 100m? Now 100m is just another turn. And if you can make one more turn, maybe you can make it to the next wall. The mental barrier doesn’t get a chance to solidify.

Micro-goals: two seconds at a time

Michael Gervais, the sports psychologist who works with NFL teams and Olympic athletes, has studied what separates elite performers from everyone else. One key finding: the best athletes stay anchored in the present moment. They don’t think about the finish line during the race.

Applied to freediving: “I’ll make it to 150m” is future thinking. That’s 50 meters away. Your mind can absolutely argue with 50 meters.

But three more kicks? Your mind can’t argue with three kicks. That’s two seconds.

So you break it down. “Three more kicks.” Done. “Push off this wall.” Done. “Glide to the next marker.” Done.

Each micro-goal takes a couple of seconds. You can always do two more seconds. String enough of those together and suddenly you’re past the wall that’s been stopping you for months.

Some athletes use technique cues as their micro-goals: checking that their arms are straight, correcting their kick, feeling the blade. It doesn’t matter what you focus on, it matters that you’re focused on something immediate rather than something distant.

What to actually do

Three things to implement:

Stop surfacing at walls. Structure your training so you turn mid-pool. If you’re working toward 150m, your training dives should turn at 125m, not end there.

Replace distance goals with micro-goals. During the dive, never think about the final number. Think about the next two seconds. The next three kicks. The next wall to turn at.

Track where your mind goes. After each session, note not just the distance, but where your focus shifted. Did you start thinking about the outcome at 100m? At 125m? Analyze these patterns to understand where you’re getting stuck.

The walls aren’t going anywhere. But once you understand they’re mental constructs, not physical limits, you can start taking them apart, one micro-goal at a time.

This is exactly why tracking your sessions in Appneist matters. Not just the numbers, but the patterns. Where does your mind go? Where do you consistently stop? The answers are in the data, if you’re paying attention.