Shell Eisenberg Breaks Long Standing USA Women’s Freediving Record

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Shell Eisenberg Breaks Long Standing USA Women’s Freediving Record

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Relative newcomer Eisenberg surprised the USA Freediving world.

The Northern California captured her first USA Women’s National Freediving Record in the freediving discipline of 'Dynamic No Fins' with a swim of 125 meters / 410 feet.

Shell Eisenberg added five meters / sixteen feet on to the previous record of 120 meters / 394 feet. This had been set by Annabel Edwards of Hawaii in 2009 at the AIDA Individual Indoor Freediving World Championships in Denmark. Shell’s swim took place at the Caymana Bay Athletic Club pool on the island of Grand Cayman, BWI.

2 mins, 46 secs

Shell’s performance took two minutes and forty-nine seconds to complete. She was competing in the DejaBlue6 freediving competition hosted by Performance Freediving International, an annual event. Her performance was completed in the twenty-five meter pool of the club and verified by two AIDA judges.

Shell said of her performance, “I’ve been training quietly for the past eight months. I’m also very fortunate to have had some excellent coaching from my friend Jessica Hill, who was a competitive swimmer, she was super helpful in working on my technique with me. I spent the whole morning being nervous about it, but when I got to the pool my nerves disappeared and I just thought about the individual tasks at hand like stretching and warming up. In my final breathe-up I just kept telling myself ‘one length at a time.

I’m the most unlikely athlete in my family, and did not grow up participating in any sports,” Shell chuckled. “My fascination of being in the water and freediving has evolved over the last five years and taken my parents and brother by surprise! I’m super psyched about reaching this goal and will be looking to achieve more personal goals in depth. If the records come it’s a pretty incredible feeling!”

Shell’s performance video can be seen here:
[video: https://vimeo.com/127801704]

Dynamic No Fins is performed by swimming without fins in a pool with the athlete holding their breath swimming as far as they can. Distance is measured with the use of a metered tape measure. The pool must be at least twenty-five yards long for the performance to be valid. Other disciplines include tests in depth and time.