Jana Strain Freediving

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Competitive Freediving History

Jana Strain Freediving

History

I fell in love with freediving in 2008, after taking my first freediving course.

At my first course, I was encouraged to compete and attend the 2008 AIDA Team World Championship, as an alternate. I quickly learned that we are mostly limited by our minds and by what we choose to believe our limits are. I met all the top freedivers in the world. World Record Holders and others who were diving over 100m deep, holding their breath for over 7 minutes and swimming distances over 175m. I was amazed to be surrounded by super humans! They were also generous and friendly. I had a curious mind and asked them, what are your personal bests and how do you train? I got 100 different answers, and some ideas for myself. Before arriving to that competition my personal best in Dynamic was 75m. The Continental Record at the time was 150 m, the World Record was 188m. While there I completed a DYN 153 m opener swim, but had received a penalty point. I came home and very soon after, broke the North American record by swimming a distance of 155 meters, followed by DYN 171m a few days later. Six months later I was awarded best new female freediver by the International Association for the Development of Freediving.

In April 2009 I set a Pan American depth record by swimming to 51 meters, set the no fins distance record at 116 meters, and took the Canadian National Champion title in Montreal. Over the next year and a half I furthered DYN 181m, and beat my own depth record twice, ending up at 54 meters. I also became a World Cup Champion in both individual and team disciplines, and was on the 1st place team at the Triple Depth 2009 competition in Egypt.

I spent until 2011 living out of a suitcase, traveling, training, safetying, competing and teaching all over the world with top athletes from every country. This experience exposed me to all freediving diciplines, many ways of training and having the lived experience of safetying and rescuing divers in trouble. This is not a goal, but the experience is helpful when coaching others who are exploring their limits. I talk in detail about these experiences when I teach AIDA 3.

In my early years, I competed against and taught courses with Natalia Molchanova, who was untouchable at the time. Before one World Championships dive, I was very nervous and she looked at me smiling and said "Jana, birth and death are important. Freediving competitions are just fun for adults"! I didn't understand how she could be so calm, while she was so passionate about what we were doing. Today I understand her words at my core.

In 2010, I stepped away from professionally competing at freediving to pursue an engineering career. In 2021 I returned to Freediving Competitions for fun! Since then I have won two overall titles at cold water depth competitions and set a national record to 130m DNF. At the time of my return to competitive freediving two of my national records were still current. The CNF 54m was valid for 13 years and broken by Cassandra Cooper in 2022. In 2023, Sheena McNally broke the 14 year standing of the 181m record. Today, I still have the honor of being ranked in the top 50 female athletes in the world both in the AIDA International ranking and in the combined ranking of AIDA and CMAS.

Records & Achievements