Esther Mucientes Madrid
Madrid
Updated Thursday, March 28, 2024-9:37 p.m.
Antena 3 In the guts of El Desafío, the "brutal" format that pushes celebrities to the limit: "The worst that could happen is fainting and we don't want to see that on television"
"We want to reach that limit and do it well, so that the contestants leave happy and proud of what they have achieved without having to go further,"
Juandi Alcázar
assures EL MUNDO during a long talk in which he was going to talk about apnea, strength physics and
El Desafío
, and ended up discovering that "there are fears buried since I was little and sometimes I have to be a bit of a psychologist."
Juandi Alcázar
is in principle in charge of helping the contestants of
El Desafío
(Antena 3) to learn to correctly perform
the dreaded and always shocking apnea test
and to overcome their fears when it comes to getting into the fish tank. He has been dedicating himself to diving for 22 years, of which 10 of them as a coach, trainer, but also
coach
. Because without the enthusiasm, the strength and the confidence that
Alcázar
transfers to the
celebrities
, the test of all the tests of
El Desafío
would be impossible to carry out.
Television
Antenna 3.
In the guts of El Desafío, the "brutal" format that pushes celebrities to the limit: "The worst that could happen is fainting and we don't want to see that on television"
Editorial: ESTHER MUCIENTES Madrid
In the guts of El Desafío, the "brutal" format that pushes celebrities to the limit: "The worst that could happen is fainting and we don't want to see that on television"
He recognizes that his thing is not only to teach how to manage the body so that it can last without breathing underwater for as long as possible, but that
there is a work of contact, affection, loyalty
and, yes, also opening oneself in a channel, which become much more than a pain trainer.
The
celebrities
who participate in
The Challenge
arrive fearing him and leave adoring him. Because Juandi Alcázar becomes something that goes far beyond being a coach. He manages to take them to limits that they would never have imagined they could reach and, yes, they suffer, but the benefit they obtain is always much greater: overcoming their fears and facing them face to face.
Juandi Alcázar
, the face that is always out of laziness, controlling every second in which the contestant is under the water, suffers with them, gets "nervous", tenses and has no qualms about admitting it: "There is no apnea in which I am super calm.
There are many in which we are looking for the limit more and in those I am more tense
. But at the same time I am calm because we are not going to take any more risks because it is not necessary."
During the talk, while talking about risks and limits, she cannot help but talk about Mariló Montero's apnea, an apnea that had a real impact on the program and on the viewers.
The presenter spent 4.08 minutes underwater
. "She went quite to the limit," says Juandi.
Juandi Alcázar, during Mariló Montero's apnea in El Desafío.7YACTION
The presenter wanted to play it safe that day on
El Desafío
, she wanted to show that if Rosa López had set a record in the history of the apnea test, she could too. And she was on the verge of achieving it if it wasn't because Juandi saw the danger, she stopped him and forced her to go outside:
"Get your head out, Mariló! Get your head out! Please, don't argue with me."
.
Together with Mariló he talks about
Jorge Sanz
, who had the record from the first season, or
Omar Montes
, who took a risk and gave the coach a hard time: "We had a plan which was that I had everything completely planned and that he was going to do whatever he wanted. And he did it."
What is it like to go from being a diving and freediving coach to being one of the key pieces of
El Desafío
? Being part of this team is wonderful because everything you see is pure truth. The tension, the dedication that everyone has in each test is palpable from the beginning in the hallways. Especially with mine, because everyone loves it and hates it at the same time. It's a very curious thing to experience. How do you prepare celebrities
for
apnea? The first thing I have to tell you is that you can't see all the hours of work behind them. And not just physical work, especially psychological work. Let's see, freediving is a safe sport if it is done with proper care and with a professional, but it always carries a risk. That's why the first key to everything is for the contestants to enter the water calm and confident. And how do you achieve that? They have to trust in their body, in their equipment, in their head, that they are not doing anything strange, nothing risky. And for that they have to lean on me. That's why a big part of the process is having trust in each other and understanding both the process and the person. My work with them is often to try to break barriers so we can go hand in hand and achieve the goal we have together. That's why you often see that I get very excited, that I give myself a lot. During the week we prepared it we told each other everything: they to me and I to them. There is a bond between us that makes it a very exciting time.
The process to which Juandi
refers
begins the same day that the recording of the program before the apnea ends. That day, the coach approaches the contestant whose test is scheduled for the following Friday and the first thing he does is sit down to have a talk in which Juandi explains what is going to happen to his body when they run out of oxygen. "They need to understand what they have to have to be well, what their body does to hold their breath,
how they react when carbon dioxide fills their body
," he explains.
And then? After that talk we enter the water and I have to give them love so that they can face apnea from relaxation. On that we work on the next part, which is the part of the struggle, of the fight, of how far we can stretch to achieve a better mark, which is the spectacular part that can be seen from home. What weighs more, physical capacity or Mental strength? It's a combination of the two, but it's clear that the head is more important. If the head is fine and that day the body is not completely fine, you can overcome the apnea. If all the furniture is in its place and the house is clean, then everything goes well.
"Sometimes we look for the limit, but there is no risk because it is not necessary, because it does not give us anything"
Are there any risks? I am very clear about that: we are not going to take any risks. Sometimes we look for the limit by getting a little closer to that person's maximum capacity, but there is no risk because it is not necessary, because it does not give us anything. And how do you know when you are approaching the limit? This is not an exact recipe. It's like adding salt to a stew: you know how much to add more or less when you taste it. Sometimes it is not the grams of salt that the recipe indicates but rather it is less or more. There is a relationship that makes more or less sense between when the contractions of the diaphragm begin and the body begins to complain of excess carbon dioxide due to lack of oxygen. This happens at about a minute and a half, which means that person could make it to three, but it's not exact math. That's why I ask them all the time and forced them to give me the OK with their hand. With the other, which is the one I hold you, I know how far we have come and how far we can go. As I say, there is no perfectly marked border, but rather it is a bit blurry. You can get more or less, but I prefer to take them out two seconds before just in case, because I know that with three seconds I will faint. It is a very fine line...But if you look around here, many people have passed by and I have I have trained many people, even for competitions, and it is time for you to have that something in your head that makes you let yourself go to your maximum. When someone does
CrossFit
or goes for a run, they don't push their body so far to the limit that they faint. Well, this is the same. What if it happens? The problem is that the body does not tell you in a clear way that you lack oxygen, but what it tells you is that you have too much carbon dioxide, which makes you feel uncomfortable for so long that You get used to that discomfort and you don't interpret that you lack oxygen. So you can faint without having any prior warning from your body. That's why I never part with them, because they can fade to black.