Freedive!
CHAPTER
EXCERPTS

History

Physiology-1

Physiology-2

Gear

Technique

Photography

U/W Hockey

Monofins

Game

Deep Diving

Glossary

Freediving Technique

Soft, smooth, quiet, confident, serene, peaceful: all these adjectives hint at the intense pleasure well-trained freedivers feel. Imagine coasting below the waves, playing "pass the leaf" with wild dolphins, flying in formation with giant manta rays or simply joining a school of fish. Without a mechanical breathing apparatus, you're truly free-free to flow effortlessly into the womb-like, enveloping water, free to join the ocean not as an interloper but as a welcome friend.

Lying at the surface face down, you take slow, deep, quiet breaths. Your body is totally relaxed, your mind open and free of anxiety. Gently sealing your nose, you pre-equalize your ears. While kicking lightly to give yourself some forward momentum, you simultaneously take your last full-capacity breath, flood your snorkel, bend at the waist and raise one of your legs. Without making a splash, you leave the surface in a perfect inverted dive.Slow, streamlined kicks propel you until gravity overcomes buoyancy and you glide downward-effortlessly. Multiple, frequent ear-clearings help prevent ear discomfort............

How should you learn freediving? Not like the newlyweds we observed in Hawaii. The young man coaxed his new bride into the water, assuring her she had nothing to fear. Timidly she placed the unfamiliar snorkel into her mouth, flip-flopped to the reef’s edge and jumped in. In the water, she bicycled furiously with finned feet, clawed the water with her arms and made a brave attempt to look into the surging water before declaring, “I can’t!”

What happened? Unfamiliar with the equipment, uncomfortable in the horizontal position, and hammered by the heart-racing cold and fear of animals lurking at her feet, she panicked. Remember, freediving is about familiarity, ease, relaxation and energy conservation.

To learn to freedive, find a competent, patient instructor who will guide you through the selection of your gear and introduce you to the basic elements of the sport in a step-wise, confidence-building fashion.
This chapter is not intended to be a teach-yourself program. While we have numbered each exercise, your instructor should select both the exercises and their order of introduction into your unique training program. Avoid advancing until you’re ompetent with the last step.

Basic Pool Exercises

Since comfort in the water is the key to freediving, let’s start with a simple, yet effective, relaxation exercise, the floating fetal position.” (If you’re not familiar with how to use a snorkel or mask, skip ahead to those sections and then return to this exercise.)............

Your fins

Choose flexible fins and wear socks or rubber booties for protection against foot chaffing and ulcers. The foot pocket should fit firmly without causing pressure points or cramping. Your feet should not slide inside the fin when you shake your foot up and down or side to side.

Like our young honeymooner, many beginners tend to flex their knees deeply and appear to “bicycle” through the water. They often make large and unnecessary arm and hand movements. Remember, keep your hands relaxed at your side. Flailing arms and excessive knee flexing waste your valuable energy, cause efficiency-robbing drag through the water and make a lot of noise, which scares away marine life. When you kick, use your hip and knee joints equally. If you flex your knee too much (bicycling), loosely wrap your knee joint with a bandage as a reminder to use straight-legged kicking from your hip. Be sure to keep your feet below the water when you swim on the surface.

Before graduating to open-water training, you should master three fin-kicking strokes: the basic slow-flutter kick, the frog kick and the dolphin kick. You’ll use the basic slow-flutter kick stroke about 90 percent of the time. Keep the strokes even and smooth. Kick gently, don’t overpower the fins and keep the blades in the same plane as your leg stroke to prevent water from “spilling off” the side of the fin.

Because of the flexible and elastic nature of freediving fins, it’s important that you understand how they work. As you kick, your fins produce forward motion when the blades displace water backwards. Additionally, the fin blade’s natural recoil provides some propulsion...........

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EAR CLEARING

The expert freediver learns to clear his ears easily by developing control over a certain group of muscles in his throat that assist the opening of the eustachian tubes. This is the same muscle group that moves with the other muscles in you head and neck when you swallow or perform exaggerated jaw and tongue movements. When you apply pressure to your nose, control over this special group of muscles bypasses the need to swallow or move your jaw in an attempt to clear your ears.
The primary muscles in this group are referred to as the Tensor veli palatini and the Levator veli palatini (the elevators of your soft palate). When you swallow, your jaw, tongue, adam’s apple and soft palate (the soft back part of the roof of your mouth where a tissue tag dangles into your throat) all move upward. It’s not necessary for your tongue or jaw to move for ear clearing—just your soft palate and adam’s apple..............

Exercise 13: Surface dive

After resting on the surface long enough to flush out carbon dioxide and to replenish your lungs with oxygen, you’re ready to start your surface-dive exercise. You should feel completely relaxed; your breathing rate should be slow and regular. Your breaths should be somewhat deeper than normal—at least 150 cubic centimeters (a half-cup of air) to cancel the effects of the extra, snorkel-induced, dead-space air.

Progressively increase the depth and rate of your last three breaths, starting with a relaxed breath and progressing to the deepest breath you’re capable of drawing. Remember to make full use of your diaphragm. For your last breath, forcefully exhale to the maximum and then fill your lungs to capacity. During these last breaths, simultaneously pre-<d>equalize your ears and initiate forward momentum by using either a flutter or a frog kick. Forward motion helps improve your surface entry.

At the moment your lungs fill, break your body at the waist, raise your left leg to the vertical position and bring your right hand up to the nose-sealing position on your mask by making a smooth “S” pattern with your arm. Slip your hand sideways through the water to minimize water resistance. Three to five full kicking strokes should get you to the neutral point (where you neither sink nor float), after which little, if any, kicking is required to continue the descent. The sensation of falling through the water is a good indication that you have made a perfect surface entry...............

Your dive buddy

Dive with a buddy whenever possible. There is always safety in numbers, and most divers enjoy sharing their experiences with others. Even if your buddy is unable to assist you, at least that person knows your general location. If you do dive alone, be sure to leave your detailed dive plan with a friend and notify that person if your plan changes...............


We hope we have made our message clear: freediving, like most sports, depends on professional training, good gear and liberal doses of common sense. Had the honeymooner, mentioned earlier, been properly introduced to her gear and received advance pool training, her Hawaiian experience would have been pleasurable instead of disappointing. Safety in the water requires forethought. You should have a plan to handle common emergencies, and you should pause a few seconds to consider what might go wrong before you attempt something new. Freediving takes commitment. Make that commitment and you’ll enjoy an exciting, rewarding sport for your entire life....