How I Learned Frenzel Equalisation for Freediving
Get 10% off with the best freediving wetsuit maker Elios with the code SU24! I don’t get commissions when you use the code - they make excellent products so this is a way to support amazing businesses in the industry while creating some benefits for my friends and community. Please feel free to let me know if you use the code so that I know you benefited from the discount, and I will be happy to connect with more top-notch businesses in the future.
In My Freediving Trilogy Part I - From Zero to 20m, I talked about how Frenzel helped me transform from not being able to freedive at all to going straight to 20 metres.
As I am someone who didn’t find the technique intuitive from the start but managed to master Frenzel fairly quickly (I have since gone to 50+m with Frenzel), I summarised in this article the resources that really helped me, as well as some top tips from my own experience. Make sure you read through to get the behind-the-scenes view of how I learned Frenzel!
I hope these resources and top tips help you master Frenzel Equalisation too!
The three YouTube videos that really helped me
There are three YouTube videos that helped me get started. Watch them all, and take what you can from them.
Continue reading down below the videos to see some additional comments.
Pavol:
Aharon Solomons:
Adam Stern:
I’ve been sharing these three YouTube videos with all of my friends who wanted to learn freediving, and it has helped quite a few, especially when they are able to learn and practise BEFORE they head out to their seaside holiday and start their level 1 freediving training. When they were able to practise and grasp the technique dry / at home, their chance of successfully completing their level 1 training within a few sessions greatly improved.
2. Understand the “Charge”
Among the above three videos, Pavol’s teaching helped me understand the two important movements you need to make Frenzel work:
making the “N” sound means the back of the tongue drops which brings up air to the right part of my mouth, and then
the “k” or “g” movement gives you an idea of the movement that pushes this air to equalise the ears.
I used to call the former movement “charge” but some people don’t like it because it gets mixed up with Mouthfill and they’d tell me ‘there is no charging in Frenzel’, comparing to the more advanced Mouthfill technique where there is a distinctive charging phase.
But to me, the “charge” or the dropping-tongue-to-bring-up-air movement was super important because that was where I was failing at the beginning! For quite a few weeks in the beginning, I could not consistently bring up air, which was why even when I did step 2 correctly, my ear did not equalise. And it was difficult for others to diagnose it because what they saw from the outside was that I was moving the throat muscles correctly. So no one knew what was going wrong, and I was given the diagnosis that perhaps my muscle was not strong enough to create enough pressure.
This was solved by continuing to practise bringing up air to the back of the oral cavity. I couldn’t always do it consistently at the beginning while I was still getting familiarised with the movement. So sometimes I could only bring up air by actually making the ’N’ sound when I dive. But this was soon not the case anymore once I got used to it and understood what movement I needed to do with the back of my tongue to bring air to the right place.
3. Practise in front of the mirror
This was recommended by quite a few people, including in some of the videos mentioned above. I didn’t think much of it at the beginning and wasn’t really doing it, especially because I was either outside or was watching the videos and so I was just testing and trying to figure things out in front of the video instead of the mirror.
But this turned out to be super important.
I remember that when I eventually stood in front of the mirror and started checking the movements of my throat, I got some visual validation for when I was making the right movement versus when I was not. Since I was trying different things and was not doing anything consistently, this really helped me narrow down from all the weird movements I was experimenting with, to eventually find the right one that popped my ear.
4. Use Otovent balloon to strengthen the muscles
This is super fun! (Or is it just me that has an appetite for weird things?)
I had never seen or done anything like it. But it makes sense - it’s the exercises that help strengthen the muscles that you never knew existed or really used.
If you have an instructor, they will probably be able to give you appropriate exercises to do with the otovent.
The exercises I did were mainly in two categories - one for muscle awareness (glottis, soft palate), and one for muscle strengthening.
Because of the fact that we don’t live underwater, some of those muscles used for equalisation aren’t necessarily known to us from our day to day life. For instance, when they told me “use the muscle in your throat to equalise” or “keep your soft palate open”, I wish they could use a stick or something to point out to me which piece of the muscle they are talking about. And even after I learned what glottis and soft palate are, I don’t always have control over what these muscles do.
So building up awareness becomes the first step of learning how to control them - only when you have better awareness can you start noticing what you are doing right or wrong. And then you can practise control and strengthen or change the things you do that help you achieve more effective and effortless equalisation.
I didn’t find good videos that explain the simplest exercises intended for real beginners for Frenzel. This is the closest I could find which is slightly more comprehensive and including some more advanced exercises:
Exercise 6 (2:42) or 7 (3:08) were probably the closest to what I was practising (but you don’t have to do the T or K lock). Basically doing the frenzel movement with the otovent to blow up the balloon.
5. Know that people do Frenzel (slightly) differently
That’s why sometimes it can be confusing to beginners who are already quite confused about the technique to hear freedivers teach you different things about Frenzel - but they all do Frenzel! What’s happening?
One of the early lessons I learned in freediving is that it’s just like living a life - there isn’t one right way to do things. People have different bodies and preferences, and what works for one might not work for another.
For instance, In Frenzel, some people equalise light and fast / frequent, some people equalise slow / strong and less frequent. I do the latter. My ears need quite a lot of pressure to equalise, and when I try to do fast and frequent equalisation I find it a bit stressful. Since I do less frequent EQ, I can better relax between each one. It helps my overall relaxation and I am not wasting effort equalising more often than needed.
Another example is the “dropping tongue to bring up air” movement that I mentioned above. I remember this used to confuse the hell out of me because some people say you are supposed to drop the tongue each time after you equalise, and some others say you close the glottis and don’t drop the tongue so that the bit of air you bring up to the back of your mouth can be used to equalise a few times. I guess either way works, and the latter is considered by some as some sort of mixed-up mouthfill technique. I even learned recently that a friend does a mini mouthfill when he does Frenzel between 0 to 20m - he charges his mouth to pop out a little, and then with that air with closed glottis he Frenzel until the air runs out then charges again. There are probably implications of those different techniques, and maybe a “perfect” technique matters more to freedivers that dive to deep depths than to those who usually do shallow fun dives. Keep an open mind, and speak to more people to see what they are doing. Try different techniques to find what works for you.
6. Have confidence that you can learn it!
Looking back, I didn’t have too long a period that I really suffered with confusion or frustration with Frenzel. But even when it was a few days or even a few hours, it could be devastating in the moment because of the uncertainty - you don’t know whether you’d ever be able to learn it and how long it might take.
I remember the various times I doubted my own ability to learn, or felt sceptical about my body’s disposition. It’s easy to have those doubts or feel frustrated, but as long as you don’t give up and continue to try, you will probably make progress faster than you thought.
I remember Linda Paganelli said in her Freedive Cafe podcast that a lot of people thought they have certain physiological reasons that prevent them from performing well in freediving (like Frenzel equalisation), but in most cases the reason is probably not the body but the method or a matter of practice.
So don’t give up, continue trying and experimenting, you will find something that works eventually!
Hope you enjoyed the reading! Was this useful? Leave a comment below to let me know! If you need any help with freediving, feel free to send me a message!
