My Freediving Trilogy
Since I did my first SSI Freediving Level 1 training in August 2021, I’ve been hooked on freediving. My family and friends could hardly find me in my London home these past 12 months. I am using all my holidays and taking advantage of the flexibility of remote working to explore this newly found passion.
I consider myself to be the opposite of a “talented freediver”. I didn’t grow up by the sea. I was not good at holding breaths. I wasn’t a natural at doing Frenzel equalisation. I am not a strong swimmer and still cannot swim front crawl or backstroke. And in fact, since my childhood I’ve never been serious about any sport. But I fell in love with freediving as soon as I took the first lesson (which was not even so successful to start with).
Since then, I’ve had a lot of fun learning about this sport while travelling around the world. I even became an athlete officially by participating in a competition just 2 months after completing my Level 1 (although this was not my plan)! Even though pretty much anybody that can freedive can participate in a general competition, and being registered as an athlete doesn’t mean anything in terms of my ability to dive, I still thought it was pretty funny since I had never associated myself with the word “athlete”.
As I get more questions and interest from friends and fellow freedivers, I thought I’d write a little trilogy to document my experience breaking into freediving. The intention is to share my story with family and friends, and perhaps it can serve as a data point for fellow freedivers who are going through similar challenges that I had gone through. To those thinking about dipping their nose into freediving but unsure if they are made for it - I for one, was probably not made for it. But even if you don't have the best genetics or have yet to master related skills, you can still learn and make progress pretty quickly and have a great time in the process.
I really enjoy freediving, learned a lot both about the sport and myself, met some really cool people, and had a ton of fun in the process. I hope my story helps a few of you out there. But please note that I am not trained to provide instructions and do not intend for my story to be a professional guide in any way. Please seek professional guidance from properly trained instructors wherever needed :)
So here we go.
