Overcome Freediving Trauma: Rest Is Not the (Only) Solution

Despite it being called an extreme sport, the fatality rate or incidence rate of serious injuries in freediving is actually quite low. If you exclude spearfishing (where some of the best practices are sometimes not followed), serious injuries and deaths don’t occur often in casual or even competitive freediving scenes.

That said, some of the challenges we experience as freedivers are less visible.

For instance, in 2023, I experienced trauma from a freediving competition which took me several months to recover from.

Coming up from a Bi-Fins dive during the competition

What Happened?

In 2023, I participated in my first freediving competition on the beautiful Caribbean island of Dominica. It was a really successful event overall and a very good experience for me personally. Not only did I thoroughly enjoy the friendly competitive vibe and forge a few great friendships, but I also managed to pull off surprisingly strong performance and bagged four White Cards out of six dives. My deepest dives for each discipline - 66m Free Immersion, 40m No Fins, and 65m Constant Weight Bi-fins - set my AIDA personal competition records, and earned me two Gold (Overall and CNF) and two Silver (FIM, CWT) medals.

I was ecstatic. Of course, me being me I was also reminding myself that these numbers were nowhere near the world records, and some medals in a small competition where the podium pretty much depends on who else joins the competition don’t really mean much. Regardless, I was happy. I worked hard to achieve those dives and was so pleased with the results. I celebrated with friends and had a great time at the award ceremony.

Little did I know then that I had over-stretched myself to the point that my body and mind had gone through some kind of trauma process that was unknown to me and started associate diving with fear and stress more than they did ever before. And all this was happening beneath the surface.

I had no injury or incident. I didn’t have any hypoxic event. I didn’t have any lung or ear barotrauma. Half of the dives felt absolutely amazing and the other half felt hard but still within reach. I was tired but understandably so because of the deep dives, and I felt good generally. I thought I just needed some rest, and I was already looking forward to getting back to the water as I was enjoying my well-earned post-comp break.

However, after a full week’s rest, when I finally got back to the training line I quickly noticed that something was wrong: I was having numerous “stress/nervous contractions” going down, and they were in almost every single deep dive that I attempted!

First of all, contractions during the descent had never happened to me before. I always thought I was blessed that I never had to deal with contractions too much as they come on quite late, and also for that reason I was not used to dive with contractions at all. Secondly, these were strong contractions that felt very different from the high CO2 contractions (which were normal during the ascent of a long dive). In some of the dives I attempted they came on as early as I took my mouthfill around 15m! So those were clearly not caused by a buildup of CO2.

Coming up from a No Fins dive in the competition

Realising I Had A Trauma

It took me a while to realise I’ve had a trauma. Since there were no accidents and no injuries. It was a simple story of having numerous stressors during a competition, doing multiple challenging dives within a few consecutive days, and pushing myself a little too hard.

In the first post-comp training session, I wanted to do 60m thinking this was 7m less than my PB and a depth that I had consistently done before so it should be a relatively easy dive, but I only managed to get to 45 as the contractions and bad sensations were freaking me out. After that I did a bunch of 30+ and even they felt difficult!!! It was very strange and frustrating!

I thought I was still tired from the competition. I thought I just needed more rest and the dives would feel normal again. Maybe a week wasn’t enough? So I tried to rest some more. 2 days, 3 days, 4 days… But it didn’t help. When I am back in the water again and tried to do what I thought were easy dives, the contractions were still there and I was experiencing strong sensations of urge to breath, stress and fear.

I was no longer in a competition, and freediving was not my career. There were no sponsorship that depended on my performance. So it literally does not matter what dives I do. I reminded myself of that and tried to work with my mind to take any residual pressure off. But nothing was working. I couldn’t do a single dive without the nervous contractions anymore!!

I took the depth back to 50m, 40m, 30m! I was amazed at the fact that I was still having contractions during the descend of a 20 metres dive!!! It was unbelievable!

In the weeks following, I tried resting some more, and only doing shallow dives so that I could work on relaxation.

I spoke to other freediver friends, some of them suggested taking more rest (months off), while others recommended the opposite - continue working through it and pushing through the mental barriers. Some people said that the fact that I was thinking about it probably triggered those contractions - but this was not the case as in some sessions I actually forgot about them but was then unpleasantly reminded of their existence when they came on. Some freedivers said that these contractions were called nervous contraction because they came on when I was not relaxed, but honestly I got to a point where I was as relaxed (or unrelaxed) as I had always been, the same as any other average dives that I had done, and those contractions still came on. We were all guessing and speculating, because no one knew exactly what was going on.

I was completely at a loss for what might have caused them and what I could do to stop them. I wondered if they would ever stop. I miss contraction-free dives!!!

Surfacing

The Process of Dealing With the Trauma

I soon went back to London where there is no deep diving. This was my opportunity to take a long break and properly rest. I had four months off - no depth training, pool training or even dry static apnea.

I was fully back to my London lifestyle, focused on work, looking after my plants, spending weekends on creative work, and carrying out restorative self-care routines such as boxing and yoga.

In October, I had a short scouting trip to Bali to check out the freediving scene there. I took the opportunity to do some depth trainings. Before going to the sea, I was a little nervous and very curious: what will happen now? How will I feel after the long break? Will I be able to dive? Will the contractions still be there? In the end it turned out that I had some really nice dives, and was able to go to 50m with relative ease (which was the depth limit in Amed), but I was still experiencing stress contractions in some of dives. They seemed to come on irregularly, though there was definitely some correlation to stress. If I was less relaxed, they would come on more frequently and strongly. This made sense, but by this point I was less interested in why they appeared but more eager to find a way to get rid of them so I can get back to my pre-trauma diving sensations.

Back in London, I even tried EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) which is a psychotherapy that is supposed to help people process and recover from past trauma. It was certainly an interesting experience, and it was the first time that I relived the moments of the competition in all its details that I could recall, six months after the event. It’s hard to know if it “worked” or “helped”. I can only say that there was no magic moment as I didn’t notice any dramatic improvements after the therapy. But sometimes these things take time, and an accumulation of the effect from different processing techniques may eventually reach a turning point at a later stage.

What Didn’t Kill Me Made Me Stronger

I came back to Dominica the following year and started training “for a new season”, though I didn’t have a goal or a competition that I was training for. My mind was more curious than ever: will these contractions stay with me forever?

I was taking my time to get back. Doing depth training between 45 to 60 metres, I logged my dives from every session meticulously. These logs provided a beautiful track record of the ups and downs I was experiencing during trauma recovery. Some days I would feel good and have no contractions in a deep dive; other days I would suffer from bad sensations and stress contractions in what should be easy dives.

Eventually, after months of rest, and training, and therapy, and more rest and more training, I was finally slowly getting back to my pre-trauma level of performance and diving sensations. I remember logging the first post-trauma dive when I had those >3 min long hangs where I felt so good and contractions-free again. I remember having the first deep Free Immersion dive when I felt they were so enjoyable and almost effortless again. I also remember logging dives where there were bad sensations yet I still made the dives which made me proud. These breakthroughs gave me hope that although it’s taking time, the situation is improving, and I can get through this. What’s more, I realised that while the contractions still happen in some dives, this whole trauma experience is going to make me a stronger diver because now I have learned how to dive with contractions.

I would say that now I am back to “normal”, or 90% normal. I still have those nervous or stress contractions on the way down sometimes, and they are still not nice. But I know now that I can handle them. I have more confidence that I can complete an announced dive, and I am less likely to turn early because of mental blockers such as fear or doubt because my mind is stronger.

I am sure there will be many other roadblocks in the future of my freediving journey. Every event is a learning opportunity, and I have no regrets giving my best to my first competition. Given the opportunity I would have done it again!

I AM OK!

Have you had any similar experience? How did you deal with it? Share it with me in the comments!