Break Into Freediving: from zero to 20 metres [My Freediving Trilogy, Part 1]
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This is Part One of My Freediving Trilogy.
One of the reasons why I thought myself to be the opposite of a talented freediver was because I was pathetic at going down underwater before I took my first freediving class. At sea you see swimmers and snorkelers plunge into the blue so elegantly, cruising around and touching down at the sandy bottom before heading up for air. It always seemed so cool to me, even if it’s just 4, 5 metres. I could never do that. In fact, I have two friends who had the privilege to witness my pathetic attempts of “diving down” at sea (once in Croatia, once in Barcelona). It was so shockingly horrendous that they’d happily talk about the anecdotes whenever they have the chance, and give testimonials on my prehistoric lack of ability to dive down even 0.5cm.
For a long time I always thought it was perhaps because I have high body fat which makes it difficult to go down. I just feel that I “float” too much. I exhaled and still struggled to go down, and then I needed to breathe again before I managed to go anywhere. How does one do it?! It was only when I took the SSI level 1 training that I realised if there was one reason I was not going down, it’s because I didn’t know how to do duck dive, AT ALL.
Duck Dive
Somehow I was very awkward when it came to duck dive.
I had absolutely no idea how to do it, and even after my instructor explained it to me and after watching others do it several times, I still felt very intimidated to practise it. During the level 1 course, in the first couple of sessions I kept asking the instructor to show it to me again so that I could procrastinate doing it myself. Somehow I felt very stupid and kind of ashamed to try. I felt clumsy and had no idea how to move my body. I thought I must look ridiculous (I probably did).
A session was only so long and there was so much to learn, the time that could be dedicated to duck dive was not so much. The good news is that you can practise duck dive over and over again without much rest, since you are not going deep, you don’t need much breath-up or rest in between the attempts. But because I was battling the funny thoughts in my head, I didn’t manage to do many attempts, and somehow my arms and legs and hips decided not to coordinate.
I had to practise more, so in the afternoons after the course sessions, with a couple of freediving friends we went for “fun dives” where I tried to practise and convert the theoretical understanding of the movement to muscle memory. From what I remember, a big part of those attempts, especially at the beginning, was battling with my head. I had to stop myself from over-thinking and worrying, and just try. Try, fail, try again, getting a bit better, try a third time, getting a bit worse… and so on. Eventually in one of the fun dive sessions, my body suddenly understood the key of duck dive (or what I was doing wrong) - it was the hip movement instead of the arms and legs, and I made the biggest progress.
With the foundation of the theory - you know what you’re supposed to do, you’ve seen how others do it, now it’s just a matter of finding the feeling of doing it right, and doing it enough times so that it becomes muscle memory. What I realised in the process was that although duck dive was about going down, the main force does not come from the arms stroking the water (which was what I tried to do frantically before I knew better), but from the hip movement that propelled the body to go downwards. Once I changed the focus point, it all became much easier, more intuitive and effortless. A good duck dive can already send you 5-6 metres deep without much effort, which is a good starting point for a relaxed bi-fins dive. It was definitely the most useful skill I acquired in the level 1 training that started to send me down.
Practising duck dive without fins
Frenzel Equalisation
One of the most frequently asked questions I get from a non-freediver who had some experience of attempting to go down a few metres in the water is “don’t your ears hurt when you go so deep?”
Prior to freediving, I was scuba diving for many years. Equalising my ears was rarely a problem. I only had issues a couple of times when my sinuses were a bit congested. However, my “equalisation skill” in scuba diving didn’t help me in freediving at all.
My first freediving instructor was wonderful - patient, methodical, kind, and knowledgeable. However, he did not want to teach me Frenzel. I still don’t know the reason for it until today, during the course when I was struggling with equalisation, he (knowing that I did scuba for years) insisted that the equalisation in freediving was exactly the same as in scuba diving. Fortunately I had some freediving friends, and by that time I already learned from them that there are two different techniques: the one that scuba divers typically use called Valsalva (which is essentially pinching your nose and try to ‘blow out’ air), and the one freedivers use called Frenzel (which uses some part of the tongue / throat muscles to equalise). I just didn’t know how to do the latter yet.
(A little more explanation for my non-diver friends on the reason for those 2 techniques: Scuba divers mostly use Valsalva because it’s easy to learn. But this equalisation technique uses the abdominal muscles which requires a lot of energy. However in scuba diving, you have what’s close to unlimited air so it’s not a problem that you consume more energy and oxygen when you equalise. In freediving, you need a different technique due to the fact that your body is upside down which means your lungs are above your head. And since air travels up, this means that it’s much more difficult to push air from the lungs into the ears in this upside-down position. This combined with the fact that you only have one breath of air, plus that air in your lungs gets compressed as you go deeper, it becomes even more difficult to push air from the shrinking lung to the head to equalise the ears. Hence the need for a different equalisation technique, which utilises the air in the mouth instead of the lung to equalise the middle ear. Besides, Frenzel is a more effective technique which means it consumes much less energy and therefore saves you more oxygen so you can safely hold your breath longer.)
So after some hours of theory study and a successful pool session, we went to the sea and I had my first very frustrating open water session where I attempted going down by pulling a line attached to a buoy. At first, I made the attempt as how freedivers normally dive - with head down. But I didn’t go far. In fact, as soon as I was upside down, before my feet even left the surface, I already felt the pressure in my ears so I stopped going further. This situation repeated in several attempts. Initially, my instructor thought I was probably too nervous, and said I need to relax. But we soon realised that I was not nervous at all, and the ear pressure was not created by psychological tension or nervousness of being in the water. Then I was asked to try going down feet first (head up). This time, miraculously I managed to pull down the line to 10 metres, equalising with valsalva as I would in scuba diving. This gave me a little bit of solace in the frustrating session, but I knew I was not using the right technique.
Pulling down the line with head up
After getting out of the water, in the debrief my instructor repeated his belief that I should be able to go down with the equalisation I knew. I was also quite perplexed as to why I was not able to go down with valsalva at all since I heard that it sometimes can work for some people to 10-20m. Regardless, I knew Frenzel was something I needed to learn, and I was determined to learn it. So I made the decision to take the next day off and practise it dry, as it makes no sense to struggle in the water if I can’t even do the right movement on land. With 3 (apparently very popular) YouTube videos my friends shared with me, I started my trial-and-error journey of learning Frenzel. (Check this post for a more detailed account on how I learned Frenzel and the references to those 3 videos.)
Eventually, it took me a full day to learn the movement - sure, now looking back a day sounds like nothing, especially for some freedivers (and some very good ones) it took them weeks or even months to get the hang of Frenzel, but back then it was a very frustrating unknown ahead of me. I kept thinking “Maybe I just cannot do it? Maybe I don’t have those muscles? What if I never manage to learn this technique? Do I need to give up freediving now?” Not knowing if this is a skill you’d ever be able to acquire can be unsettling and demotivating in a learning process. But luckily I didn’t have to endure the uncertainty for too long. After hours and hours of trying in front of the mirror, pestering other freedivers to demonstrate and looking into their open mouths, alternating between the 3 videos and trying all the sounds they ask you to make to get a sense of the tongue movement, I finally felt a hint of the right movement. Checking in the mirror, it seemed like my throat and nose were showing the right movement, while my belly was relaxed and my ears were popping slightly. I was so excited and couldn’t wait to test it out in the water.
The next day we went back to the sea. I was able to use Frenzel to go down with head up and horizontal position. My instructor checked to make sure my belly was relaxed when I went down, which validated that I have indeed switched from Valsava to Frenzel. Somehow I was still unable to equalise head down vertically, probably because the muscle movement was not strong enough to create enough pressure for the ears to equalise.
Even though I still didn’t manage to dive head first, I was very encouraged by the fact that I could equalise using a weak Frenzel. Then from there, once you know the right muscle movement to look for, exercising to strengthen the muscles becomes a diligence game. I was carrying my toy - the otovent and balloon everywhere I go, and practised with some exercises whenever I had a chance. I remember my friends laughing their ass off when I took it out and started blowing into the balloon in a restaurant when we were waiting for food.
But the hard work paid off! In my 3rd open water session, I was able to Free Immersion (FIM) head down vertically to 12 metres, which was a great achievement to me and a huge encouragement. With this breakthrough, I could also start working more on a few other techniques such as the duck dive, and passing some technical requirements for Level 1 (such as mask-free ascend and arms only ascend from 10 metres).
Practising Frenzel with otovent while hanging out…
From there, with the basics of duck dive and Frenzel equalisation, I was already able to “play” in the water in ways I wasn’t able to before. I could finally do what I had been jealous of other people doing for a long time. Going for a swim in the sea with other freedivers with or without fins became so much fun. I had to work on my psychological barriers of feeling ashamed to “TRY”, but eventually grew really fond of the process of trying and finding out what happens. Maybe I fail and make a fool of myself, then we will laugh together and I will try again; or maybe I make some progress and every little bit counts and adds up to a big step up (or in this case, down).
In the end, I completed my Level 1 training on session 5 where I got to 17 metres and saw the wreck in Tabaiba! I could still remember the incredible feeling when I looked down and saw the wreck standing there, so calm and majestic, and the universe was silent as if time stopped for some seconds. My goal before the Level 1 training was to be able to go down to 5 metres and to be able to “play” underwater. I think I have achieved my goal :)
Afternoon fun dives
