Includes:
SSI Standard Digital Manual all languages – Digital SSI International Certification – Equipment.
Your future Performances:
3-4 minutes Static breath hold – 25-30 meters freedive
Dahab is the best place in the world to take a Freediving course! Water is warm all year round, we have no current, no waves and 20-30m visibility underwater. These are the ideal conditions to learn how to freefall. After your first freediving course and a couple of training sessions, you should be comfortable with 15-20meters freedives. Around that depth, your body will lose its buoyancy and you will no longer need to swim down. We call this the FREEFALL and that will the main skill to learn during your advanced freediving training. Freefall is basically any motion of your body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. Freedivers describe it as flying underwater or floating in space. To learn this skill we will add some weight on your belt to enter the Freefall very shallow where you feel comfortable. Once you have the right technique you will try it in your deeper dives with your normal amount of weight of course. It will allow you to save a lot of oxygen and will make your descent incredibly easier. In your SSI Level 2 you will also learn about Frenzel equalisation and how to train it. This technique is simple to learn. Instead of pushing air up with your belly, you will use your tongue as a piston to send air into your ears. This freediving technique also helps saving a lot of oxygen. It’s one of the most efficient and powerful techniques in the sport because it allows us to go deeper with a small effort. If you ever experienced ear pain after freediving/scuba diving, or if you have to lift your head up every time you equalise, then you must learn Frenzel.
During this freediving course you will also learn how to stretch your ribcage, lungs and diaphragm in order to hold your breath longer and feel way more comfortable.
After your freediving beginner course and a couple of training sessions, you should be able to hold your breath 2-3 minutes and be ready for more. During this freediving course, your instructor will explain you how to train your breath hold and his coaching will guide you to new heights. Harry Houdini, illusionist and stunt performer, was capable of holding his breath for over three minutes. But today, competitive freedivers can manage over ten minutes with a single breath. The oxygen you breathe is transferred to your blood and delivered to the various tissues of your body, where it is converted into energy. The waste product of this process is CO2, which is carried back to the lungs and released from the body upon exhalation.
When you hold your breath, O2 is still converted to CO2, but the latter has nowhere to go. It re-circulates in your veins, acidifying your blood and telling your body to breathe, first through a warm sensation in your lungs, and eventually in the form of strong spasms of your diaphragm, commonly called “contractions”. Luckily for us, it is easy to train physically and mentally to cope with those signals for a while.
Learning freediving skills in the sea before the pool has never been a good idea. Confined water or pool training is safe, controlled, warm and familiar. At Freedive Dahab you will learn freediving techniques first in the shallow water then try it in the ocean. In this training you will learn more about weighting, finning, streamlining and speed. You will also learn and practice warm up routine and safety skills. Weighting becomes more important the longer you want to stay at the same depth: this is why it is vital for the Dynamic Apnea, When you find your neutral buoyancy for dynamic, your body stays in mid-water without floating up or sinking down. Streamlining is also an important part of dynamic apnea, but so is relaxation. The key is to find the balance between the two. It’s good to train with a tight streamline in order to increase shoulder flexibility, then back it off slightly when you go for maximum performance. When it comes to speed, a part of it depends on if you are a person with primarily a good breath hold time, or primarily good fitness. Either you treat dynamic as a “moving static” or you use your muscles more to move “faster” to cover more distance in shorter time. But remember, “fast” in freediving is still in the upper range of slow, compare with other water sports. During this freediving course you will make your technique sharper and understand how your body works to max up your performances.
Freediving legend Umberto Pelizzari said:
“The scuba diver dives to look around. The free diver dives to look inside”
Freediving is a form of meditation or self-discovery for many freedivers, diving deeper not only into the ocean but also into themselves.
The more you train, the more experience and comfort you gain, the deeper you will go. Many beginner freedivers did not believe it was possible for them to reach 15-20 meter unless they were super humans. But most beginner freedivers can do it already after their beginner course and maybe just a few training sessions. The same will happen during your SSI Level 2. Freediving to 30m isn’t much harder than 20m when you have the right techniques. Even though we are not able to breathe underwater, out bodies are built to adapt to breath hold in a fantastic way, starting to utilize the O2 available in the most efficient way possible. Your freediving training in Dahab will provide you techniques to enhance this even further, extending your breath hold time and provide you with a unique way to experience the aquatic world. Freediving is one of the fastest-growing water-sports in the world. The better you become at it, the more you will be able to explore the oceans around the world.
DAY 1: Starting at about 9am with some review about breathing and breathe-up techniques and theory about different training methods applicable to both confined and open water training, and dry training. We follow with a static breath-hold session and debriefing. After the lunch break we do the first OW session, working mainly on buoyancy and free falling.
DAY 2: Theory followed by CO2 tables dynamic in confined water, and after lunch break we head to the second OW session, to keep practicing free falling and learn Frenzel equalization.
DAY 3: Two OW sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon with theory and exam in the break. At the end of the day debriefing with wrap-up and celebration photos for our Facebook Page!