What the hell is Freediving?

I constantly get blank looks from people when I mention that I freedive, which are actually better than a lot of comments I get, such as "right, so how high do you dive then?", "you guys are mad, i'd never parachute from anything" or what one guy said when I said I was competing in the world champs in Egypt "right.... so where do you do that, in the Nile?".

So.... here is the layman's guide.

Freediving is anything where you hold your breath underwater. Over the years a few different disciplines have been invented, but essentially it's all snorkelling at it's finest. In competitive freediving there are probably around 25o-300 athletes competing in Here is a run-down of the different disciplines, divided into 2 groups - those in the pool (non-depth) and those in open water (depth) :

Pool

Static Apnea - holding your breath for as long as possible, usually lying on the surface. This is a simple test of breath hold, and is very challenging considering all you're doing is lying there, as mentally you can be all over the place thinking of reasons why you don't need to be holding your breath. My best in comp in this is 5 minutes 20 seconds, though I did 5:44 recently but got disqualified on a technicality. In training i've done over 6min a couple of times. Since i've not done any successful competition statics this year I don't have a world ranking. Last year's ranking was 121st. In Australian all time ranking i'm 6th.

Dynamic with fins - travelling horizontally underwater attempting to cover the greatest distance on the one breath. You can only use a pair of fins or a monofin (big dolphin tail thing you strap your feet into) for propulsion. My personal best (PB) was set in competition in the World Championship this year at 132m, ranking me 64th in the world, 3rd in Australia.

Dynamic without fins - same deal but no fins are allowed. The athlete typically does a split breast stroke, averaging around 3-5 arm strokes per 25m. It's very slow and energy efficient. Technique is crucial in this one, so I have spent a lot of time working on this, as hydrodynamically i'm like a fridge in a wetsuit. I'm currently ranked 37th, 2nd in Australia.

Open Water

Constant Weight - the freediver descends and ascends a rope to a pre-determined depth. They can use fins or a monofin and/or their arms but no other method of propulsion. They can't hold the rope or use the rope, it is a guide only. They can't take weight during the dive, hence the name. This is the big freedive discipline that everyone considers the most pure and/or important. My best in comp is 52m from 2006 though i've done 55m in training. World ranking 65th, Aus ranking 3rd.

Constant Weight No Fins - same deal but no propulsion methods at all. Probably the hardest of all the disciplines as you don't have much propulsion in your arms and legs and at depth you become heavier. Definitely the purest of all the disciplines. My PB was set in comp this year at 37m - world ranking 13th, Aus ranking 2nd.

Free Immersion - The freediver dives underwater without the use of propulsion equipment, but only by pulling on the rope during descent and ascent. This one doesn't make it into comp very often. I haven't done this discipline yet, but watch this space...

Variable Weight - The freediver descends with the help of weight and ascends using his own strength: arms and/or legs, either by pulling or not pulling on the rope. Mostly the freediver used a sled on the rope, which is basically a piece of metal with handlebars and a brake and lots of weight. The diver rides this down, leaves it at the bottom and makes their own way back up. Because the freediver uses weight to get down, the depths are a bit deeper than those in the self-propelled disciplines. I haven't done this before but once again, watch this space...

No-Limits - no rules as such, the diver gets down as deep as they can and come back whichever way they want. Usually it's a sled down and at the bottom they fill a baloon with air from a tank and the balloon brings them back up. Typically deeper than anything else and more dangerous. There have been a couple of deaths in the past but these have been at fairly extreme depths. This and Variable Weight are not competed in, only record attempts are performed.

Now you know all there is to know about freediving. It's been around for hundreds of years, from the Japanese and Korean Ama divers to the Greek sponge divers. As a sport it's been around for probably 50 years. Much bigger around the Med than elsewhere such as Australia, which is no surprise as the history is there. Growth wise it's picking up every year, more and more people take up the sport and start competing, comps are getting bigger and better organised every time.

A Brief History of Time...

I suppose I should share a bit on how you ended up reading this blog. I grew up in a rural part of Australia, not far from the beach. As a youngster we had a pool in the back yard and my brother and I used to do plenty of laps underwater. Mum has some good swimming genes so we both got into it quite a bit, though neither of us did any proper training. I remember going to a family friend's farm when I was probably 7 or so and swimming in their creek, we had a competition to see who could swim to the bottom. I remember getting to the bottom in what seemed like 50m deep murky water and picking up a rock and bringing it back up. In hindsight it was probably about 5m deep but hey, I was pretty small back then. When I was about 10 I could do 2 and a half laps underwater in the pool, so roughly 30m. When I was 12 we moved to the beach and I started bodyboarding more and did a little bit of snorkeling but not that much.

In 1990 I saw a movie called The Big Blue on tv, we taped it and I still have the tape now. It's a story about 2 freedivers in a rivalry and diving deeper than anyone else in the world. A real romantic kind of story which got me hooked on the sport from that point. Now though you talk to any freediver and they'll say they watched The Big Blue as a kid and fell in love with the sport, but they secretly cringe now as the movie is a bit over the top, and Rosanna Arquette is possibly the most annoying person alive. After that I went to uni in a town hundreds of miles from the ocean and then moved to Sydney and put aside all watery things for a bit.

On my honeymoon in 2004 we went to Fiji and I managed to get down to about 13m a few times on some of the reefs. On our daily snorkelling excursions I met a guy that had a set of freediving fins (ridiculously long looking flippers) so I got chatty with him, turned out Rick lived in the next suburb from me in Sydney. Before we could exchange details or anything he ended up getting gastro and I didn't see him for the rest of the trip. Back in Sydney I hunted on the internet for a couple of months and found out that there is a whole competitive sport based around this crazy nonsense. I found a shop that sold freedive equipment and went in to buy some fins. The first person I spot was Rick looking at some wetsuits. Not long after we started spearfishing together, then eventually a freedive course was offered in Sydney by Wal Steyn, the best freediver in Australia and one of the best in the world. Out of all of the guys on the course, only myself and another guy, Nathan kept training. We trained twice weekly for a year and a half and kept in touch with Wal and met a couple of other Sydney freedivers along the way. Late in 2005 we moved to London and I started going to some competitions over here, including 2 World Championships. My best rankings in comp have been 2nd in the British Championships in 2007 (Wales), the Apnoe Greene Pool Comp in 2006 (Germany) and a 3rd in the SaltFree Summer Splash (Wales) in 2006.

Welcome to Benny's Freediving Adventures

It seems these days nothing you do is real unless you do it on the internet. So i'm joining the rest of the mob and reporting my life as it happens. Well not everything, just the bits that relate to freediving, which is, well, everything. I'm doing this for reasons twofold - firstly, I am essentially a lazy bugger and if I see things written down it will hopefully inspire me or make me feel guilty enough to keep up a training regime. Secondly, i'm about to head off on a project i've been working on for a long time, and I figure friends reading a blog at their leisure will be better than emailing the world and sundry with pages of crud. So welcome to Benny's Freediving blog!