It is the practice of holding your breath when diving underwater without the use of breathing equipment. It is undertaken for a variety of reasons: to become more physically and emotionally aware of your body, to be free from heavy scuba equipment, as a way to take underwater photos, to catch food, or to compete professionally. Freediving is a safe and increasingly popular activity. To some it always remains recreational, to others it becomes a way of life.
IT IS DEVELOPING IN FOUR MAIN AREAS:
GENERAL HEALTH AND FITNESS
Freediving is accessible to anyone with good health and fitness. Regular and focused freediving improves your physical fitness and mental well-being through anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic exercise generally promotes strength, power and fitness while building lean muscle mass and physical endurance. Light hypoxic training, whereby oxygen availability in your body is limited by using specific training techniques, is known to have positive effect on your physiological systems. Freediving can also improve your mental health by increasing your ability to consciously relax, to manage stress, to focus and concentrate, and to become more mindful and self aware.
RECREATIONAL
Recreational freediving remains a leisure activity aimed purely at seeking pleasure from a freedive and is non-competitive. You can learn and develop new techniques to freedive underwater, while also enhancing your physical, psychological and emotional state. Training can cover general diet and fitness, techniques such as the breath-hold as well as relaxation exercises. Recreational freediving either in a pool or in open water, can help to reset your mind, allow you to feel renewed, and help you to find harmony with nature and your inner calm.
APPLIED
Applied freediving signifies the more advanced skills and techniques used by freedivers to support their daily underwater activities such as hunting for seafood, exploring the underwater world, providing assistance as part of rescue training or undertaking scientific research with Giant Manta Rays. Freediving as part of daily life has been undertaken all over the world for thousands of years. The female ‘Ama’ divers in Japan hunt for seafood and pearls while the Bajau people, indigenous to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines live at sea and spearfish. Freediving is their life and their existence.
COMPETIVE
Competitive freediving focuses on the specific skill development of a freediver for competition and record attempts. There are different disciplines for pool and open water freediving, including static apnea (breath-hold without moving), dynamic apnea (diving to distance with breath-hold) and various forms of depth diving. Freedivers perform these disciplines while competing against others to achieve personal bests and to break records. There are different rules and equipment for each discipline. Reaching the top of the competitive freediving community requires total commitment as a professional athlete, to physical fitness and skills development as well as mental training, diet and rest. Competition freedivers have a strong social community where experiences, skills and knowledge are shared regularly.
Content provided by Molchanovs instructor Chris Jackson in Playa del Carmen. For more information or freedive course booking click the link