By early 2003 I had spent a year and a half or so dabbling at freediving. I enjoyed going on the Sundiver and other dive boats to Catalina and other destinations, dipping down 15 to 20 feet at a time to get pictures of marine animals. Because I could virtually never line up a dive buddy interested in the odd combination of freediving photography, I kept my dive profiles intentionally very conservative. I reckoned that if I stayed within about 20 feet of the surface and dove for no more than 30 to 45 seconds at a time, the chances of blacking out -- freediving's greatest danger -- would be extremely remote.
Even so, I began to wonder how far I might be able to push myself if I got some real freediving training. So I began to look around for possibilities.
Pipin Ferreras, a well-known freediver from Cuba, was known to run a school in Florida. Another couple operated a freediving camp seasonally in Baja California. And there were yet other operations in Europe. The most accessible, however, appeared to be a four-day Advanced Freediver clinic put on periodically in Malibu, Florida or Hawaii under the auspices of Performance Freediving, a company run by Kirk Krack, a freediving coach and trainer based in Vancouver.
Before he turned just about exclusively to freediving, Kirk, who was 34 at the time I took the clinic in early 2003, was into technical scuba diving and was involved in setting up and running DiveTech in Cayman. He was certified as an instructor trainer for trimix, trimix gas blending and rebreathers. In the Cayman Islands he was involved in a mapping project that took him down to depths of 500 feet on scuba.
While there he developed an interest in freediving, and in 1999 set a record in Cayman for a constant ballast freedive using a scooter by holding his breath while descending to 250 feet. In Cayman he also got involved with Ferreras in running the International Association of Freedivers, and began coaching competitive freedivers like Tanya Streeter.
Kirk subsequently moved back to Canada, and if I heard him correctly I think he said during the clinic that he hadn't had a scuba tank on his back in 18 months. When he had scuba-dived relatively recently it was as a safety diver for freediving competitions.
The stable of athletes who Kirk was coaching included Brett LeMaster, Mandy-Rae Cruickshank and Martin Stepanek, each of whom has held world's records in various freediving disciplines. Mandy held the then-world's record for women's static apnea (holding your breath while floating motionless face down in the water) at 6:16, while Martin held the world's record for men's static apnea at 8:06. Kirk is no cigar-chomping coach who sits on the sidelines; he routinely freedives in the multiple-hundreds-of-feet range and said he tries to keep his depth ability within 10 meters (33 feet) of whichever world class athlete he is training in an event.
For the past three years, Kirk had run about 30 Advanced Freediver clinics in Florida, California and Hawaii, training some 500 divers. The majority are probably spearfishers, but the group also included people into sightseeing or taking pictures while freediving, or who are simply curious about it. There are performance prerequisites to get in, but they were not too daunting.
Our clinic group included 16 divers, mostly from California but some from as far away as Alaska and New England. Many were spearfishers, although the two fellows from Alaska consider themselves reef tourists, and one divemaster from an L.A. area dive shop took it just because she was curious about freediving. The local host for the class was an instructor who teaches through Malibu Divers named Grant Graves. Kirk and Martin flew in to teach, and were assisted by Grant and a freediver from Florida named Tony Marcuccino.
Saturday
On day one, we had a class session at a hotel in Santa Monica (the classroom at Malibu Divers was booked). We spent a considerable amount of time going through safety and emergency management. Performance Freedivers' approach to safety is like that of Global Underwater Explorers in the scuba world -- which is to say, it's their first and overriding focus. They drilled into us that it's possible to black out even holding your breath in a pool (and, in fact, one participant did during the weekend). As long as the airway is protected and the diver is at or is brought quickly to the surface, recovery is virtually always fast and automatic without even the need for rescue breathing. Drowning generally occurs only when a freediver isn't properly supervised. So rule no. 1 for this organization is that you never put a toe in the water unless you're in a buddy team -- and the buddy team means direct, constant supervision of each other, not "same ocean, same day" buddying. We spent a lot of time on correct buddy procedures, how to monitor each other, what to do if your buddy experiences trouble, etc.
The classroom session also got into breathing techniques, physiology, training exercises and schedules, etc. Divers like Martin and Mandy have lung capacities considerably greater than the average person, but Martin stated that that isn't the main thing in freediving; "It's 80 percent up here," he said, tapping his forehead. [He added, incidentally, that his lung capacity (approximately double that of the average adult male) is not because of genetics or a fluke of birth, but rather is due to the fact that he participated in competitive monofin swimming beginning at age 7 or 8. Martin, who was 25 at the time of my clinic, believes his physique was built by training at ages during his childhood and teens when his ribcage and lungs were still growing and relatively flexible.]
Because of the fact that 80 percent of the challenge is in the head, a lot of emphasis in freediving is given to getting properly relaxed and avoiding panic reactions. Some famous freedivers meditate, do yoga, listen to guided imagery tapes, etc. (Then again, Martin said he prefers hard rock and finds it relaxing.) For our class, before each diving session we would go through a ritual of stretching followed by specific breathing patterns to slow the heart and relax.
After Saturday's classroom session, we went to the pool at Pepperdine University. Our first exercise was going to be a "static," which is to say, holding our breath while floating face down in the pool. This was an eye-opening experience for me. I expected this to be harder to do in the pool than sitting on the couch because it seemed to me that having your face submerged in water would create more tension. On the contrary, it was far more relaxing and enjoyable than dry static; it was sort of like floating in a womb state, and after a minute or so I sometimes had the sensation of gently moving or rotating as I lost spatial reference. After stretching, we suited up and split into buddy teams. One buddy would breathe up and do the static breath-hold with the other buddy resting his or her palm on the small of the breath-holder's back to keep them stabilized in the pool, all the while keeping time on a dive watch and tapping the breath-holder periodically. Each time he or she is tapped, the breath-holder has to wiggle a finger to show that they are okay.
Now, when I was practicing breath-hold on the couch at home, I got to be able to get to 1 minute without undue effort. In the two weeks before the clinic, I gradually moved this up toward 1:15 and then 1:30. My best time at home was 1:40. Definitely no threat to the world-class competitors.
In the pool, we all started by doing a static breath-hold for 1 minute, which everyone completed fairly easily. Then we went to 2 minutes, and then 3 and more if we could do it. My best time for the first day ended up being around 2:10.
Sunday
The second day we did another round of static breath-holds in the Pepperdine pool. I bumped my best time up to 2:30. I felt I might have been able to keep going, but my buddy had gotten fairly cold by this point and her hand shivering on my back was distracting me. Most of the students, many of whom were fairly accomplished freedivers, did around 3:00 to 3:30. The shortest was 2:00 and the longest was 5:10. (By comparison Kirk, the clinic leader, generally does between 6 and 7 minutes, and Martin held the world record at 8:06.)
Out of 16 students, three who did the longest breath-holds experienced "sambas" as they finished, and one is believed to have momentarily blacked out. A samba is a brief loss of motor control resulting in twitching or mild convulsions. Under the rigorous buddy system practiced by Performance Freedivers, these divers were quickly supported and felt completely normal within 10 seconds. Thus the experience is regarded as no big deal -- it simply shows you the outer limit of your ability.
Along the way during the breath-hold, most divers began experiencing involuntary contractions at one point, which is the body's attempt to breath in response to rising CO2 and dropping O2. Most began experiencing these between 2:30 and 3:00. They are considered normal signposts along the way (a diver might remember "I went to three contractions before terminating the dive"). I didn't experience any contractions on my 2:30 dive -- meaning that as a relatively unpracticed breath-holder my static was not limited by sheer physical ability, but rather by my psychological discomfort as my CO2 level rose and my O2 level dropped. One of the main thrusts of freediving training is to become gradually more and more comfortable to this CO2-O2 change without panicking. After the static breath-holds, we put on fins and went into the deep end of the pool for practice in descents, buddy rescues and other procedures. I'm happy to say that although my breath-hold may need work, I was given excellent marks on my entry technique (floating face down in the water, then bending at the waist, cocking one knee and raising that leg to begin sinking). Amusingly, there was an open water scuba class in the bottom of the pool, kneeling in a semi-circle as they performed mask clears, breathing off a free- flowing reg, etc. I don't know what they made of us people with snorkels hovering alongside them as they worked.
Monday
On day 3, we took the Catalina Express over to Avalon and went to Casino Point for an afternoon dive session. There is an old swim platform lying on the bottom at the northern corner of the dive park in about 60 feet of water. Four descent lines were tied to this structure and tethered to floats on the surface. We paired off into groups of four divers working at each float. We first did "free immersion" descents -- which is to say we pulled ourselves down the rope and then back up with our hands, without finning. This was an interesting experience I had never tried before. I had thought that it would be more tedious and thus more difficult than finning ascents. On the contrary, pulling down the rope was much easier, at least in the first 30 feet where we were weighted to be positively buoyant. Past 30 feet, finning became the more efficient way to travel.
The coaches stressed the importance of looking sideways at the line and not craning our necks downward while descending (or upward while ascending). Partly this is done to focus on one step at a time and avoid a panic reaction. It is also done to keep the airway properly situated to conserve air.
After a couple of warmup dives to 15 and 30 feet, we began to test how far we could go. Most of us started out a little too quickly, a good way to burn up air. But a freedive is like a long-distance marathon where you have to pace yourself carefully and just take it a step at a time. The desirable descent/ascent rate suggested to us was 200 feet per minute (still considerably faster than a safe scuba ascent).
Since all of us could hold our breaths for at least 2 minutes in the pool, Kirk told us that theoretically there was no reason we couldn't get down to a depth of 100 feet. This is based on the idea that your practical time on a working descent is half of the time you can do in a static in the pool. So if you can do 2 minutes static in the pool, you should be able to do 1 minute on a working dive. At 200 feet per minute, one minute gives you enough time to go down 100 feet and come back up. This, of course, is theoretical and requires adequate practice. To the best of my knowledge, no one in the class actually achieved working dives as long as half the length of their pool static time.
As I began to do finning descents past 30 feet I started getting twinges in certain teeth. I had experienced these before and knew them to be caused by pressure imbalance in my maxiliary sinuses (which lie just above the teeth). In fact I'd seen an ear-nose-throat doctor the month before and had been on a course of relatively gentle treatment (mostly daily saltwater nasal washes, then before the diving day papaya and pineapple enzymes that act as natural anti-inflammatories, and finally aspirin as a second anti-inflammatory on the diving day). I found that if I slowed my descent and cleared carefully, the twinges would go away. As I made descents down toward 40 feet, however, the twinges got stronger. My best dive Monday was to 41 feet, after which my teeth were quite painful and I had to stop. Many divers made it to the bottom at about 60 feet. Vis was only about 12 feet. Some of the non-California divers expressed interest in their first encounter with a calico bass.
Tuesday
Monday night we stayed over on Catalina, and on Tuesday we boarded the King Neptune, one of a couple of dive boats that run from Avalon. The young divemaster seemed to think the enterprise was fairly nutty and expressed his (joking? half-joking?) concern that several people were going to die. For our morning dives the boat anchored in about 200 feet off Hamilton Beach, a couple of coves to the northwest of Avalon. Kirk and crew brought out a giant X made of 10-foot arms of PVC pipe. This was placed in the water with a float on the end of each arm; attached to each float was 150 to 200 feet of descent line, weighted at the bottom with 25 pounds of lead.
Given my sinus situation I decided to unleash a weapon of mass decongestion -- Afrin spray. A lot of people view this as nasty stuff, as there can be a big rebound of stuffiness after using it which can cause many users to develop a habituation. It's an effective topical decongestant, though, and compared to Sudafed in pill form doesn't raise the heartrate as much (thus killing bottom time). So I gave each nostril a good dosing an hour before hitting the water. I managed my best descent of the clinic, to 50 feet. (By comparison my previous greatest depth in freediving had been about half of that, 27 feet.) This time, my sinuses didn't bother me in the slightest; the limiting factor was just the newness and slight anxiety caused by being that deep without a breathing source.
There was quite a strong current running, and during the periods that I acted as surface safety (floating on my stomach and watching the line below), I saw quite a parade of jellyfish. I have to say I don't know jellyfish species anywhere near well enough to even take a stab at identifying them. Suffice to say I saw at least six or seven distinct species of jellies wafting by during our hour and a half or so in the water. Some were short tubes, about the size of large hair curlers, studded with small brown spots around the exterior. Some were curving sheets sort of the shape of parafoils. One I particularly enjoyed was a fairly large bell-shaped jelly with seemingly luminiscent pulses moving up rows of cilia along its sides.
At our coaches' specification, lunch was chicken noodle soup. Although spearfishers like to eat heartily and load up on carbs before spending a day working in the water, competitive freedivers find that a full stomach hurts performance. They suggested a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, soup for lunch and then, if necessary, a heavier dinner at the end of the day. But the competitive divers will fast altogether for a day or more before a meet.
After lunch it was back in the water for another session on the lines. Because of the strong current, the coaches and captain decided to motor up the coast to a spot off Hen Rock Cove just to the southeast of Long Point. Rather than anchoring, they decided to live-boat it and let the setup with the descent lines drift with the current. Most of the divers seemed to be getting a little tired by this point in the day, and many complained of equalizing issues. Although my sinuses were fine, one eustachian tube decided to seal up tight and after a time I couldn't equalize my right ear. So my morning descent to 50 feet stood as my personal best ever so far. The deepest descent by any student in the clinic was 98 feet.
I came away from the program very pleased. I had more than hit my target goal of 40 feet, and have a program of exercises to keep building breath-hold time. Before taking the clinic, when I'd be at 25 feet I felt fairly deep in terms of my experience range. After diving to 50 feet, however, doing one to 25-30 now seems much easier and more comfortable than it did previously.
A lot of people I mentioned the clinic to say, "I can't imagine myself holding my breath and diving down underwater. How uncomfortable!" But freediving is a little like the concept from 12 Step programs of one day at a time. In the case of freediving, it's one fin kick at a time. If you pull back and look at how far you have to go or how deep you are, you might freak. If you focus only on the next muscle movement to make, it's not as intimidating.
Total freight for the four days was $495 for the clinic plus $195 in boat/ferry/hotel fees. For those not ready to commit to that level of experience, Grant mentioned that he would be offering a "lite" version of freediver training teaching the core exercises and procedures from the class for a very small fraction of the cost out of Malibu Divers. This is an encouraging development, because until then, apart from occasional clinics like this one, there was nowhere you could turn for freediving instruction locally in Southern California.
So, in all, it was a gas. If you want to try it, don't forget that a buddy is a must -- particularly in a pool.
This class report was written in spring 2003. Since that time, Performance Freediving has renamed the
class I took, now calling it "Intermediate Freediver" instead of "Advanced Freediver." In addition,
costs have gradually gone up as you would expect due to the usual inflationary forces.