Freediver Certification: The PADI Freediver Course

Freediving communities has started to grow as a popular sport or recreational activity. As more people get into it a lot of Dive agencies had started offering licenses. In the Philippines AIDA, RAID and PADI are the active agencies. You may get any of these certifications. They offer the same principles at its core only varying in the levels and requirements needed. Usually the certification depends on the instructors available in your dive area.

So here goes my PADI experience, a technical perspective with a dash of adventure.

---

My Dive buddy @carlo-files and I took our PADI freediver course with Free Immersion Moalboal(FIM). Getting there had been an adventure on its own. We planned to take Carlo’s car but it needed maintenance so we had to ride the bus instead. The trip was smooth but the skies were dark. We arrived at the hostel at around 7:30am. The session was set to start by 9:00am so we had ample time to get settled in and get ready. We did a quick check on what to bring, well first sign of chaos was that I had forgotten my GoPro housing. Of all the things to forget it had to be the camera (Luckily FIM had their own camera).

We rented motorcycles at 600PHP or 12.00USD, so we’d get around easier. As adventures go, the odds were not in our favour, it had rained quite hard and the route was a bit tricky. We got wet before we even got into the water or the resort for that matter, plus we had no idea where to go, as far as adventures go we were off to a great start.

We got to the resort safely without crashing the bikes. We were shortly joined by our course-mates and instructors. We met Ruth and George, taking up AIDA 2 certification, a lovely couple on a three-month honeymoon, they are from London and they decided to kick off they’re trip learning how to freedive as they might be able to dive in other places as they travel. We also met Vasit, taking up AIDA 4, a swim coach from Davao who after finishing his requirements became the only AIDA 4 certificate holder in Davao and probably Mindanao.

Our course instructors:

Wei(Maria Noella Zosa) holds the record for deepest deep dive in the women’s division at 45m. And Founder of FIM

Mikey, co-founder of FIM, is also a very experienced deep freediver, he has a lot of technical know-how on how to improve your dive technique.

Patrick, a freediver from freediving planet, assisting Mikey and wei for our course.

(During our dinner at Cheif Mau's, left to right: Me, Carlo, Mikey, Patrick, George, Ruth, Wei and Vasit)

The course costs roughly 6000php or 120USD(we were able to avail a discount promo so prices may vary in other dive centers). The course lasted for two full days, consisting of lectures, trainings and a lot of water time.

There are five common freediving disciplines encounter as you start out.

1. Static Apnea, or to hold ones’ breath as long as possible

2. Dynamic Apnea, to swim while holding ones’ breath and swim as far as possible

3. Free immersion, to dive along a line as deep as possible

4. Constant weight freediving, dive a constant weight all throughout the dive.

5. Assisted disciplines, advanced disciplines that use other equipment. These are usually for competitive freediving.

To pass the PADI course you’d need a 2-minute static apnea, 40-meter dynamic swim, a 5-meter rescue, a 10-meter depth either by constant weight freediving or free immersion, and to pass the freediver exam on the PADI touch application

The first day was conducted at Kasai Beach and dive resort. For the most part of the morning we had lectures and introduction videos to really talk about freediving and basic skills we need to develop. We had breathing exercises to help us relax and improve apnea time. Two types of equalization techniques had been discussed as well. The Valsalva method, which uses your diaphragm and is commonly used by scuba divers and the Frenzel method, which needs a certain familiarity with the anatomy of your throat and mouth and does not use the diaphragm, this is what is used when freediving. Several breathing exercises help you get to know the parts of your mouth and throat needed for Frenzel equalization. ( I cannot go into much detail since I do not have a full grasp of the Anatomy, you can check out videos and other technical articles or better yet got to your local freediving instructor for proper training.)

Once we got familiar with the breathing and equalization techniques, we test them out in the pool. Here we had to complete the first requirement, the 2-minute breath hold. You get 4 minutes per attempt, wherein you decide your breath-up (relaxation breathing to reduce heart rate) time and your apnea time. You get three 4-minute attempts then it starts decreasing. As I mentioned earlier it was raining so it’s been really cold in the water, luckily I was able to relax enough to accomplish 2-minute breath hold at the first try which saved a lot of energy.

Dynamic apnea swim is also tested in the pool, since its easier to measure distance. The challenge with the irregular shaped pool was we had to do a turn while still holding our breaths. If not executed properly it will affect your breath hold as well as make you feel dizzy. Fortunately this was one of the easier requirements, you just need to have proper pacing so you won’t lose your oxygen reserves, too fast and you burn energy, too slow and you hold your breath too long which may lead to black outs. Balance is key as well as a clear head.

The most important skill I have to say was learning rescue techniques when your buddy blacks out. During black outs the priority is to make sure all the airways are free from the water so your buddy wont swallow water, then you must remove the mask and administer Blow-tap-talk. Blow-talk is the act of taping your buddy and try to talk him into consciousness. Usually once the body’s airways are out of the water the person will be responsive, we apply recovery breaths after 10 seconds of unconsciousness by blowing air into the nose or mouth (Recovery breaths is not CPR or mouth to mouth). Once we got familiar with the blow-tap-talk we practiced it in shallow water, at a 2-meter depth (still in the pool) then executed it at a 5-meter depth in open sea the next day. For deeper rescues it’s a bit trickier from pulling your buddy up and the hand positioning when bringing him to the surface. To avoid confusion and misinterpretation of instructions I will attach a link below if you want to check out rescue simulations. (However, I must warn you to practice it with an experience or licensed diver, learning online will not be enough and you might end up putting both your lives in danger.)

Rescue simulation

The next day the weather was much better but the waves were still pretty hard so we headed to a secret diving spot with probably the best view, in La conception cove. Away from touristy spots we had the ocean to ourselves. We had the entire day to finish all the remaining requirements. We conducted rescue dives which was repeated at least three times to make sure we got the steps right, preparing us for emergency situations.

(La Conception Cove)

The depth requirement was tricky for me especially. The PADI requirement was 10 meters, yet I had struggled to equalize as I descended. Freediving requires you to relax yet on that day I had trouble finding that “zen”. Maybe it was the pressure of it being a certification or that I had set too high a standard for myself it took me a really long time to get to the 10-meter mark.

Pushing for AIDA 2

We had the luxury of going for two certifications, since most certification agencies have similar riquirements, however AIDA 2 requires to go down to 16 meters. As I said, I was not relaxing at all. I’m tense and I had trouble with my breath-ups and each failed attempt just made me feel worse. Dive after dive, I kept falling short, of the 16 meter goal. Until It was already 4:00pm I was getting tired and dizzy from all the dives, Wei instructed me to do a free immersion dive with my feet first rather than head first. As I started going down I was relaxed as ever, I felt the urge to breath somewhere in the 10-meter mark but I knew that I still had enough oxygen. I had no trouble equalizing and before I knew it I got to the tennis ball indicating the 16-meter depth. I was ecstatic, if I hadn’t been holding my breath I would have screamed under water!

As it turned out the feet first free immersion worked because as we kept diving head first my body had not been familiar with the positioning and my head position had been so tense and at a wrong angle that the airways that help us equalize will have trouble with airflow. In the end I had found peace in the water and conquered the challenges.

Going home had been an episode of amazing race, it was 5:00pmm and the last bus leaves at 7:30. We had to return our Bikes, got to the hostel and hop on a bus. Only an hour after getting on the bus were we able to sit down and talk about everything that we had learned and experience.

Why get certified?

The certification currently isn’t a requirement, however as more people starts freediving more people are at risk. Freediving can be a personal, even therapeutic experience but it also has dangers of its own. Getting certified would mean you had gone through the necessary trainings to help others learn to freedive as well as possibly save lives. To have at least one certified freediver in your group will make you feel safer as you explore the great blue.

TIPS:

To avoid a foggy mask, dab a drop of shampoo on the mask and rinse enough to leave a thin layer of shampoo that will not hurt your eyes. The shampoo helps prevent air from condensing.

Invest in a wetsuit. I had the luxury of finding out what it feels like to dive in really cold waters in just tights and a rashguard. It’s not fun! And it make it harder to relax as you shiver from the cold.

if your wearing dive socks/booties make sure to tuck them under your tights or wetsuit to minimize the water that gets in them.

Freediving is all about relaxing, so leave all your stress at shore.

After every dive you have to signal to your buddy that you are OK, because freediving is a personal experience. You have to know how to listen to your body and know when you are tired, thirsty or hungry. A lot of factors can add up to blackouts or difficulties in diving. As Wei would say:

“Never forget to say you are OK.”

---

If you liked this post and is a freediver yourself, or would like to learn how to freedive, upvote and leave a comment. Maybe we can dive together someday!

Thanks for reading steemit, stay awesome!