Free Diving Schools

[Ale Andres]

A group of experienced FREEDIVING Instructors, along with some people with medical backround, together with some people that know how to write a course outline according to an agency standards, and a pharmacist (that's me), created a team, all sharing in common their love and passion for diving expressed their wish to write a course outline. The invitation for anyone who thinks have anything to contribute is open.

Mr Oceanos:
I've got the sensation that you are changing your speech as this discution is getting deeper...if you are part of a team in wich are involved "a group of experienced freediving instructors" why don't you ask them for the outlines? surely they will have everything you need...
The people involved in this discution is REALLY very experienced, if you're looking for some good research you must listen them, and i think that if they are reacting in this way, some reason must be...
Sorry for my bad english, hope this is understandable.

[island_sands]

You are questioning our safety approach and worry about it. So beat. I can do nothing about your fears as I was always in favour of the belief that if one has this kind of problems one should seeks the help of a professional in this field.

Um, hello? I have some choice words to answer to this part of your thread but because i am an educated young lady I will not.

If Henry and Boyle knew that you are claiming ownership of their theories would probably laugh in their grave! Keep dreaming and continue your fight against dangerous approaches!

Who is claiming ownership of their theories? NOBODY. But i tell what people are claiming ownership of here, and it seems that you don't understand this concept but it's called INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. That is why people are reluctant to part with outlines to somebody who cant even name himself publicly, say who he is, hide behind his username, and then try and weasle out information from people instead of openly introducing himself and going about it the right way.

As has been suggested above, why dont you approach the professionals who have written and published outlines. Samdive I see is not willing to part with hers, (rightly so, as it's her INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY). Perhaps some of the other organisations might be willing to assist you, if you approach them directly instead of just posting a request "willy-nilly" in open forum hoping that someone is going to reply with the outlines and say "here you are mate".

There are more professional ways of carrying out your market research as you call it, and in my professional opinion you have not gone the right way about it.

Hope the water in Cyprus is clear for you today.

Best,
Sara-Lise Haith

[ADR]

"A group of experienced FREEDIVING Instructors, along with some people with medical backround, together with some people that know how to write a course outline according to an agency standards, and a pharmacist (that's me)......."

Is it just me or does it strike anyone else as odd that from that group of people they decide the Pharmacist should write the course outline?

I think I'll get my dentist to fix my car and ask my lawyer to take a look at my leaky sink.

[island_sands]

Originally Posted by ADR

"Okeanos is a newly formed company started two years ago as an education centre for sport SCUBA diving. It also deals with imports and sales/distribution of SCUBA diving gear. The friendly approach to its customers soon resulted in the formation of Oceanos Diving Club where people may meet and organise their diving activities. Hence one may find in Oceanos all essential Es for sport SCUBA diving, which are: Equipment, Education and Experiences."

These Essential E's by the way, are what they teach you in the PADI Instructor Development Course. That is a direct usage of PADI material (copy and paste). I am sure that PADI are flattered! The whole idea of PADI IDCs is to brainwash people into promoting their materials (and teach how to teach of course) but never forget the PADI marketing! There is a whole day on it during the course.

[Stavros]

Originally Posted by island_sands

i am certainly reading your posts above. Which are the Greek freediving agencies that you mention?

Hi island_sands
in Greece there is one national freediving agency (also including fin swimming, UW target shooting and spearfishing) called EOYDAKT which is basically representing CMAS in Greece... When freediving took off they also started getting involved in freediving training. If you check the AIDA Int instructor manual you 'll see that their courses are recognised by AIDA (same as PFI or Apnea Academy for example).

This is the only Greek freediving agency - most Greek freediving instructors are using this system (although a certain lack of standardisation does exist). The only other "agencies" are Apnea Academy (which is not a Greek agency just a representative of AA in Greece) and 5 AIDA International instructors (including myself)

That’s the situation in Greece.


I think we should just give this whole subject a rest - Diveoceanos is a scuba diving professional in Cyprus who has decided that there is money to be made in teaching freediving and rather than taking the straight (and more expensive) route of actually getting freediving education from one of the existing Freediving education agencies he has decided to just create his own (which is cheaper). So he is trying to collect information on the net in order to put this together. He has already tried something similar in a Greek freediving forum and got told off and now he is trying it at DB...

Dear Diveoceanos - I sympathise with what you are doing but due to your lack of freediving knowledge you are not taking into account one very important fact of freediving education: A freediving instructor needs a great deal of physical and mental in-water skills which he can only gain through many years of hard work holding his/her breath ... not everything is in a freediving manual. This is a big difference with scuba ... not everything is in a text book.
All freediving instructors are above-average or great freedivers before they become instructors... that you cannot get off the net...

Cheers Stavros

[diveoceanos]

Like I was expecting! You are trying to escalate a conflict that has nothing to offer to this forum, apart from satisfying your injured ego. You are searching the internet and my company’s site which is good to find something against me, like a lawyer.

My company is a different part of my life pals. This project has nothing to do with my company. I understand this Sherlock behaviour though. You don't know me, and you are sceptical, because you care about this sport. I give you credit.

However, I can see that your approach is somehow offensive and focuses at attacking my credibility, my knowledge, my capabilities, my personality and you act like a public court that has convicted an initiative before you take the chance to see what this initiative is about. You don't know the facts, nevertheless you seem like you came to a decision. Is there any point to continue tis attack appart from continuing a dead-end discussion?

As for the market research, thanks for your advise. I have access to all valuable information. All I wanted was just something like this (no descriptions, no subheadings, no instructor:student ratios, no time schedules, No text) :

The history of Free Diving
Free Diving Equipment
Diving Physics
Safety Issues - Rescue
Physiology and Problems associated with Free Diving
Diving Techniques
Nutrition and Exercise for Performance Free Diving
Free Diving Competitions
Training sequence and programs
Confined Water Skills
Open Water Skills

Note: Our proposed outline is much more extended than the above example, the perfromance requirements are defined, the skills are described in details, and the duration of the course is by far much longer than any 3-4 day or 1 week program. The philosophy is to have the students under a long period of training with continous performance appraisal, medical tests, spirography, anthropometric measurements, regular excercising in various techniques and associated skills like yoga, marchial arts breathing kata, and continuing coaching / mentoring untill they finish the academy and be complete free divers. We aim in developing the right attidutes, how to deal and control our natural competitiveness, minimise accidents, develop other associated skills with free diving.

P.S. We do have some actual course materials. However our benchmark is higher than any course material. We are planning to base our own texts on sound medical publications, training videos that are currently under development by our own professional team. I don't think we need to get anyone's consent to use universal and widely used concepts of diving physics, and physiology in our courses. We have our own approach about training and on how do built upon ones performance, we have in our team some of the best performers in the field. We have some prototype input with regards to DCS, freediving videography and picture editing, some personal views on training techniques and some special features like spearfishing techniques. We aim at maximising ones performance while staying within safety limits. I have the reassurance of my colleagues that we can definitely bring this project forth, and i feel confident that we can do it.

[island_sands]

Good luck.

Originally Posted by diveoceanos

Like I was expecting! You are trying to escalate a conflict that has nothing to offer to this forum, apart from satisfying your injured ego. You are searching the internet and my company’s site which is good to find something against me, like a lawyer.

My company is a different part of my life pals. This project has nothing to do with my company. I understand this Sherlock behaviour though. You don't know me, and you are sceptical, because you care about this sport. I give you credit.

However, I can see that your approach is somehow offensive and focuses at attacking my credibility, my knowledge, my capabilities, my personality and you act like a public court that has convicted an initiative before you take the chance to see what this initiative is about. You don't know the facts, nevertheless you seem like you came to a decision. Is there any point to continue tis attack appart from continuing a dead-end discussion?

As for the market research, thanks for your advise. I have access to all valuable information. All I wanted was just something like this (no descriptions, no subheadings, no instructor:student ratios, no time schedules, No text) :

The history of Free Diving
Free Diving Equipment
Diving Physics
Safety Issues - Rescue
Physiology and Problems associated with Free Diving
Diving Techniques
Nutrition and Exercise for Performance Free Diving
Free Diving Competitions
Training sequence and programs
Confined Water Skills
Open Water Skills

Note: Our proposed outline is much more extended than the above example, the perfromance requirements are defined, the skills are described in details, and the duration of the course is by far much longer than any 3-4 day or 1 week program. The philosophy is to have the students under a long period of training with continous performance appraisal, medical tests, spirography, anthropometric measurements, regular excercising in various techniques and associated skills like yoga, marchial arts breathing kata, and continuing coaching / mentoring untill they finish the academy and be complete free divers. We aim in developing the right attidutes, how to deal and control our natural competitiveness, minimise accidents, develop other associated skills with free diving.

P.S. We do have some actual course materials. However our benchmark is higher than any course material. We are planning to base our own texts on sound medical publications, training videos that are currently under development by our own professional team. I don't think we need to get anyone's consent to use universal and widely used concepts of diving physics, and physiology in our courses. We have our own approach about training and on how do built upon ones performance, we have in our team some of the best performers in the field. We have some prototype input with regards to DCS, freediving videography and picture editing, some personal views on training techniques and some special features like spearfishing techniques. We aim at maximising ones performance while staying within safety limits. I have the reassurance of my colleagues that we can definitely bring this project forth, and i feel confident that we can do it.

[samdive]

I just wonder what your opposition is to becoming an instructor with a recognised agency?

Why go to all this work to rewrite stuff that exists? Why NOT become and AIDA or AA or CMAS instructor? That way not only is the course written for you, you are also able to get insurance, have far better liability cover, your students get a recognised certification and you have another body of instructors to share experiences with - all teaching the same as you.

Why NOT do it that way? I'd be interested to hear....

I guess seeing as you are quite happily spouting PADI-speak in your mails, and showing off your scuba qualifications, you are not trying to write your own Scuba courses, why do that for freediving?

[diveoceanos]

Originally Posted by samdive

I just wonder what your opposition is to becoming an instructor with a recognised agency?

Why go to all this work to rewrite stuff that exists? Why NOT become and AIDA or AA or CMAS instructor? That way not only is the course written for you, you are also able to get insurance, have far better liability cover, your students get a recognised certification and you have another body of instructors to share experiences with - all teaching the same as you.

Why NOT do it that way? I'd be interested to hear....

I guess seeing as you are quite happily spouting PADI-speak in your mails, and showing off your scuba qualifications, you are not trying to write your own Scuba courses, why do that for freediving?

Interesting point of view. Imagine a group of people with a vision! That vision is to come up some day, after hard work to a training system that is longer than average, as detailed as possible, offering as much scientific monitoring as possible of the performance of students, using your prototype work with own training videos. Would any of those organisations you mentioned be interested to change their training courses to meet our expectations? We do have a professional video production studio and we have contributed to various magazines with educational videos, we held seminars with videos! We have people who train themselves, at least 4 times a week for 3-4 hours, they know every single rock in the sea, and they believe they know enough to bring this project forth. I will tell all those people who are ready to give their time, and expertise that they should compromise with what is available allready. Dreamers? Perhaps! Time will show...

Recognition is an other story. Is there an official European Organisation that approves standards and provides accreditation for training courses in Free Diving like for example are the European Technical Commitees or EUF that does this for SCUBA diving? You know pretty well that there are national laws about SCUBA diving, there are EN standards like EN14153/1 throught 3. EN14413/1 and 2, EN250:2000, EN12628:1999 and much more, defining the boundaries of not only training courses but also for equipment manufacturing and maintenance standards and also Service providers standards. Is there something in Free Diving analogous to what is available in SCUBA diving? Just asking.

[Nikkey]

I don't understand why everyone is being hostile.
Diveoceanos I am sure is not going to go out and start teaching freediving HIMSELF he is simply on a development team and came to a forum for some information.
I don't see anything wrong with creating a new agency, we have great ones in place but thats what happens when a sport grows. It doesn't mean bad things for us or freediving it just means there will be another group offering a course that will be accessible to people wanting to learn how to freedive. I don't see the problem....

[diveoceanos]

Originally Posted by Nikkey

I don't understand why everyone is being hostile.
Diveoceanos I am sure is not going to go out and start teaching freediving HIMSELF he is simply on a development team and came to a forum for some information.
I don't see anything wrong with creating a new agency, we have great ones in place but thats what happens when a sport grows. It doesn't mean bad things for us or freediving it just means there will be another group offering a course that will be accessible to people wanting to learn how to freedive. I don't see the problem....

At the end of the day, at least one individual got the point!

[Stavros]

Originally Posted by Nikkey

I don't understand why everyone is being hostile.
Diveoceanos I am sure is not going to go out and start teaching freediving HIMSELF he is simply on a development team and came to a forum for some information.

HAHAHAHA Want to bet on that Nikkey?

[samdive]

nothing like EN standards for freediving, seriously doubt there ever will be!

Oceanos - have you actually looked into the AIDA system? I am sure it provides what you need. Why not take a ** course and find out more?

[Kimmo]

The history of Free Diving
Free Diving Equipment

Is this something to do with freediving or just diving for free because it is "Free Diving". I apologize my bad English

- kimmo

[diveoceanos]

Originally Posted by Stavros

HAHAHAHA Want to bet on that Nikkey?

Hmm! You are employing other tools now, eh Stavros? You are placing bets, becoming a bookmaker! And you are not lacking a sarcasm either! This is the attidute you want us to develop? Is this the attidute of an educator? Are those your values mate? Is this the leading by example attidute? You are a leader man, and as such person, I wish I could see you. But not like this! This is a degradation, officer!