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Education prerequisite for Apnea competions?

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.

Can you accept having to complete a freediving education before you can enter a comp?

  • No way, too much bother, people are responsible enough to compete without any official teaching

    Votes: 28 80.0%
  • Yes, but only accepting AIDA education standards

    Votes: 1 2.9%
  • Yes, but only accepting AIDA & FREE education standards

    Votes: 1 2.9%
  • Yes, but only accepting AIDA & IAFD education standards

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes, but only accepting AIDA education standards and specially approved schools (Apnea Academy, etc.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes, but only accepting AIDA & FREE education standards and specially approved schools (Apnea Academ

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes, but only accepting AIDA & IAFD education standards and specially approved schools (Apnea Academ

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes, but accepting AIDA, FREE & IAFD education standards

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Yes, accepting AIDA, FREE & IAFD education standards and specially approved schools (Apnea Academy,

    Votes: 5 14.3%

  • Total voters
    35

CEngelbrecht

Well-Known Member
Oct 31, 2002
619
98
118
47
I post this poll to hear íf people are prepared to seek out an official education before entering an Apnea competition (excluding spearfishing & team sports). This is obviously to highten safety as in other risky sports, like special driving licences in car racing.

It's open for debate. Personally, I wouldn't make such a move right away. I would await more freedivers to get a chance to actually take the courses, because these aren't widely spread at present. I would wait for like 2010 and after this date noone can compete without a accepted education.

In the poll I assume that the competitions stay within the AIDA administration for simplicity and that the AIDA standards are mandatory. The question is if one can accept having to have taken an education before one can compete, and if so which fractions' standards can be accepted.

Chris Engelbrecht, Copenhagen
 
Chris,

You are probably right on target. After getting past my knee-jerk no more regulation, don't tread on me, personal freedom of the seas gut reaction, it is pretty easy to see that some form of universal education can only be beneficial. I just returned from a Performance Freediving clinic . The way they build very intense safty into a natural, easy and automatic part of diving was fantastic. What it did for my diving skills was equally fantastic. Every diver should know what they teach, not just competitors.

That said, there are some good reasons to consider this subject with care and at leasure. I suspect that the "no more regulation" reaction will be pretty strong. The sport is young and will need some time to adjust to the idea of regulation. The various organizations still spend too much time bickering. Education could easily become a weapon for each organization to try and beat up the others. Good education, by its nature, is costly. Bad education is worse than useless. Getting general agreement on who ,what and how much is going to take a while.

Thanks for raising the issue.

Connor
 
Noone has ever died in a freediving competition
(only in training, or world record attempts)
 
Hi,

i think cdavies has raised most of the potential points/questions that will have to be addressed. Additionally, I think people would need to trust the process and feel they are really getting "real" education and not just a thinly veiled attempt at extracting more cash from people as some of the endless (pointless ?) scuba "certifications" are certainly perceived to be.

regards,
 
qualifications

its all very well asking people for qualifications but there is not exactly much out there yet

I am, I am told having completed a course, an AIDA * Trainer yet I have no written proof of that, no idea what courses I am able to teach and no guidelines on how to teach them.

As a fairly highly qualified scuba instructor, I am currently putting that experience to use writing some freedive courses which I hope to have accepted by AIDA and my scuba agency at least in this country.

At the moment it is totally unfair to ask anyone to show a certification as those certifications are simply not easily available. So far I have paid 60$ to aida for freediver level 2 and trainer level 1 (for me) and freediver 1 (for a friend) and had nothing back to say either of us are qualified to do anything...in fact I would not even know who to approach to ask about it...

AIDA needs to get its act together and I am doing what I can to help that happen in the UK.

But yes, I agree, to enter a comp you need a certain level of knowledge and skill. I would hope most people have got that from their peers. To ensure it, maybe a comp briefing in written format could be made available to competitors who have not competed before. I am willing to offer the "small bear's guide to big competitions!" for example..

Sam
 
I think not. Safety divers, judges and officials...sure. All I need as a competitior is a form that describes the rules, my responsibilities and a waiver, thanks.
Do high-jumpers in the Olympics have to take a course? Or downhill skiers? Or triathletes, or MTBikers...etc? Finswimmers? Nope.
This sounds like a good way for 1: someone to make money by freediving (Instructors), and 2: drive people away from competing. I wouldn't enter any competition that required this, I assure you. What I would do would be to compete with another entity or start a grassroots movement to create a new one! I don't think this would sit well with freedivers, given the nature of the people attracted to the sport. More regulation we don't need.
This is similar to SCUBA certification, which is mostly about marketing, and little to do with actually qualifying people how to dive.
Cheers,
Erik Y.
 
Good point, but I think there's another big problem.

Let's say I want to organize an AIDA competition here in Italy.
If an accident occurs, I have to prove that I did "everything" in order to avoid damages to athletes or safety divers or anyone else attending the competition.

Here in Italy, the magistrate would judge me considering first of all the rules of this sport, which are set by the federation which organize freediving competitions inside the National Olympic Commettee (CONI => FIPSAS)

If I don't follow their rules (example: max 65 meters in CB) any incident it's probably going to cost me a lot (both from civil and criminal points of view).
Since AIDA is not recognized by our governement (I doubt it is recognized by any governement, including the French one) I guess I'm not the only one in the World with this "problem".

By the way: here in Italy if an athletes sign a paper where he takes all the responsibility for anything that may happen to him during the competition......the agreement is just toilet paper.

So I ask you: what should I do in order to organize an AIDA competition here in Italy? An AIDA certification here....it's not recognized and doesn't help.

Sport has nothing to do with certifications because when the trainer/president of a club/federation sends someone to a competition, he's sort of certifying that the athlete is able to take part to that competition. Trainer and/or President of a Club are something more than a simple instructor. The problem is -once again- that AIDA is not part of the "official" sport world and untill CMAS doesn't bankrupt or fall down in pieces....will never be.

Joefox

PS No one is dead in a Freediving competitions, but how many competitions do we have each year? If we want to develop freediving I guess we must think big numbers.
 
What is the problem?
Is there a safety problem right now?

Just make sure people train in the regions of the depths they set at competition.

It is very nice as it is right now.
This suggestion Christian would enhance beurocracy and make some people richer, and put the sport more in the hands organizers e t c.
 
I personally do not want freediving to be like SCUBA diving or Karate where people often are judged by thier rang in the internal rang/grade system.

Let freediving be a free sport where anybody can take place without rang or grade system.

(Rang or grade systems is in my opinion for politicians who can't proof themself in other ways than having a black belt or some high certificate.);)

Let the competitions show the divers actual skill and work for increased safety.
 
While I like the idea of getting some formal training in freediving from a group such as Performance Freediving to improve my own skills, I am uneasy at having to have a certification of some sort in order to compete in a competition.

I wonder who gets to decide what that certification entails? Who decides which training agency or school is good enough to make the grade and who, if anyone monitors the training standards of the instructors?

What if I want to compete in a competition sanctioned by another agency besides the one I trained with? Will I now need certification from that organization as well?

You would need either a central body to oversee everything or agreement between the major agencies before this could work and maybe in 5 years that will be possible.

As Connor said, the quality of the training is all-important. In scuba and technical diving for example, training varies from excellent to horrible and the divers who get the bad training show it in the water. Could a freediver with bad training actually be in more danger than before he was trained?

From my point of view, If I was looking at arranging a freediving competition, the people that I believe to be in the most danger are the deep safety divers. I would be far more worried about an incident occurring with one of them rather than the freedivers.

Ash
 
I think requirements for competitions would not be fair, as there are people who for financial or other reasons can not afford to take such courses.. it would make the sport elitistic.....which I have encountered already in some places..
Although I have to say that more often freedivers have been very nice people and welcoming.. thanks to you all..

Safe diving

Pekka
 
  • Like
Reactions: Erik
I should clarify that I have no problem with anyone making money from freediving.....more power to you!
Erik Y.
 
Although I fully intend to take a Performance Freediving course in the spring, I also would hate to see the sport regulated to that degree. I do however like the idea of a briefing form or booklet for new competitors as suggested already. Possibly this is already done in some competions. That said, I would obviously encourage good education whenever possible.

Aaron
 
Originally posted by Erik
I think not. Safety divers, judges and officials...sure. All I need as a competitior is a form that describes the rules, my responsibilities and a waiver, thanks.
Do high-jumpers in the Olympics have to take a course? Or downhill skiers? Or triathletes, or MTBikers...etc? Finswimmers? Nope.
This sounds like a good way for 1: someone to make money by freediving (Instructors), and 2: drive people away from competing. I wouldn't enter any competition that required this, I assure you. What I would do would be to compete with another entity or start a grassroots movement to create a new one! I don't think this would sit well with freedivers, given the nature of the people attracted to the sport. More regulation we don't need.
This is similar to SCUBA certification, which is mostly about marketing, and little to do with actually qualifying people how to dive.
Cheers,
Erik Y.

I could not agree more to you Eric!

Here in Austria we have a very special situation. Although there are only a couple of active freedivers, we have already two "outstanding" :D instructors which want to make "Big Money" with their courses.....

I am sure that mandatory courses are bad for the sport in it's current state.
 
This is similar to SCUBA certification, which is mostly about marketing, and little to do with actually qualifying people how to dive.


That's the truth!

Jon
 
Do high-jumpers in the Olympics have to take a course? Or downhill skiers? Or triathletes, or MTBikers...etc? Finswimmers? Nope.

Good point, a difference should be that freediving involves obvious risks like there's risks in motor racing, which requires special licenses. However, other risky sports like skiing, bob sleding, MTBiking, etc. does NOT require licenses to compete (not that I know of, at least), for whatever reason the governing people have for accepting that. So deciding about this also depends on how big a risk you consider there to be in freediving. :head

I think I'm looking for some kind of preconfirmation that people enlisting for a competition can actually dive, and one way to do that is ensuring an education. Another way could be, like they might be doing in skiing etc., to develop the communities, let people talk to one another and guide newcomers correctly. This method is somewhat arbitrary, but if it's working for other risky sports, then why not for freediving? :confused:

Know what I mean?

Chris Engelbrecht, Copenhagen
 
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