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Freedive courses

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 90 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.
I do know that as an advanced PRI freediver I am considered to be a safety diver at AIDA competitions (I think anyway, have never done it). You are supposed to have current CPR training as well and you get that on your own (not thru PFI).

Cheers Wes

So this course has some parity with certain AIDA standards?
 
Hi Dave, Vertical Blue courses target the depth disciplines.
Since they follow the Apnea Academy format there are still sessions of static and dynamic, but these are conducted in the lagoon next to Dean's Blue Hole, so no pools are involved.

Wow thats an exotic one! I could probably stand dynamic in the sea, Its not too different to what I do on shallow beaches here sometimes.
 
I dunno hey. I think if you want this certificate for the reason of say insurance issues when organizing events and such, youd need to do the full coarse even if you only do deep diving safety precausions and procedures still stay the same and if they do that in a pool then thats the way its done probably cause it works best. Also the basic disciplines and tecniques they teach you gets used and applied all over...
 
Perhaps you should consider doing a beginners course if only to learn some of the formal aspects of freediving- eg. recognised safety precautions, breathing exercises, training tips, etc. If you can put up with a few hours in a pool or on a line then I think you will find it worthwhile in progressing with the "larking around" discipline.
You also may need to accept that being such a new discipline "larking around" may take some time to be adopted by the existing teaching agencies. If you have some qualifications from AA, AIDA, PFI, FIT, etc, then maybe you can start to develop your own program.
How you would decide the winner in a larking around competition is probably going to be your biggest problem though.:t

Hahaha! This post makes perfect sense, sarcasm and all.
You are right about the usual beginer courses, I certainly wasn't knocking the AIDA courses that are always on offer.
I know the tips and the physiology lessons and safety procedures are all bound to be beneficial... Hence My interest.

The established courses are known and respected and bring a degree of respectability to freediving but they only teach freediving as a sport (competition)... but is it? I'm not even competing with Myself... I just enjoy it. Formulaic is fine for training but the finished product has to be free of constraints for Me.

I mean, They don't teach You SCUBA until you are competent in open water then make You do lengths of a pool or see who can go deepest. They just train you up to a recognised level of competence in the water and certify You... then You are free to enjoy the water, which is the appeal of freediving for Me. Plus You have all the benefits of a recognised qualification... which is better to have and not need than to need and not have.

larking around will take longer than I've got to be adopted by the established agencies lol... It looks like to get where I wanna be in terms of skill and qualifications I'll probably have to do the usual courses, bumping up My rating as I go along and supplement it with some depth clinic if need be.
 
I dunno hey. I think if you want this certificate for the reason of say insurance issues when organizing events and such, youd need to do the full coarse even if you only do deep diving safety precausions and procedures still stay the same and if they do that in a pool then thats the way its done probably cause it works best. Also the basic disciplines and tecniques they teach you gets used and applied all over...

It may be important to teaching... I'm not in a position to know that yet.
I certainly can't see the use of dynamic in a pool to say spearing in the sea tho.
 
I still do not understand why you are insisting with your demand to remove static and dynamic training from freediving courses. Either you want to learn better deep diving or spearfishing - then just get the right course for it and do not bother about the cert. Or you want to organize freediving competitions as you wrote, or want to get a freediving insurance, and then it makes no sense trying to avoid the full freediving education cycle. If you only plan spearfishing, get an insurance tailored for spearfishers - I do not think that they will require any AIDA diploma - the waste majority of spearfishers never heard of AIDA anyway.

But anyway, even if you hate pools or dynamic and static training that much, I do not see how it could harm you if you take a regular freediving course and have to endure two or three static and dynamic sessions. If you think it would kill you, get a specific depth course or a tailored individual course - the AIDA diploma has absolutely no value for someone just looking for better technique at spearing or photographing, and as I told, I do no think you need it for the insurance. There are tens of thousands of spearfishers and only very few have an AIDA certificate, which does not neccessarily mean they are all uninsured.
 
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Easy, it builds endurance and it shows you how your body will react when working on limited amounts of oxygen in a controlled and reasonably safe environment. It also teaches you how to safely push your limits with a end goal in mind, ie. going down to 20m and working a 10m area while down there :)
 
Trux,

Spearos project an image of a bunch of mavericks but regardless of image Most of the spearos here are certified. the largest training organisations do follow a known system onto which they add things like rigging guns, buoys, stringers and teach about tides and hunting grounds and hunting tactics.
ask the course providers how many spearos are amongst their students if you don't believe it.

Now say I were to open a spearo school without the known qualifications... that would be hopeless as most people here value organisations and governing bodies... if they didn't then we wouldn't have a government.

I'm not suggesting AIDA etc. stop teaching what they do, I was just suggesting they should diversify a little outside the sport of freediving and into teaching freediving with no games attached. they would be well placed to give more credibility to other freediving activities.
 
Easy, it builds endurance and it shows you how your body will react when working on limited amounts of oxygen in a controlled and reasonably safe environment. It also teaches you how to safely push your limits with a end goal in mind, ie. going down to 20m and working a 10m area while down there :)

Thats no longer the goal after watching Stephane Mifsud do Aspetto at 36M!!! :D
 
If you want a course specifically for spearos, get one - you will certainly find some. Still pays what I told - you do not need to bother about the cert for your spearing. If you want to open an AIDA or CMAS certified school - you will need much more than just a freediving cert - you will need to be a certified AIDA or CMAS instructor (or need to hire one). I see no reason why AIDA should remove those disciplines from their courses or create specific certifacte for the depth disciplines only. AIDA is not a spearfishing organization, but a freediving one. You may try looking around for some spearo-only federations - in some countries there are indeed some. However, I see no reason why a spearfisher or even worse a spearfishing instructor would want avoiding static and dynamic training. Finally, real spearfishg is just that - a combination of deep diving, shallow dynamic hunting, and static apnea (aspetto), so having profound knowledge about those disciplines and mastering them properly is as much important for a spearfisher as for a freediving competitor.
 
I've already said it's not specifically for spearing. That is just one of My interests underwater, sometimes I dive empty handed and others with a spear or camera.

From My experience I know that spearing is not comparable to sports freediving. Carrying equipment, diving at shallow angles with head up and paying more attention to the surroundings changes the game completely... and are usually necessary in spearing situations. Diving on its own requires a more introverted approach... as does freediving as a sport unless I'm so mistaken.

A spearing organisation with some clout would be a better umbrella organisation for My own interests than AIDA etc. but as of yet no such organisation exists.

AIDA stands for International organisation for the development of apnea? if thats true then there is nothing stopping them branching out.
 
From My experience I know that spearing is not comparable to sports freediving. Carrying equipment, diving at shallow angles with head up and paying more attention to the surroundings changes the game completely... and are usually necessary in spearing situations. Diving on its own requires a more introverted approach... as does freediving as a sport unless I'm so mistaken.

Hallo atomichaggis -
I have read the whole thread and I think there is one point that has been missed out. I am an AIDA instructor and teach both recreational freedivers and (primarily) spearfishermen based on the AIDA course structure (without any real additions or deviations).
I think everybody that decides to go in the water holding their breath has a great deal to learn by doing (at least) a bare minimum of pool work because the pool is where you can really split up what you are doing when you are in the water larking around: You hold your breath (static) you move around in the water in the most O2 economical way you can (dynamic) and you have to deal with pressure/equalisation etc (depth training).
As you see from the above it is far easier to correct problems (in concentration, relaxation, equalistation etc) if you deal with each aspect individually rather than if you throw it all in a big pot and you have an instructor trying to help you correct your larking abilities...

Personally coming from a strong spearfishing background I was very reluctant to approach pool diciplines since what I enjoyed was the open water... after 3 years of competitive freediving I am certain that everyone that wants to play around in the ocean has a lot to gain from working on a few things in the controlled environment of the pool - even if you do not decide to start doing 3 pool sessions a week just the 2-3 sessions included in a course will give you a great deal of information on what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong and give your instructors the proper environment where they can correct you in order to improve your larking performance.

In a nutshell I think that is behind the course structure of all apnea training systems - split the activity into three separate segments (static-dynamic-depth) in order to easily improve each one and therefore greatly improve the whole.

On your note above from my experience spearfishing or UW photo/video work are just extensions of freediving... If you only spearfish (as I did) or lark around then it might be difficult to identify that you are actually doing a lot of things similar to what a recreational/competitive freediver is doing - you have all these extra factors in that do not allow you to identify the base of what you are doing. If you have some freediving training you all of a sudden see that when you are out spearfishing you are doing everything the same way as when you freedive but you add a gun to your hand and a static at the bottom when you arrive (and maybe a shot in the end)

Think about it ;)
Cheers Stavros
 
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