Wow, my wife and I just returned from 2 days of Performance Freediving beginner training in Vancouver BC. Martin Stepanek (world famous freediver) taught the course and personally coached us thru all the practice diving. Martin is a great teacher and coach and easily made sure we learned all the necessary safety skills while happily answering our nubie questions about his amazing feats, like his +100m constant weight dives.
It was quite a thrill to have Martin personally coach and time us for our practice in pool statics. My wife set a personal best of 3:33 (up from about 2:30) on Saturday and I set a personal best of 5:15 (up from 4:20). If that's not amazing enough I didn't even push my 5:15 that hard as Martin informed me that if I blacked out I would not be able to do the open water dive that afternoon for safety reasons. Martin is very serious and strict about safetey and at the same time very open and considerate of people not doing exactly in the style that he teaches.
When we first signed up for the course we promptly got a Performance Freediving T-shirt and a thick +100 page manual in the mail. I was amazed as I read the manual how many new things I learned. I read deeperblue all the time so thought I was very well informed. Later in the course I learned a ton more and many things that I had only read about and not really understood made complete sense.
The open water ocean diving was alot tougher. I have only freedove in cold water a few times and never with a weighted line and never at horseshoe bay so the whole deal was pretty "spooky". The one really easy part was having Martin there watching the whole time. He would dive down and check on us as we did our training dives down the rope, it added alot of feeling of security plus having done all the practice rescue technique in the pool beforehand. Martin not only made it look easy, he made it easy for us too. I easily did the 20m line and was going to go a bit deeper untill I got cramps in my calf. Another student did 20 meters as well using thier hands on the rope (free immersion) and before that they had only snorkeled really and not dove deeply at all!!
So anyway if this sounds like an advertisement for Performance Freediving I guess it is, though just from a happy student wanting to say thank you to Martin and Performance Freediving and let everyone know that the course rocked and was well worth the cost, time and effort. If anyone has questions about if the course would be good for them I would be happly to give an answer. - Cheers Wes
It was quite a thrill to have Martin personally coach and time us for our practice in pool statics. My wife set a personal best of 3:33 (up from about 2:30) on Saturday and I set a personal best of 5:15 (up from 4:20). If that's not amazing enough I didn't even push my 5:15 that hard as Martin informed me that if I blacked out I would not be able to do the open water dive that afternoon for safety reasons. Martin is very serious and strict about safetey and at the same time very open and considerate of people not doing exactly in the style that he teaches.
When we first signed up for the course we promptly got a Performance Freediving T-shirt and a thick +100 page manual in the mail. I was amazed as I read the manual how many new things I learned. I read deeperblue all the time so thought I was very well informed. Later in the course I learned a ton more and many things that I had only read about and not really understood made complete sense.
The open water ocean diving was alot tougher. I have only freedove in cold water a few times and never with a weighted line and never at horseshoe bay so the whole deal was pretty "spooky". The one really easy part was having Martin there watching the whole time. He would dive down and check on us as we did our training dives down the rope, it added alot of feeling of security plus having done all the practice rescue technique in the pool beforehand. Martin not only made it look easy, he made it easy for us too. I easily did the 20m line and was going to go a bit deeper untill I got cramps in my calf. Another student did 20 meters as well using thier hands on the rope (free immersion) and before that they had only snorkeled really and not dove deeply at all!!
So anyway if this sounds like an advertisement for Performance Freediving I guess it is, though just from a happy student wanting to say thank you to Martin and Performance Freediving and let everyone know that the course rocked and was well worth the cost, time and effort. If anyone has questions about if the course would be good for them I would be happly to give an answer. - Cheers Wes
