Ploughing vs freediving

[cdavis]

Simos, London sounds like it has passed the "tipping point" in freediving popularity. I haven't seen that yet in the US, but think its coming and that your club's approach is the right one. Out of curiosity, is there any movement toward local comps in your area?
And my wife has a similar reaction.


Trux, Point well taken, but I think it can work either way for different people. For example, I'd practically kill to hang around and dive recreationaly with the quality of diver that shows up at Will's comp, but I would not get in the water with them in a competition.

Connor

 

[monkeyhatfork]

I think tru growth will likely come through a recreational/adventure travel angle perhaps even health and fitness like stig severenson is doing more so than competitions, its not gonna come from AIDA but rather inventiveness of freedivers. A sport like skateboarding comes to mind(no governing body), a much newer sport than freediving quickly evolved largely due to low budget video put out frequently by the sponsers, we would go home geek out on the videos with our friends then go out and skate it got exposure for those in the videos and quarantees a steady flow of product for the sponsers I dont see that happening here, spearo videos being the exception. We cant rely on The Big Blue forever and It seems unlikey that something like Greater Meaning Of Water(sorry) is going to inspire anyone to take up this sport. I'm in Kona right now and just spent 3 days in a row diving with Spinner dolphins, these kind of experiences are my main motivation for training and I think more identifiable experiences to the general public than line diving(not to say I havent watched will's 101 video a thousand times). I think the rolling of the eyes at the watching of freediving videos can be easily solved by integrating it into nature programing/travel etc. something that gives context to the experience.

I also agree with Simos club approach, I didnt have a pool buddy for a long time so I basically created one, a friend from work who was interested in learning to swim better started coming to the pool with me, I gave her some fins showed her safety proticol and blackout recovery, she gets great enjoyment out of 25m dynamics and has no desire to do more but I now have a reliable buddy for the pool.

I also think there could be allot more cross-over from other sports, surfers, tri-athletes, I've even seen mma people using dyn no fins for anearobic training. Even Padi advertises in Surfer Magazine and freediving is far more applicable to surfing than scuba

 

[cdavis]

Videos, VIDEOS. we want to see your spinner videos! Can they top the spotted dolphin vids??

Now that's the kind of thing that gets non-divers juiced up.

Connor

 

[monkeyhatfork]

the best video yet, I had a good lense this time whent out again today after that last post with 2 friends and swam straight out into a pod of 30 spinners, agian tommorrow and mon. It will take a few days to edit I'll maybe try and throw up a few pics tonight, my focus on this trip was supposed to be to work on some depth and maybe find some new cool lava tubes but the spinners have been showing up everyday so its become a dolphin trip---anyway I'm off subject so I'll start a thread for this in freediving stories

 

[Simos]

Hi Connor - to answer your question: we run competitions in our club a few times a year. But we vote for the winners, based on who did the best dive and enjoyed it the most. So performance is not the #1 factor for the voting. It gives the opportunity for anyone to win - I think it makes sense eg I see someone that a month earlier couldn't even do 25m, was scared of water etc and they do a 40m dive with great technique and come up smiling, I think they should be considered to win..

The competitions are run to all the aids rules for those who want to get aids points or go for a record.

We have many videos on YouTube: search for 'Notanx xmas' for example to see a few of the fun exercises. The club is probably 80 people now or so, with a good split in genders, ages etc
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