What started you freediving?

[roy_nexus_6]

I was Scuba diving on a Live-aboard in Truk Lagoon (Chook) and witnessed one of the divemasters practice freediving while we were anchored above a wreck.

He paid us a visit at 80' and then went back up. I decided I have to try this, and was hooked on freediving since that day.

 

[ApneaBlue]

I watched THE BIG BLUE and I was sold!

 

[Victor_]

I’ve always liked to dive and swim underwater. But living in cold climate I could do that only for 1 or 2 months in summer on the Black Sea. Since I remember myself I’ve always started my swims with dynamic apnea, though moderate in distance of course. About a year ago I saw Molchanova’s interview on TV and realized that freediving is what I’ve been looking for. I’ve found her, and since November I’m taking her classes 4 times a week.[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]

 

[cdavis]

Read a copy of Cousteau's "Silent World" at about age 10 while visiting family friends. Stole the book so I could finish it (still have it and never regreted a thing). Hooked from that point on, but didn't get a chance to put gear and opportunity together until 15. For the next year I was constantly bugging my long suffering mother to take me to the coast so I could shoot some fish. Then it was " Can I borrow the car? (same reason) Learned scuba in college. It was fun, but always a second choice.

Connor

 

[hardhat]

Started out scuba diving (still do sometime), and wanted something new to do in the water after eightteen years of scuba. Kirk and Mandy-Rae live here to so I thought it would be easy to learn from the best. Still learning. Also once I started I couldn't believe the connection you feel with the ocean and the surreal feeling of being in the water with out all the scuba gear and still being deep in the water. This is real diving.

 

[Kman]

Haha! No, i ment to say tragic. That was an original story anyway. Most freedivers tend to:
1. Be born water loovers spending more time under water since they were born
2. Overcoming water fobia and got stuck loving the water
3. Old scuba divers.

Well, I have a slightly different story.
I love water, always been in it. Competitive swimming and all that but got fed up with constant swimming and quit water sports.

One day a couple of years ago I saw this guy going after the 200m world record here in New Zealand on the News (Ant Williams) and thought that was pretty cool but what took me was the Fin he was wearing since I had not see one before.

About 6 months later there was a call out for contestants for a reality TV show about Yachting, of which I applied on a whim. To cut a long story short, I got short listed, then on the show. We were informed that there was a "sports pychologist" as part of the assessment team. It turned out to be Ant Williams.
Every opportunity I had, I asked him about what he did, how he did it and would he give me a shot as doing it! (I bet I annoyed him asking all the time).

By the time the show ended filming in Fiji, Ant arranged a boat to take us out for a snorkling trip as a group. When out there, Ant went down to about 10m and a couple of us took a shot at getting down there to the bottom. After a few shots we finially made it and thats where I got the bug.

Pretty much as soon as I got home I was on the lookout for a Mono and have not looked back since.



My friends think I am nuts, but thats part of the appeal!

 

[crusty]

When i was you we grew up in a beach shack in the North of W.A

We were quite poor the shack was 4 wall of Corrigated iron and an iron roof and we only survived on the food that we grew and Dads hunting skills.

Dad used to work 6 days a week down the Coal mine and he used to hunt Roo, Emu , Rabbits after work to give us some meat for dinner, ( a good roo can go along way)

Problem was we lived about 200m from the coast and dad couldnt swim, He could spear the small rays etc in the shallows but counld'nt get the fish out deep.

Then one day when i was a bout 6 years old dad saw me swimming and had a bright idea he went and got the spear and a small inner tube and some rope
He tied the rope to my ankle put the tube under my arms and inflated it a little then waded out to his chest depth we me standing on his shoulders, we would stand there dead still waiting for something.
Then when a fish, ray, turtle, swam past i would launch myself from his shoulders and drive the spear home, the spear was 4 foot long straight tree branch about 16mm thick with three sharpened butter knives tied and clued to it, with a thin 6 foot rope of the back i could tie to my wrist.

The spear would hold in well, if the fish etc would run then i would just hang on and dad would pull me back in with to rope tied to my anckle.
With the inner tube stopping me from drowning

We could put enough fish etc on the table to feed my 9 younger brothers and sisters
( dad cound'nt afford condoms) and then pass the left overs around the rest of the beach shacks.

That was my intro into breath hold diving and Spear fishing more out of necessity than anything but im still love it and could do it every day,
and will alway give part of my catch to mum and dad,

Crusty

 

[cantshoot]

Ever since I can remember I loved to be in the water. My parents told me that when I was a baby I used to get close to the swimming pool and occasionally fall over and swim about like nothing was wrong, while they were freaking out trying to save me.:naughty :naughty

I remember one of my first swimming lessons at the local swimming pool. They were teaching us how to hold our breath (apparently I had forgotten how to do this) so basically my dad would just hold me under water while I tried to climb to the surface.:waterwork :waterwork It felt like he would hold me down for minutes but it was probably only a few seconds.


Well we had a beach house that we used to go to a couple of times a year and my dad used to take me snorkeling and try to catch fish. He was never that successful in catching much and it seemed to have rubbed off because now I CantShootStraight. I used to wrap my arms around him while he would go under and take me deeper and faster than I was able to go, just like riding a dolphin or a whale, those were the good old days. Now I can barely get him near the beach/ocean, and less of a chance of getting him into the water, so sad.

But eventually my cousin and I decided to go out farther into deeper waters in search for fish. Now I seem to do more recreational free diving or extreme snorkeling and amateur UW video (real amateur) while cousin does the hunting.

 

[sinkweight]

I owed a lot of money to a certain type of family that makes accidents happen to people that don't pay for "insurance". Ironically, I fell into disfavor after selling them crates of "The Big Blue" VHS boxes with blank tapes. Thank goodness that this certain type of family never made homemade cement-bucket anchors often. It took about 2 minutes for the wet cement around my feet to dissolve. When I surfaced, there were a bunch of officials making sure I was ok, and after a minute or so passed, I gave the "ok" signal and handed them the mini-cassette that was recording the whole transaction.

That's how I started freediving.

 

[Queer4spear]

Went with nutty friends and they called me a pussy, so I got in and I'll be damned if I didnt LOVE it !

Been doing for 20 yrs now.

 

[XyseR]

during gold fish lessons at my local pool..."bob your heads for 3 seconds" - i went for around 30...

hehe, then never got cought while playing sharks 'n minos

 

[Nick_V]

Long car trip...

 

[RPGgrenade]

Let's see... I'd always been the kind of kid that stayed underwater the longest (if you could get me in the pool at all due to my freaking out cuz of the cold) and i already knew how to equalize since i was like 7. whenever it was summer time i would swim in our pool a lot, but nothing really interesting. for the longest time i was a skinny weakling, then i took up swimming at 16 years old, and i was at the top of the class, to the point where the teachers wanted me to go into the 'elite' section two months after joining, but i couldn't cuz of school stuff. Anyways after getting into the college swim class i found myself not enjoying it as much as before and i couldn't fathom why.
So one day i was in the pool (around 30 min before everyone else) underwater with near negative lungs so i could sit there and thought "I know i'm not gonna go pro with swimming, so why should I keep doing this if it isn't fun anymore, i thought i loved the water...." so after getting out i realized i had been under for like 90 seconds and was surprised how long i lasted, i thought maybe there was a way i could do that but more.
about a month or so later i came across a japanese Comic called Glaucos, which i had seen before a little bit and didn't read it again cuz i thought it might be boring, but as i continued reading, i found out it was about freediving! I didn't know what it was at first, but after the first few chapters i figured it out and found that most of the stuff i'd been doing my whole life for fun (like underwater uddiyanna bandha) was actually training for stuff like this. That's how it went pretty much, i started training on my breath hold times right afterwards.

 

[Simos]

It used to be the Big Blue, nowadays it's Glaucos, bet tomorrow it will be some iPhone app there is a recent thread on Glaucos somewhere on DB by the way...

 

[RPGgrenade]

It used to be the Big Blue, nowadays it's Glaucos, bet tomorrow it will be some iPhone app there is a recent thread on Glaucos somewhere on DB by the way...

it's in the Freediving stories section, I started it XD

 

[Simos]

it's in the Freediving stories section, I started it XD

Haha that explains it, I thought it was too much of a coincidence

 

[Ms Mer]

Have always felt drawn to the sea despite growing up away from it and in a family that had no interest in it. Moved to a coastal city because I hated the claustrophic feeling of not being able to be near it or see it. Got into ocean swimming via triathlon and loved the feeling of being in the water. I had no trouble motivating myself to train for swimming and found it very relaxing and calming training in the open water. Of course it was seeing The Big Blue that I discovered the existence of freediving and have taken an interest in how well Kiwi freedivers do internationally but never thought that I would be able to do it as I thought it was for elite athletes. Swimming led to to snorkeling and a growing frustration with not being able to be "down there" where I wanted to be. I feel at home there, words are hard to find to describe exactly how it makes me feel but I believe part of me is aquatic. Recently I thought I would learn to scuba but a suggestion by someone who freedives planted a seed - and here I am!

 

[RPGgrenade]

yeah my family isn't really "into" the ocean. none of them are. Particularly because the sea water here in chile tends to be cold a little bit harsh near the beaches (at least the places i've been). But i want to take advantage of the fact that the entire country has the ocean to it's western flank. I will try going into the ocean when i have more experience. Maybe after taking an official course.

 

[Noah]

Excellent thread!

... Grew up on the water, as my father was a commercial deep-drop fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico in the 70's... I believe I was about 7 years old, when his anchor got hung up in the reef one day(10m deep)... as he did not care to dive(had a healthy fear of sharks from years of comm. fishing haha)... he sent me down after the anchor...

... I was terrified.

... the vis was shit that day, maybe 2m, and I had no idea what "monsters" the anchor might be hung on haha ...

... when I protested, I remember him saying, "I'm not losing a perfectly good anchor when you've got a perfectly good mask on the boat"... and over I went

... the adrenaline rush I experienced permanently scarred my brain and I have been chasing that feeling ever since...

I LIVED underwater from that moment on, to the point that I often felt as though I did not fit in to the "normal world" at times...

... then I saw "The Deep Blue" movie, and it made me feel better haha .... until that point, I thought I was the only freediver in the world...

Freediving has been my love ever since.