Freediving Course Booked

So a little bit of research unearthed an outfit in Newquay, FreediveUK. Just the ticket; run buy a guy who has been on TV, coached big wave surfers how on to hold their breath whilst being rolled over a shallow reef by 1ooft breaks, and more importantly for me, he’s on of a very small number of freediving instructors in the UK.

FreediveUK teach AIDA courses, an abbreviation of the French originating Association Internacionale de Apnea (or something like that). Apnea is holding your breath, as in sleep apnea, when people snore so badly they suffocate, there you go.

So I booked up for a 1 day AIDA 1 star course. £125, a lot of money for a few dips in the pool, but I’m going to do this properly.

Why?

I’m 48 yrs old, I live in the county of Devon in England and I have been  a struggling snorkeler for years and years. I’ve always had a mask and snorkel of some kind, and I’ve always made the most of it, sometimes at home on the coast where I live, and on holidays abroad or when I have spent time travelling. I struggled because I didn’t know what I was doing, never used weights to assist my descent and spent too much energy fighting my way down to have anything left in my lungs to enjoy it. And yet I am pretty fit, I swim a lot, I’m confident in the sea, and sitting in an armchair I can hold my breath for ages; so what’s wrong? On a trip to Greece last year I decided enough was enough and a few lessons would do me a world of good. Then I found some freediving videos on the web, and suddenly my ambitions doubled, or trippled; gotta do it.

Oh and this picture isn’t my freediving kit, it is shed junk.