The First Twenty Meters
Hitting 20 meters for the first time is one of the most empowering milestones in a freediver’s journey. It’s not just a number—it’s a gateway. The first real threshold. A place where technique, mindset, and body awareness come together. But like all good things in freediving, it requires patience, precision, and a little bit of humility. As an instructor, I’ve helped hundreds of divers reach this mark. And I’ve also seen many struggle—not because they weren’t capable, but because they rushed the process or focused on the wrong things. So here’s a breakdown of what really matters when working toward that first 20-meter dive. The Surface Is Where It Starts Most beginners underestimate the surface phase. They gear up, line up, and want to dive—fast. But what I’ve learned over the years is that the dive begins long before you leave the surface. Give yourself 2 to 3 minutes. Slow down. Breathe deeply. Visualize your dive. Run through each phase in your mind like choreography. This moment of preparation not only calms your nervous system but helps anchor your intention. Start well—and you’re already halfway there. Technique Over Depth Obsessing over depth numbers can get in your way. Instead, obsess over form. Whether it’s your duck dive, finning technique, or body position, clean technique will carry you further than brute force ever could. When your movement is smooth and efficient, you’ll enter a flow state—where the depth seems to come to you, not the other way around. In fact, some of my students don’t even realize they’ve hit 20 meters until they reach the bottom plate. That’s how freeing it can be when you stop chasing meters and start refining movement. Equalization: Learn It Dry, Master It Wet If you’re not already using the Frenzel technique, now is the time to start. This method allows for quicker, more consistent equalization—especially in the first 10 to 20 meters where most issues arise. But here’s the catch: if you can’t do it dry, you won’t do it in the water. Use tools. Watch tutorials. Book a course. Practice with feedback. Equalization isn’t something you figure out mid-dive. It’s a technique that requires repetition and muscle memory, built long before you’re 15 meters down. Start with Free Immersion If you’re new to depth, don’t rush to fin down. Free immersion—pulling yourself down the line with your arms—gives you more control over your speed, head position, and relaxation. It’s not just easier on the body; it’s easier on the mind. You can pause, regroup, and stop anytime without fighting against your own technique. That sense of control builds confidence fast. Kick with Intention Once you switch to finning, think of it in phases. Start with three strong kicks to get going, followed by three medium, then three light. Let your buoyancy shift guide you. As you pass 10 meters, you’ll start becoming neutrally buoyant. A little deeper and you’re sinking. That’s your cue to stop kicking and let gravity take you. This natural descent saves energy and increases your efficiency. Think glide, not grind. Pause When You Panic At some point on your way down, intrusive thoughts might sneak in. This is too far. I can’t make it. My lungs hurt. I should turn back. Don’t panic. Don’t react. Just pause. Count to three in your head. Focus on one part of your body—your hand, your chest, your legs—and soften it. Most of the time, this moment of reset is all you need to regain control and keep going. And if it’s still too much? No problem. Grab the line and ascend. There’s always another dive. Respect Your Pace Not everyone hits 20 meters on their third session. Some need weeks. Others need months. And that’s okay. Freediving isn’t a race—it’s a practice. It’s about showing up with awareness and a willingness to learn from each dive, even the ones that don’t go as planned. Progress in freediving is rarely linear. Some days you’ll feel invincible. Others you’ll feel like a beginner again. Trust the ebb and flow. You’re still moving forward. Enjoy the Journey The first 20 meters is more than a physical achievement—it’s a mental turning point. It’s where you stop thinking of yourself as someone who wants to freedive and start becoming a freediver. It’s also where things start getting fun. The deeper water. The silence. The stillness. The feeling of flying. So be patient. Be persistent. And most of all—enjoy the process. Because once you reach 20 meters, you’ll realize it was never just about the number.
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19/05/2025
Facing Burnout In Sport
You thought you were just tired. A bad week, maybe two. But now even the thought of putting on your gear drains you. The sport that once gave you life now feels like a job you can’t quit. You wonder what’s wrong with you. You’ve lost your edge, your spark, your why. You’re not broken. You’re burnt out. And you’re not alone. The Burn Beneath the Surface Burnout isn’t just a buzzword, and it’s not just for corporate workers with inboxes overflowing. It happens to athletes. To the weekend warriors. To the record-breakers. To the ones who love it so much, they forget to stop. It’s more than just being tired or needing a couple of easy days. It’s when your body, mind, and spirit say: enough. In sports psychology, burnout is understood as a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged and excessive stress. According to a foundational study in The Sport Psychologist, athletic burnout is made up of three main components: emotional and physical fatigue, a diminished sense of achievement, and a growing indifference—or even resentment—toward the sport itself. You don’t just lose energy. You lose interest. You lose identity. Who Is at Risk? Because athletes are trained to override discomfort, it often goes unnoticed. You push through pain. You train when you’re tired. You wear sacrifice like a badge. But there’s a difference between discipline and depletion. When you start to dread the thing that once defined you, it’s time to listen. Burnout can show up in anyone. Perfectionists who never feel they’ve done enough. High performers with no space to fail. Young prodigies pushed hard from the start. Veterans who’ve lost their drive but feel obligated to keep going. It cuts across disciplines, ages, and experience levels. And ironically, it often hits the most passionate the hardest. Those who care the most are often the ones who push themselves into the ground. It’s easy to mistake early symptoms for a lack of motivation or grit. You might chalk up the mood swings, the exhaustion, the poor sleep, or the mental fog to stress or aging. But over time, the pattern deepens. Training feels like a chore. You find excuses to skip sessions. You feel flat during workouts. Wins don’t feel like wins. And even when your body says it’s ready, your heart isn’t in it. Psychologist Christina Maslach, who pioneered research on burnout, points out that burnout is rarely about personal weakness—it’s about environmental imbalance. In sport, that imbalance can come from overtraining, lack of rest, pressure to perform, or a loss of autonomy. Athletes often feel like they’re living for others: for coaches, sponsors, followers, or results. And in the age of social media, the comparison game only adds fuel to the fire. You scroll through others' highlight reels and wonder why you don’t feel the same excitement anymore. Somewhere along the way, joy turned into obligation. Burnout vs. Overtraining: A Subtle but Crucial Difference It’s also important to understand how burnout differs from overtraining syndrome. While they often coexist, they’re not the same. Overtraining syndrome is primarily physiological. It manifests through fatigue that doesn’t go away with rest, consistent performance decline, recurring illness, and elevated heart rates. Burnout is more psychological. You might be physically capable, but emotionally and mentally checked out. One lives in your cells, the other in your soul. Recovering from burnout isn’t about pushing through. It’s about stopping. Fully. For longer than you’re comfortable with. And not just physically. The recovery that matters most is psychological detachment from sport. That means stepping away from the routine, the identity, the metrics. It means allowing yourself to be more than an athlete. More than the sum of your stats. Research in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology emphasizes this need for full mental recovery. Athletes often don’t just need time—they need distance. They need to reconnect with who they are when they’re not training. For some, that means traveling. For others, it means sitting still. For many, it means confronting the discomfort of no longer having performance as a crutch. Recovery might look like walks without a destination. Days with no plan. Eating without calculating macros. Rediscovering what you like outside of chasing goals. Sleeping in. Saying no. Talking to someone—ideally a coach, therapist, or sport psychologist who understands the inner mechanics of burnout. You don’t need to figure it all out on your own. In fact, that’s often how you ended up here in the first place. And when the fog begins to lift—and it will—the return needs to be deliberate. Not back to where you were, but forward into something better. That means being honest about what led you to the edge. Was it too many competitions? An obsession with improvement? External validation? A fear of being left behind? Coming back stronger doesn’t mean diving in with even more force. It means revisiting your relationship with your sport. It means redefining success. Maybe it’s not a personal best or a podium. Maybe it’s training without fear. Feeling connected again. Or just finding peace underwater. Intrinsic motivation—the internal joy of doing something for its own sake—has to come first. When your worth is tied to outcomes, burnout is always around the corner. When your identity rests on being “the best,” there’s no room to rest. But when you move for the love of it, recovery becomes possible. You stop chasing, and you start flowing again. Redrawing the Lines Part of the process may also involve setting boundaries you didn’t have before. That could mean limiting training days, avoiding toxic comparisons, saying no to events, or protecting your time outside the sport. It could mean reshaping your community—surrounding yourself with people who value your well-being more than your output. It could mean diversifying who you are. Because you are not just a freediver, or a cyclist, or a triathlete. You are a person first. Some athletes never fully return to their old training loads—and that’s okay. Others come back sharper, more balanced, and with a deeper appreciation for what they do. There’s no universal timeline. What matters is that you come back on your terms, with intention. Because this time, you know what to watch for. If you're a coach or parent, your role in preventing burnout is crucial. Many athletes suffer in silence, especially those who are high functioning. They may not complain. They may even appear to be thriving. But burnout can exist behind perfect attendance and top scores. Ask deeper questions. Encourage honest check-ins. Celebrate the off days, the boundaries, the signs of balance. Be willing to see the human before the athlete. Burnout Isn’t the End. It’s the Signal. If you’re reading this and realizing that something here sounds familiar—don’t panic. You’re not alone. And this doesn’t mean the end of your athletic journey. Burnout is not failure. It’s feedback. A message from your body and mind saying something needs to change. And if you listen, it can lead you somewhere better. Some of the strongest, most enduring athletes have been through burnout. What they share isn’t just resilience—it’s transformation. They come back not just with better habits, but with a better understanding of who they are. They realize that the goal isn’t constant domination. It’s sustainable passion. It’s alignment. It’s health. Freediving teaches this beautifully. In a sport where effort sabotages progress, and surrender becomes strength, burnout is often the final lesson. You cannot force your way deeper. You must trust. You must let go. You must befriend stillness. In the end, burnout has a strange gift hidden inside it: clarity. When everything is stripped away—goals, ego, ambition—you’re left with the truth of your relationship with the sport. And that’s where the rebuild begins. Not from pressure. But from presence.
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19/05/2025
The Ocean Is Not Your Gym
Somewhere between the deep dive and the perfect frame, we lost the plot. Freediving has in recent years been co-opted by a culture of performance. Instructors chase records. Influencers chase likes. Brands chase attention. What began as an intimate exchange between human and ocean has increasingly become a spectacle: one that prioritizes personal goals and digital validation over the very environment it depends on. It’s time to ask the uncomfortable question. What is the cost of treating the ocean as a gym? From Reverence to Recreation Historically, freediving was born from necessity. Pearl divers, sponge hunters, and sea nomads read the sea like a book—its moods, temperatures, rhythms. They knew the sea could not be conquered, only respected. Today, many modern divers step into the ocean like they step into a training facility: looking to extract something from it. The shift is subtle but profound. When your dive is measured only in meters, when your breath-hold is timed to the second, when your performance must be captured on camera, the ocean becomes a backdrop to your ambition—not a co-creator in the experience. The Rise of Performative Freediving There is a particular aesthetic that dominates the freediving world online. The slender silhouette descending into blue. The dramatic arch of the monofin. The exhale. The triumph. On social media, depth and duration are currency. And with that, a culture has emerged—one that celebrates endurance over awareness, and appearance over impact. Performance itself isn’t the problem. The issue is what gets left behind: coral beds bruised by careless fins, marine life disturbed by crowds of divers, delicate caves echoing with human noise. In pursuit of footage, we flood spaces that once thrived in silence. We pose, post, and profit—while the ecosystems we claim to love quietly erode beneath us. The Ocean is Not a Controlled Environment Unlike a gym, the ocean is not built for us. There are no padded floors, no filtered air, no climate control. It is wild. It is alive. And it is under stress. Coral reefs around the world are bleaching. Seagrass meadows—critical for carbon sequestration—are being trampled. Endangered marine species are pushed further to the margins by growing human presence. In such a context, diving without awareness is not neutral. It’s extractive. We often tell ourselves, “I’m just training,” as if physical presence has no footprint. But every dive leaves a trace: from the boat anchor that tears through the seafloor, to the sunscreen that leaches into reefs, to the sheer noise that alters the behavior of marine life. This is not hyperbole—it’s ecological fact. The Problem with Overtraining Another side of the issue is overtraining. It’s not just harmful to athletes—it’s harmful to the ecosystems they train in. Some training sites see dozens of freedivers descending daily along multiple lines. These locations, once quiet sanctuaries, now echo with the constant presence of human bodies and their accompanying gear. Imagine if a national park allowed 40 athletes to sprint, leap, and stretch on the same patch of protected land every day, all year round. The impact would be obvious. Yet when it comes to underwater environments, we still operate with the illusion of limitlessness. Marine ecosystems, especially in tropical and subtropical zones, are incredibly sensitive. Reefs grow at the pace of millimeters per year. Sea creatures breed in specific seasons. Underwater noise affects everything from feeding patterns to mating behavior. Freedivers, despite their silence, are not invisible to these systems. Normalizing Environmental Illiteracy The freediving community often prides itself on being “in tune” with nature. But tuning in means more than admiring the view. It means understanding where you’re diving, what species live there, what seasons they’re vulnerable in, and how your presence changes the equation. Unfortunately, many freediving schools still treat ecological awareness as optional. The focus is on physiology, safety, technique—and not on the surrounding biome. The result? Generations of divers who know their residual volume but can’t identify a threatened species. Who learn about equalization but not about coral spawning. Who train for competitions held in sites they don’t even know the history of. This kind of ecological illiteracy is not just a missed opportunity. It’s a liability. Competitive Freediving’s Growing Footprint Depth competitions have become a hallmark of modern freediving. They showcase elite talent and push human potential—but they also bring with them a significant environmental load. Boats. Safety divers. Support staff. Equipment. Anchors. Repeated line drops. Increased surface traffic. When done thoughtfully, competitions can integrate sustainability measures: mooring lines, minimal intrusion, waste management, local ecological assessments. But in many cases, especially when events pop up in emerging freediving destinations, the pressure to perform outweighs the pressure to protect. As more divers travel to remote locations to train or compete, the carbon footprint expands too. Flights, fuel, imported gear—all contribute to an invisible web of environmental costs that rarely make it into the highlight reel. So What Can We Do? The critique is not meant to shame. It’s meant to invite reflection—and responsibility. If freedivers truly see themselves as stewards of the sea, then it’s time to live up to that identity with tangible action. 1. Shift the Mindset: Let go of the gym metaphor. The ocean is not a training facility—it’s a living world. Frame your dives as encounters, not workouts. Practice with reverence, not repetition. Remember that every descent is a privilege. 2. Choose Ethical Schools and Instructors: Not all training centers are the same. Seek out schools that teach ecological literacy as part of their curriculum. Ask instructors about their environmental policies. Support those who limit class sizes, avoid sensitive habitats, and prioritize low-impact practices. 3. Learn the Ecosystem: Before diving in a new location, study its marine life. Learn about its protected species, breeding seasons, and historical stressors. Understand the role your presence plays in that system—and adapt accordingly. 4. Stop Chasing Content: Do you really need to film every dive? Is the clip worth the disturbance? Be honest about your motivations. If documenting your freediving journey, do it in a way that uplifts, not exploits. Highlight conservation. Respect privacy. Show restraint. 5. Advocate for Sustainable Competitions: If you compete or organize events, push for sustainability standards. No anchor zones. Eco-certified support boats. Local environmental briefings. Carbon offset programs. Prize less the records, more the responsibility. 6. Reduce Your Gear Footprint: Do you need three wetsuits and five sets of fins? Buy less. Choose durable, responsibly made equipment. Support brands that reinvest in ocean protection. Refuse the cheap, rebranded imports that dominate the market with zero accountability. Rewilding Our Relationship with the Sea Freediving is not about dominating depth. It is about surrendering to it. When done with intention, it becomes a ceremony—not a sport. A way to rewild ourselves in a world that constantly demands control, metrics, and visibility. To dive well is to know when not to dive. To see a rare fish and not chase it. To encounter a coral bed and float above, not hover over. To feel the need to train, and still give the ocean rest. It’s also about community. Sharing knowledge. Uplifting stories of protection over performance. Teaching the next generation not just how to dive—but why it matters where, how, and with what consequences. The ocean has never needed us. We need it. And if we continue to treat it like our private gym, we may find ourselves locked out—of its beauty, its mystery, and its future. Respect is not passive. It’s active, informed, and accountable. As freedivers, we pride ourselves on breathing less. Maybe it’s time we also took less, posted less, and left more space—for the ocean to breathe too.
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19/05/2025
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