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Can you be unfit and still practice freediving? Of course, you can. Even though via exercising and training you will get to develop yourself in a safer manner and at a faster pace, there is one freediving discipline that doesn't expect you to spend time at the gym. Which one is that? In a recent interview with Tokushikai Canada, Sheena McNally shared her views on the subject.
Free Immersion is one of the self-powered freediving disciplines, which are the ones where you're using your body as the means of propulsion, to go to depth and back up again - if i were to rename it I would call it “pulling”! So, imagine a buoy, like a surface float, with a weighted line going to depth, and so you use your arms and the line as the means of propulsion, and your legs can completely relax. Basically, imagine pulling yourself down an anchor line or something on a boat! So, you pull with one hand and you equalize with the other. This one is super nice for people who are learning because it's slow, so it makes it easier to work on their equalization. The line is their physical connection to the surface which is super comforting when you're learning, and even when you're not learning this is super comforting just to be constantly holding this line, constantly connected to the surface. Also, the line makes it easy to stop.
I would argue that this type of freediving, where you’re pulling on the line, in some ways it's the most relaxing of the self-powered disciplines, because you don't have to use the legs, so the athletic demand of it is not as high as the other disciplines. You could be severely unfit and still be like a pretty good, pretty decent free immersion diver I would say! I know for a long time I just didn't really have any fitness to speak of, and so I was just doing mostly free immersion because it's not so much effort.