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Freediving is one of the safest sports around, as long as it's done in a responsible manner and under the supervision of one or more trained buddies. Cristian Castano, one of Colombia's deepest men, explores 7 safety tips that all freedivers should be aware of.
Ηello guys, my name is Cristian Castano and I'm a professional athlete and national record holder for Colombia. I'm also an AIDA instructor trainer and part of the Alchemy team. The first tip I'm going to give you is to learn proper skills. What do I mean by this? If you are a beginner in freediving, if you've never taken a course, what would be important to do is to know how to properly swim, and know how to float, how to use a mask and a snorkel, it will be very helpful for you and very safe later to go on a freediving course or to try to do some deep dives. But I also mean for when you are already let's say, a decent deep diver, it would be good to train all the techniques to make your dive safer. How do we do this? Of course by training in the pool, if you want to switch to disciplines, maybe let's say you're doing free immersion and you want to do a monofin dives or you want to do no fins dives, the best thing to do is to go in the pool and really train your technique to improve all your skills and then to make safer and easier deeper dives in all the other disciplines.
Ok, the next tip is to use proper equipment for your dives and by this, I don't mean that you have to buy the latest fanciest equipment. You don't need the best wetsuit, the best mask, the best fins, but you need to have proper ones, things that are going to make it safer, so things that are not going to break and I'm not only talking about the equipment that you're going to be wearing, but also the equipment that you're going to bring to do the setup. Like for example to have a nice buoy, a nice rope, a nice stopper for the rope, because if one of these things fail or the carabiners are old and rusty, it could be dangerous, if you lose it, if the line comes out of the carabiner if the stopper doesn't work and you keep going down and then just have proper safe equipment for your setup. So a nice stopper, a nice rope, a nice buoy, and just decent fins that are not going to break, a mask that is not going to get flooded with water, can really help you to keep it on the safe side.
The next tip i'm gonna give you is of course not to hyperventilate. This is a very important rule in freediving and it comes from many freedivers who maybe practice without having any knowledge of freediving before and then they do it just in their place where they live, maybe they go spearfishing or they hear their friends it's really easier to do the dives when you breathe strongly, but definitely, this is something you must not do, because it will be very dangerous. It will do the opposite of what we want, which is to hold our breath for longer, it is very likely that you will end up blacking out if you do it super strong without even holding your breath for a long time, because all the vessels in your brain will contract and the blood will drain. So, don't do this. Even if at one point you're gonna feel it's easier to hold your breath when you hyperventilate, actually it is gonna make shorter your breath holds and make it super risky. So don't hyperventilate, learn with a proper instructor, take a proper freediving course and learn how to breathe and just focus on relaxation and it will be a lot better and a lot easier.
The next one is a very common problem that might happen when we go to a new place where we freedive and it's a really warm place. Like most places where we freedive like Egypt or the Caribbean or Indonesia and the Philippines, are places that are very hot and that you might end up sweating a lot more than normal and the problem is dehydration. So the tip is to stay well hydrated, and drink as much water as you can, it will never hurt you for your diving because we digest water in a really fast way. So stay well hydrated, and I would recommend you even to put some rehydration salts or electrolytes in your drinks, to help you stay good without dehydration of your body. Because when we are really dehydrated, we can have a really bad impact on our performance. We are going to be feeling really tired and we're not gonna realize sometimes that the problem is this. So, it really happened to me, I really improved my diet after having weak hydration when I first moved to Egypt, and it really made a difference. So stay well hydrated.
One more very important safety tip is to pay a lot of attention to your surroundings when you're doing a deep session or a session near the shore. And by this, I mean that sometimes if let's say you're with your friend and one of you is really focused on relaxation breathing, maybe even have the eyes closed, the other one the one who's going to be doing the safety should also be aware of what's going on. By that I mean sea life and also boat traffic. It's not nice and it has happened to us a few times in San Andreas island that you're very relaxed preparing for our dives, and then a big shark sneaks behind your back. It's not good, so pay attention to that. Also to jellyfish, some of them can be dangerous depending on the place, of the country of the world where you are. And also it's not good when a boat comes really close to you or they might not see you, it will be good if you can bring a flag or something that is really visible for the boats. But also then you have to stay paying attention and make sure that you can see the boat from far away and because also some of them don't make that much noise. And I'm talking about Indonesia, when they come, they're very silent, so you need to pay attention to that as well, to avoid the problem and the boat hits your freediving buddy.
The next step would be to take care of your body. Of course, our body is our main tool for doing free diving so we need to be very fit for when we're going in the water. How are we going to take care of our body? By eating well, by stretching before our dives, like that we're going to prevent having any cramps or any problems, muscular problems when we dive. We don't want to have a problem, muscular, when we are deep and then we have to go all the way up. So if we eat well, if we don't eat too much before our dives, then we're also going to feel really good in our breath holds in our system. So yeah, stretching and eating well will be the other tip to take care of our body before we go for our dives.
And the last basic tip i'm gonna give you is what we always say, is the most important thing in freediving, and i have to say it even if you probably have heard it a million times, is never, ever, to freedive alone. It is very important that it doesn't matter the kind of diving, it doesn't matter how easy it is, it doesn't matter how good you are, you're never gonna go on your own, you're gonna be risking your life and that is something that we just don't do. Please keep it safe ,it's for the good of all of us, if you don't dive alone, if nothing happens to you, then we're gonna build a better reputation for the sport and we're gonna be doing a much better thing for all of us. So don't freedive alone, always go with a buddy and take care. That's it, goodbye!