I
recently had the chance to spend a weekend conquering one of my fears… Exploring THE SEA…
and to top it all, I learned the basics of freediving.
Before
I start, let’s define what Freediving is… According to Wikipedia (which I
suppose is the “go to” for such definitions. Lol!) - Freediving, free-diving, free diving,
breath-hold diving, or skin diving is a form of underwater diving that relies
on divers' ability to hold their breath until resurfacing rather than on the
use of a breathing apparatus such as scuba gear.
Introducing Coach Roger and my new friend Audrie
My good friend Reymond Pante who introduced me to freediving...
Pictures below were taken during lecture. So, since the activity entails holding your breath, we started off by learning the techniques of how to properly do it.
After this, we then proceeded to the site. Two options to go to the site, you can either walk (takes about 30 mins) or take a tricycle for 50php.
Pictures below were taken during the floating session before we headed off to the deeper part of the sea.
After checking on each of our swimming and floating skills, we then started to swim going to the diving site.
Below were our pictures during the diving activity. I didn't know that this event will change the way I look at deep seas (everything went good except from my few bouts with muscle spasms, lol!) Before I post our pictures, first off, let me thank the people behind this unforgettable experience. Freediving Coaches of Asia, you guys are the best. They are composed of people working on a common goal and that is to bring people closer to the sea... special shoutout to the Master Coach @Jeroen Elout who hails from another country yet chose to stay in our beautiful Philippines and spearheaded this freediving activity.
Free Diving Coaches of Asia aims to:
1. To teach EVERYBODY on sea survival. To reduce non swimmer rate and the yearly drowning count. (Drowning is the no.1 cause of death among Thai youngsters aged 15 below, each year 3000 kids drown)
2. To teach freediving to everyone, because once people start to love the sea they can eventually help in taking care of it.
3. To train more coaches as thousands are needed if we seriously want to teach a nation how to survive at sea.
Photo op with the diving master...
Freediving Main event
Kudos to all our Coaches Coach Roger, Coach Anthony and everyone (sorry I forgot the names of the rest of them)! You guys are really awesome...
Guys, here is the most recent upcoming event posted by Free Diving Coaches of Asia. Kindly visit their site and like the page.
Lastly, Special thanks to my newfound friends... I hope we can all get together again for another set of Freediving activity. Thank you everyone for being the best! Ryan Eramis Apayat, Aubrey Rodriguez, Crissy FabelPadre, Jeff Belchez, Kenneth Domingo, Lawrence San Juan, Tiffany Delos Santos, Presa Prangko, Rap Paolo and Reymond Pante.
I highly recommend this activity as it will make you appreciate nature at its best. Hope you enjoyed my weekend escapade! 'Til my next adventure!
This is a public alert for anyone who is reading this post and considers taking the courses of the now internationally infamous group "Freediving Coaches of Asia". The practices of this group and the person who has been leading it, have both been condemned by all means in the international freediving community, for delivering a very risky methodology and techniques of freediving for beginners.
ReplyDeleteTo the author of this blog, please do not delete my comment. You better read the link and consider removing this blog post which is advertising the wrongdoing of Jeroen and his dedicated followers. Jeroen is abusing a loophole which is in an essence the lack of legislation in the Philippines for the sport of freediving. I would like to emphasize that Jeroen is not certified to teach freediving from any international known body and none of his students who become coaches are certified as well. Please do not advertise them.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10212911517769893&set=a.4095663357115.2168531.1448781232
Hello po Mr/Ms Anonymous, I do understand that you mean well and you are talking about safety and getting lectures from a certified freediving instructor. But before you start scaring people I would like to share my very PLEASANT EXPERIENCE with "Freediving Coaches of Asia". It all started in June 10, 2017 I was supposed to go to Buscalan to get a tattoo with Apo Wang-Od but the event got cancelled so I look for alternative events that I can join for that coming weekend and I saw them in Facebook Events and so I sign up. The experience for me was very AMAZING, from a person with zero knowledge of what the sports is, I was being introduced to something that is very interesting and cool. The main thing that always stand out from all the lectures is to ALWAYS HAVE A BUDDY, SO NEVER DIVE ALONE and always safety first. I try my best to understand the lectures as much as I can because everything is very new to me. Never during the practical execution of the lecture that I felt unsafe and in the end of the two day event I was really VERY HAPPY and very satisfied.
DeleteMarlowe Samar
Hello Anonymous,
DeleteThanks for stopping by and letting us know of the issue regarding freediving. I was very surprised of the story, however, I don't think I'm in the position to jump into conclusion having only heard one side of the story. In fairness to the people at Freediving Coaches of Asia, they do not mean to put anyone in harm's way. They were very strict in imposing the rule that no one dives alone. We were paired with another person who served as our buddy just as what Marlowe said. I would also like to reiterate the goal set by these people:
Free Diving Coaches of Asia aims to:
1. To teach EVERYBODY on sea survival. To reduce non swimmer rate and the yearly drowning count. (Drowning is the no.1 cause of death among Thai youngsters aged 15 below, each year 3000 kids drown)
2. To teach freediving to everyone, because once people start to love the sea they can eventually help in taking care of it.
3. To train more coaches as thousands are needed if we seriously want to teach a nation how to survive at sea.
While the training session was ongoing, I do not recall them ever having said that they were all licensed free divers. What I do recall is that they call themselves "Coaches" for the very reason that they knew what techniques to be used during freediving and that they will be glad to hand those information down to newbies like me.
The information that is contained in the Facebook post indicated in your comment is very much appreciated and valued but I think it is unfair for me to judge and it will be wiser if we can approach someone from Freediving Coaches of Asia to speak and clear this matter out. I will try to reach out to any of them and hopefully we can get an answer.
Thank you and have a great day!
Thanks for sharing this blog. It contain lot of information about FreeDiving.
ReplyDelete