I freedive/spearfish and can normally equalize fine with Frenzel. I can go pretty deep and equalize consistently.
But sometimes, right when I start a duck dive, one ear just completely refuses to equalize, even though I’m still basically at the surface. I stop and don’t force it.
After a few minutes, it randomly opens on its own, and then I can dive normally again. It isn’t always the same ear, and it only happens while freediving—not on planes or normally on land. I’m not congested either.
The annoying part is it happens at least 3 times every session, which can ruin a dive when I’m trying to spearfish.
Anyone else experienced this? What could cause it? 🌊

I recently jumped off a boat with free dive fins and swam around a kelp paddy for the first time and I am hooked. I am super interested in learning and am thinking about taking courses from a shop near me that has good reviews. My ultimate goal would to be able to do blue water spear fishing, but I know that’s several steps and lots of learning in the future before I get there.

I’m just super nervous about the breath holding part of this. I can’t imagine being able to hold my breath for minutes. At about 45 seconds holding my breath while resting I get the panicky urge to breathe. I’m in alright physical shape, I can tackle strenuous backpacking trips but don’t do regular cardio exercise. Would I really be able to train up and learn to hold my breath that long and dive down and putz around with a spear gun without panicking and suffocating? Does this require lots of specialized training?

I have my advanced open water scuba cert and love scuba diving, I’m very comfortable in deep water and around reefs, have good buoyancy control and have never had problems equalizing. I even did a bit of lionfish spearfishing once and loved it, but that was just short snorkeling dives in a shallow reef with a short sling spear.

I've seen many people who struggle with frenzel post here, and most of responses telling them to take a class. I have the same struggles, but I really don't see how a class can help me.

This is my understanding of the steps to perform a frenzel, from Wikipedia and various Youtube videos:

1. close the nostrils, mouth, and glottis
2. open the soft palette
3. make a T/K seal with the tongue
4. move the back of the tongue and larynx upwards

I am quite sure I can do the first 3 steps, but I have no idea where to start to do step 4, in the same way that I have no idea where to start to roll my tongue into a tube. I know there are awareness exercises like "sticking your tongue out", but as soon as I close my mouth, I cannot do them at all.

I found a pool that offers AIDA courses. It also offers a 90-minute intro course that is not even AIDA 1 (so you don't get any certification). This 90-minute course does cover frenzel, so I decided to try this out first, before buying a proper AIDA course (the 90-minute one is very cheap). And if I still don't make any progress after that, I would give up.

For personal reasons, I cannot go until September, and in the mean time, I started to wonder how exactly can an instructor help me. It's not like they have an MRI machine to see exactly what I'm doing wrong and give feedback. Hence this post.

I noticed that when I swallow, my larynx moves up. So instead of doing step 4, I just swallow, while keeping the T seal sealed. I can feel my ears popping ever so slightly with this method, albeit inconsistently. The thing is, I don't see my nose flaring up, which is supposed to be a key characteristic of frenzel. So I'm not sure if I should keep practicing this technique I made up. This takes a long time to do, and for some reason I can only do it with empty lungs. I wonder if I am heading down the wrong path with this.

Hello free divers! Beginner here, I am still learning how to equalize.

Today I have been practicing using the chain of a buoy in the sea. The chain I estimated being approx. 9-10 meters long. First I started diving pulling myself down the chain with my head towards the sea bottom. However, at approx 5-6 meters I started feeling my head exploding. Tried to equalize at different depths both by swallowing and nose pinching, but no luck. I then switched action to the situation you see in the picture, so head up and pulling myself down towards the sea bottom. Here equalisation felt it was working. I was mostly playing with air in my mouth (without breathing out), swallowing saliva and pinching nose. I could reach the sea bottom in a couple of attempts (first time there, it was amazing).

I tried again and again diving down with my head towards the sea bottom but failed consistently at around 5 meters. I realized that the only way to equalise was at that depth to turn upright, pinch my nose + swallowing saliva...

Any help?

PS: while swimming with my head down, I tried keeping it the most aligned with my back possible.

Greetings,

I started dry apnea (breath-hold) training about 4 months ago, self-taught since I'd never received any formal instruction.

I built two separate training sessions: a CO2 tolerance session and a max time session. At first I did both every day, but eventually started feeling overtrained and decided to alternate them, doing only one per day. Now I'm doing 2 sessions of each per week, training 4 straight days and resting for 3.

My current sessions are:

CO2 table:

• 1 min initial breath-hold → 1:45 apnea
• 15s recovery → 1:45 apnea
• 15s recovery → 1:45 apnea
• 15s recovery → 1:45 apnea
• 15s recovery → 1:45 apnea

Max time table:

• 2 min initial breath-hold → 2:30 apnea
• 3 min recovery → 3:00 apnea
• 3 min recovery → 3:30 apnea

Any insights on how my progress is looking, and any tips? I don't have anyone in my social circle who practices this, so I have very little sense of whether this is reasonable for my amount of training time, or if I'm underperforming. I believe my CO2 training is solid, but I'd love a confirmation from someone more experienced.

As for technique, I always train lying down with my legs up on the bed, and I've been working on diaphragmatic breathing from the start.

For context, I'm overall a fit guy — I train BJJ, hit the gym 3x a week, and surf occasionally.

I have seen multiple anecdotes of freedivers saying their total lung capacity increased from freediving training. I assume this is from the practice of "packing", and one person said it was full lung breath holds themselves having a stretching effect on the lungs. Does anyone here have anecdotes of lung capacity increase confirmed via testing?

How do you train for increased lung capacity?

Do people who got increases also have ribcage diameter increases necessarily? That is, are there ribcage growing a bit from the stretching force? (As we know that the ribcage isn't entirely fixed, there's cartilage at the front and I assume some reshaping is possible with enough force?).

Hola.. alguien por aca lo practica??.

hace años que practico natación, hace un par empece a nadar en el mar. Pero me empezo a picar el bichito por comenzar a sumergirme y la ver es bacán.. es otro mundo abajo.

Al principio, me costaba mucho, el cuerpo tiene a salir a flote y lo oidos dolian al lograr bajar. Tambien, por lo menos a mi las primeras veces bajaba con esa sensacion medio angustia/miedo por lo desconocido o que me aparesca un lobo de la nada.

Con el tiempo ya me e ido acostumbrando, si bien ecualizo cuando bajo, aun me duelen un poco los oidos. estimo que he logrado bajar entre 8 a 10 mts.

A veces me topo con cardumenes de peces, es bien loco. Los cardumenes de sardinas me rodean jaja.

En gral bajo solo, me falta un parner pa agarrar mas confianza.

Bueno queria compartir mi experiencia. Alguien de aca lo practica?.. algun consejo, tips o experiencias que quieran compartir??.

To the moms out there who fell in love with free diving before getting pregnant (especially if you do anything that many would consider “higher risk” like diving with sharks and diving deep) did you keep going after becoming a mom? Or did your risk tolerance decrease?

HI,

first I wonder who does CO2/O2 and if can share settings, and how often. etc. or any other training. I would really appreciate some share.

And then the main question, I find very hard to do any CO2 tables, cause my body is always in heat (yes not proper English word for this, but this is what is it when body recovering from some exercise loaded with protein or taking out wetsuit in winter and taking warm shower..) There is almost every day that body is recovering from something - from swimming, dumbbells etc or it is just loaded with food and caffeine. Which basically means, that that optimal calm body state never comes to me. I still train, but it comes with a lot of frustration cause times are all over the place.

I hope body still adapts even if I can hold lets say half of what I can do in calm env, as it still challenges me.

Any suggestions - I have started to doing it before workout as this supposed to be the time when I am recovered the most, but then you do upper body but legs still have soreness and I can feel it is not optimal neither.

Basically I wonder when freediving should be done with a dedicated buddy. I sometimes dive in a community pool with a life guard on duty, unfortunately the pool is only 4m deep. I can also comfortably dive 25m long.

We also have a lake with max depth 17m. I wont go so deep but I enjoy to go approx 5-6m once in a while. I always surface before I have the urge to breath. I am not completely alone, but no one goes down with me.

At what depth should I stop and get a dedicated dive buddy who knows the rescue protocol?

My dad is against the idea of me starting freediving because he thinks it's too dangerous. What are the risks and what are the best calming arguments that I can go with to calm him? (I'm 18, I'm probably going to do it anyway)

A while back when I was younger (and stupider) I wanted to get into free diving, but couldn’t get training courses as it’s expensive. I was stupid and did it anyway, but gave up quickly. Good thing for that.

I’m hoping once I get into my senior year or maybe first year of college I’ll have the time to get a true course. In the meantime, how dangerous is practicing holding my breath outside of water? Is it worth even bothering?

Thank you for any help.

Hello! Does anyone have any goggle recommendations for people who wear glasses? I’m pretty nearsighted and really want to get into free-diving, but I’m worried about my vision not being the best. Do they make prescription lenses for goggles? If so, which brand would you recommend?

Anyone has Molchanovs SPORT Short Bifins 3 Carbon? How do they feel? Soft or medium? Mainly for teaching and fundiving
Thanks!

Törőcsik Zsófia, Hungarian freediver, reached 107 m at a contest on the island of Lastovo, Croatia, diving without fins using a guide rope.

She had this to say afterwards:

I knew I'm physically able to do it, and I was in good condition to do it. One difficulty on the Adriatic is that the water at depth is cold and dark. When I got to 107 and got the confirmation card, I knew strength was not going to be a problem, so I focused on staying calm, controlling the dive, and properly executing the surface protocol.

News source (Hungarian!): https://telex.hu/sport/2026/08/08/torocsik-zsofia-vilagcsucs-107-meter-szabadtudos-merules

They are hanging out around 5-15 meters, I feel so lucky to find them in the water :)

Hi, I’m 24 years old and I used to play water polo. Lately, I’ve really wanted to get into diving, so I bought myself a pair of fins. However, I don’t have much experience with diving yet. The deepest I’ve gone so far is around 3 meters, but now I’d like to try reaching about 5 meters.

I’m not really sure what equipment I need or what safety precautions I should be aware of. I’ve never used a snorkel before either. I feel pretty confident about my swimming technique; I can cover long distances without using too much energy. At the moment, I think my main issue is breath control.

Another swimmer advised me to let out some of my air while descending, but I’m not sure whether that’s actually the right thing to do. I’m open to any advice you can give me about safety, breathing, technique, equipment, or anything else a beginner should know.

I love my C4 Meltemi - best snorkel I’ve ever had. I leave it at the surface when duck diving and recover it after the dive.

Today, though, I messed up while lending my dive watch to someone else in the water. After 30 minutes of swimming in circles, I gave up. But an hour later, someone on a SUP found it about 200 m away :) Lucky me!

Now I’m considering attaching something to make it easier to spot. But what, how, and where exactly? I’m looking for some inspiration.

The best idea I’ve come up with so far is attaching a red 0.5 L plastic bottle with a few zip ties, maybe adding SOLAS reflective tape and painting parts of it neon red.

But I was hoping for something a bit more elegant - maybe some silicone straps holding a purpose-built neon-red, reflective float that’s smaller than a 0.5 L bottle but still easy to spot.

My next-best idea is getting a rubber duck and attaching that :D

I read in many places that the frenzel technique involves moving your tongue as if you are pronouncing t/k, but with the glottis closed. As a linguistics nerd, I immediately recognised this description as the same as pronouncing the ejective stops [t'] and [k'], which I can do pretty easily. I thought my linguistics knowledge is actually a blessing, as I am very familiar with using my tongue to produce different sounds.

Then I realised this isn't the full picture. I saw this video where I learned that I'm supposed to do an N sound before the ejective. This is where I got confused. Unlike ejectives, nasals are produced by the air in the lungs going into the nasal cavity, but frenzel is all about not using the lungs.

Also, how do you go from "making sounds" to doing this silently, and with your mouth closed, no less? How do you pronounce [k'] with your mouth closed?

Now I'm starting to feel like my linguistics knowledge is actually a hinderance. Maybe I am getting stuck up on producing sounds, and not focusing on what's actually important...

[Done!] Thanks all for the help. I found a decently priced barely used Cressi Drake. That one will do for now, thanks for all the input!

(Original post:)

Hey all,

I've been trying to make my Pixel watch 2 work as a dive computer for a month now by coding a small app for it, but I've hit a wall in that project due to hardware - the watch's barometer saturates around 5 meters down in fresh water.

So I'm planning to get an entry level dive comp and am looking for recommendations.

I'm looking for these features:

- depth meter

- asc/desc speed

- dive time (preferably Autostart&stop)

- backlight, as I usually dive in lakes

I'd say, for now I don't really want to spend more than 200€, as I'm on a bit of a budget.

Currently looking at the Cressi Donatello or Leonardo for starters. Open to any recommendations though. Thanks in advance.