Freediving for Beginners - How to Start Freediving Safely

Freediving is diving underwater on a single breath, with no scuba tank. You breathe at the surface, descend, and come back up on the same lungful of air. Almost anyone who is comfortable in water can learn the basics in two to three days.

You might look at experienced freedivers going very deep and wonder whether it is dangerous, or how anyone holds their breath that long. This guide answers both. It covers how the training works, which gear you will use, how to breathe before a dive, and what to realistically expect on your first day in the water. Whether you are a confident swimmer or you have only ever paddled in the shallows, freediving is for you.

How Do You Start Freediving?

You start with a course. Freediving is not a sport to teach yourself, because its main risk, blackout, gives the diver no warning and needs a trained buddy at the surface to manage. Four steps get you from interested to certified.

Get comfortable in the water. You do not need to be a strong swimmer. You do need to be relaxed with your face in the water and able to swim a few lengths without it feeling like work.
Choose an agency. AIDA, SSI, PADI, Molchanovs, RAID and Apnea Academy all run freediving courses and all follow a broadly similar teaching structure. In practice, pick whichever has a school near you or at the destination you are travelling to next.
Choose the course length. A full entry level certification usually runs two to three days. A try dive or discovery session takes one day, skips the certification, and tells you whether you want to carry on.
Book it, then prepare. Start stretching, practise equalizing your ears and get used to slow breathing before you arrive. Everything in the tips section below is worth doing in the weeks beforehand.

What Should You Expect on Your First Day?

Two numbers matter to almost every beginner, so here they are before the gear list rather than buried at the bottom of the page.

10 to 30 feet (3 to 9 m)
The depth most people reach during their first freediving days.

90 seconds to 2 minutes
The breath-hold most people manage within the first few days. Untrained and with no technique, most of us sit at 30 to 60 seconds.

Treat both as ranges rather than targets. Everyone is different, and the fastest way to have a bad first day is to arrive with a number in your head and then miss it. Trained freedivers commonly hold three to five minutes, but that comes after months of practice and usually in a pool rather than at depth.

Do not focus on numbers. Enjoy the process, keep practising, and the depth arrives on its own.

What Freediving Equipment Do You Need as a Beginner?

Six items: a mask, a snorkel, fins, a wetsuit, a weight belt, and a buoy with a rope. Your course will supply all of them, so you do not need to buy anything before you start. If you already know freediving is going to stick, buying your own is worth it, because gear that fits properly is more comfortable and safer than gear that nearly fits.

Mask

A mask covers your eyes and nose, lets you see underwater and keeps water out of your nostrils.

Freediving masks and scuba masks look almost identical, but they are not interchangeable. Freedivers use low volume masks, which hold less air inside and therefore need less air from your lungs to equalize on the way down. That difference matters more the deeper you go. My guide to choosing a freediving mask covers what to check on fit and seal, and my five most recommended masks compares specific models.

Snorkel

A snorkel is a tube that lets you breathe with your face in the water while you relax at the surface before a dive.

It is the simplest piece of gear you will own and the easiest to overspend on. Freediving snorkels are plain J shaped tubes with no valve, no dry top and no splash guard, because all of that adds bulk and drag for no benefit to a freediver. You take the snorkel out of your mouth before you descend, so the clever features never get used.

Fins

Freediving fins have much longer blades than snorkeling fins, which lets you move further on each kick and therefore burn less oxygen getting to depth.

Start with plastic. Entry level freediving fins are cheaper, far more durable, and forgiving if you kick a rock. Carbon and fiberglass blades are more efficient, but they are also fragile and expensive, and the efficiency gain is wasted until your finning technique is good enough to use it.

Wetsuit

freediver underwater in black pants and silver jacket

You will want a wetsuit even in warm water, because freedivers spend far longer floating still at the surface than swimmers do, and you lose heat fast when you are not moving.

Freediving wetsuits are usually two pieces: high waisted pants with a separate hooded jacket over them. That gives you a double layer over your core, no zip to leak through, and enough stretch to move freely. Getting cold is not only unpleasant, it also makes it harder to relax and control your heart rate, which shortens your breath-hold.

Weight belt

A weight belt carries blocks of lead that offset the buoyancy of your wetsuit and your lungs, so you can descend without fighting your way down.

Two things matter. First, the belt should be rubber rather than nylon, because a rubber freediving weight belt sits on your hips and stays there when you fold into a duck dive. Second, the amount of lead has to be right. Too much and you sink when you need to float at the surface, which is the single most dangerous mistake in the sport. Work out how much weight you actually need and err on the light side.

Buoy and Rope

A buoy is a float you and your buddy hold at the surface, with a weighted rope hanging vertically below it.

Your instructor provides both during a course, so a freediving buoy is not something you need on day one. Once you are diving without an instructor it becomes essential rather than optional. The buoy makes you visible to boats and gives you something to hold on the surface. The rope tells you where you are in the water, stops you drifting, and stops you going deeper than you meant to. You clip to it with a lanyard on your wrist so you cannot stray from the line.

How Should You Breathe Before a Freedive?

Slowly, into your belly, and without ever hyperventilating. The minutes before a breath-hold do more for your dive than anything you do during it, because a relaxed body burns less oxygen.

Your first course will cover relaxation breathing properly. Two techniques are worth practising at home before you get there.

Belly breathing. Most people breathe into the chest by default. Breathing into the belly instead uses the diaphragm properly, and according to the Cleveland Clinic it lowers heart rate and blood pressure and decreases the body’s oxygen demand. Lower oxygen demand is the whole game in freediving.
Tidal breathing. Tidal breathing is simply how you breathe at rest. Normal breaths in and out, no forcing. Aim for a ratio of roughly one to two, breathing out for about twice as long as you breathe in, which settles the nervous system.
One thing to never do: hyperventilate. Fast, hard breathing before a dive feels like it is loading you with oxygen. It is not. It flushes out carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide is what triggers the urge to breathe. Remove the warning signal and you can pass out underwater with no warning at all. This is a major cause of shallow water blackout, and it is why every freediving course teaches calm breathing rather than deep breathing.

These techniques are the optimum way to breathe before a freedive, and they work just as well on dry land. Breathwork has been shown to reduce anxiety and help calm a busy mind. Give it a try at home before you ever get in the water.

Freediving Tips for Beginners

Six things worth doing before your course, or before your next session with a more experienced buddy.

Get Your Own Gear

Masks, snorkels and fins are all fit dependent, and everybody’s face and feet are different. A busy dive centre may not have much to choose from, so having your own removes the problem.

If you live near a dive shop, go and try a few on and ask for help with fit. If you do not, there is plenty of information and review detail online, including on this site, so ordering is perfectly workable. Stick to brands that make gear specifically for freediving: Mares, DiveR, Beuchat, Cressi, Omer, Elios and Cetma are all safe places to start.

Make Stretching a Habit

Flexibility in your chest, shoulders and hips makes you more streamlined and more comfortable in the water, and a more streamlined body needs less oxygen to move. Regular stretching or a yoga class does the job.

Practise Equalizing Your Ears

Ear pressure stops more beginners than lung capacity does. You have to equalize on the way down, and it is far easier to learn the movement on dry land than while sinking.

There are several equalization techniques, and the one you end up using depends on how deep you go. To start with, simply practise popping your ears repeatedly, back to back, in your free time.

Improve Your Mental and Physical Fitness

Freediving will improve your fitness on its own, which is one of the real benefits of freediving. Progressing faster takes deliberate work, though. A mix of water sessions, dry training , and mental exercises builds the physical capacity and the calm that longer dives need.

Follow a Healthy Diet

What you eat in the hours before a session changes how your body handles a breath-hold. Some foods leave you energised, others leave you heavy or bloated, and bloating is genuinely uncomfortable when you fold into a duck dive. Knowing what to eat and what to avoid before freediving is worth the ten minutes it takes to read.

Never, Ever Dive Alone

Solo freediving is the single biggest of the dangers of freediving. If you black out underwater and nobody is there, you drown. It is that simple, and it happens to confident, experienced divers, not just beginners.

A buddy is not someone floating vaguely nearby. It is someone watching your dive, waiting at the surface as you come up, and trained to bring you up if you do not. That is the first safety rule of this sport and the one that has no exceptions.

Questions From Beginners

It is so important to learn to freedive with a trained professional who will keep you safe and teach you important safety practices. Courses are designed to keep you, and those around you safe.

Freediving can be enjoyed by everyone in different ways. Although it is not easy to become a 100m deep diver, it is easy to learn the basics and enjoy freediving on the reef. Most people learn the basics of breathing and good diving technique in just a few days.

Everyone is different so it is difficult to tell how deep a beginner will freedive, but generally, average people can reach a depth of 10-30 feet (3-9m) on their first freediving days. It’s important not to set expectations, because then if you don’t reach them, you will feel disappointed, even though you might have achieved a lot and had fun. Don’t focus on numbers, enjoy the process and keep practicing and the depth will come.

Most people can hold their breath for around 30-60 seconds without any training, with some basic breathing techniques and a few attempts, most people can manage a 90-second, or even two-minute breath-hold in the first few days. With regular practice, master freedivers can hold their breath for 3-5 minutes, some of them more than 10 minutes (this however applies to static apnea practice usually).

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Freediving For Beginners – How To Start Your Freediving Journey