Top 5 Freediving Tips and Techniques to improve your diving

Hey, I'm Adam Stern. I hold my breath and dive really deep. Here are my top five freediving tips and techniques to improve your diving. Number one, relaxation really does matter. There is a very strong correlation between the level of relaxation that you start your dive with and the level of relaxation that you can carry on through that dive. When you're diving, your level of relaxation affects everything. It will determine how much tension you hold in your body, in your muscles. It will determine how much stress you hold in your mind. If you're stressed when you hold your breath, it'll cause you to burn through your oxygen faster, which will then cause you to build more carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide is what gives you that urge to breathe. So here's the hot tip. It's not so easy to control your mind. Our brains don't always want to cooperate with us when we're holding our breath and diving. But it is much easier to control your body. If you force a relaxation into your body, into your muscles, it will send the signals to your brain that you are relaxed, that you are safe, that you are not stressed. And then your brain will in turn reciprocate that and start to relax. Quick interlude. You all know how this crazy social media stuff works. The more people I get to watch these videos, the more worthwhile it is to make them. So share the video with your diving friends. Share it in your diving circles and subscribe to the channel. Help me make more of these videos. I sound like a politician. Number two. If you want to spend more time on the bottom, use less energy to get down. A good duck dive can get you down three to five meters. Then all you need to do is fin a few times until you become negatively buoyant and start the sink. Time spent working on your duck dive and finning is always time well spent. And all you need to do is spend five minutes working on your technique every time you go for a dive and you'll be a duck diving, deep diving maniac in no time. Number three. Get a green and gold wetsuit. Having a bright wetsuit makes all the difference. Number three. The real number three. Equalize often. More often than you think you need to. You should never feel pressure in your ears. You should have equalized before that pressure had time to even build up. On a dive to 10 meters, you should have equalized at least 5 to 10 times. And the equalizations that we're going for, those are full pops. Those little crackles or half equalizations, they're just never enough to allow us to continue descending comfortably. If you guys are having any issues with your equalizing at all, I have made a tutorial video on how to frenzel equalize. So you can check that one out after this video. Also, I know some of you have been making fun of my lisp in the comments. I know I have a lisp. It's only a little lisp, but I'll tell you what's a pain in the ass when your last name starts with S, stern. So if you want to show your support for all the lispers in the world, please write, Sammy the snake ate slippery sausages for supper on Sunday in the comments. Thank you very much. Number four. Progress your diving slowly. I know that we all want to spend more time at the bottom, more time underwater. Maybe we want to dive deeper, but these are things that really do come naturally with time. Your body adapts very naturally to free diving as the years go on. Don't rush. This is a sport or activity that you can do well into your older years, 50, 60, 70 years old. You can still do this at a high level, but you know what stops a person from progressing and getting better? Progressing too quickly and having bad experiences. Every time you have a bad dive or you have a bad breath hold, it will scar your mind and every single scar will slow your progression. These old negative experiences, they make us stressed. They make us tense when we dive and we don't even really know what's going on. The subconscious is powerful. So much more powerful than I think any of us really realize. Number five. Swim streamlined. This one just makes sense, doesn't it? If your body is nice and straight, you'll move through the water faster and with less effort. The easiest way to ensure this is to descend or swim through the water with your chin tucked in. The rest of your body will always follow the shape or take the lead from the position of your head. And if your neck is stretched out and you're having a look where you're going, what's going to happen is your back will banana and curve. And that's a really inefficient way to be swimming through the water. Now, I know this is incredibly weird if you're not used to it. Also, I know that you won't be able to see where you're going. And you do need to be able to see where you're going. Otherwise, you're going to swim into a giant cod and get swallowed whole. So realistically, this is what I want you to do. Tuck your chin in and swim streamlined for the first five or ten meters where you're the most positively buoyant. And then once you have cut through all that buoyancy and you start to become neutral or negatively buoyant, that's where you can open up and start to look around and see where you're going. I promise you, you will feel so much fresher when you arrive at the bottom, which really ties back into that whole thing of use less energy to get down. Those are my top five freediving tips. If you want me to make a video on some other topics, make sure you write it down in the comments. Otherwise, check out some previous tutorials that I've made or check out some of the previous freediving adventures that I've been on. And subscribe so you don't miss any of these videos. I love you all. Dive safe. Never dive alone.