Apnea: what if I started?

I would say yes, first and foremost. Competition is only a very small part of this fabulous discipline. It should be understood that the objective of the monitor is to offer very rapid access to autonomy. A freediving course should be enough to acquire the basics and be able to practice very quickly on your own (at least in pairs at least, but without the need for a heavy structure). apnea should be oriented towards freedom, only. Access to depth is a choice, but I have many interns who come back each year to “splash around”, take pictures, ventilate, have fun.

Absolutely ! Apnea has nothing to do with performance or abyssal quest; Freediving means retaining your ventilation in the water, but also learning to move, to move calmly and correctly to approach the flora and fauna. As such, we organize with two other instructors awareness courses in freediving with the big five of the sea (manta rays, tiger sharks, white sharks, sirenians, mammals)

You just have to want to go. The rest is in the realm of surprise. I very often see pure sedentary people, smokers, who progress in a dazzling way in two sessions and triathletes who block… apnea requires knowing how to relax and listen to one's body, to show humility and abnegation… and there, we are not all equal !!! A person who has never dived in apnea will very quickly find themselves, at the end of the first session, in the -20m zone, which they did not expect !!

I first learn to discover myself, to listen to myself. Who am I in the water…? To start, it's super simple: many structures in France offer swimming pool freediving, very accessible, for all levels. We will learn swimming with fins, dynamic apnea, static apnea, in a fun and educational form. At sea, we discover the extreme flavor of access to depth: courses of relaxation, relaxation, ventilation, immersion technique, discovery of the pig! 100% satisfied people, but above all guaranteed surprise !!

The internships that I propose take place on 1, 2, 3 or 5 days.
In the morning we start at 8:30 am with a stretching, relaxation and ventilation session. Then we go to sea for 1h30: head-up and head-down immersion technique (duck or free immersion), discovery of the three flagship disciplines (go down and up with the fin, go down and up while pulling yourself with your arms on the rope, pig pilot). Then return for a meal and a debriefing and second session in the afternoon focused mainly on autonomy in pig (what I propose is unique, it is called the pilot school of pig, to become a “sledpilot”) . The principle is simple: during the internship, we go through levels of autonomy. You learn to be a pilot, like an apnea instructor, at different depth zones, being able to fully manage your whales from departure to return by having a passenger.
The objective of the internship is to advance the intern by allowing him to be more and more autonomous.
The days end with a short theory session… enough to sleep well at night !!

You just have to be attentive to the recommendations, listen to the advice, be patient, and be humble. And above all, never force, and let it happen; the problem is with the ears. If you force yourself, you hurt yourself and you end up in the boat.

Yes, since 1994 we have worked a lot on this, both at the level ofAIDA that of the FFESSM. I am in charge of developing scaph and apnea diving in Monaco, and I had fun taking the best of everything and bringing it together within my structures… it works really well. But harmonization requires a key word: sharing. In apnea, the best thing is that after each descent you can discuss, verbalize, laugh etc…. unlike scaph diving where you only make signs… ..

Pierre Frolla and his six instructors offer their courses in Monaco, in the Larvotto reserve a few meters deep, or on the wreck of Catalina, a seaplane placed at 60 meters.
Other sizes of the discipline can also welcome you a few days: one can quote for example Jean-Michel Pradon in Marseille or Guillaume Néry at CIPA (International Center for Snorkeling) in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.
And countless clubs offer an apnea section, and training or training in the pool and at sea. On the website of the Apnea Commission of the FFESSM (http://apnee.ffessm.fr) you can find, on an interactive map, the coordinates of clubs that can accommodate you, and a lot of information on the discipline.
The website of Aida France (http://aidafrance.free.fr) gives you too, besides a complete panorama of activities, a list of affiliated clubs.

THEStatic Apnea : generally practiced on the surface, the freediver, as its name suggests, remains motionless.

THEDynamic Apnea : horizontal displacement, also practiced at shallow depth.

Le Constant weight : the diver descends and ascends with the same ballast.

Le Variable weight : the diver descends with a ballast which he abandons on the ascent.

THEFree immersion : the diver immerses without fins, in length or in depth.

Frolla Pierre

on scuba people