I have been staying at my cousins place while working here in Indonesia for this 3 month period. This situation is a little different then in the past because at the moment I am working for my own company so I don’t get the lavish apartments and perks that a big company can offer.

It’s all good though cause my cousins place is nice and its good to have family around to talk to and to enjoy the weekends with. We also like to do the same activities so it makes it more fun. One of the bonuses also is my cousin has a pool in his backyard though one of the negatives is that the pool is extremely shallow, about 1.5m, and really short (about 10m) so its not really good for freediving practice in the normal sense.

However there are many great exercises you can do with a pool this size.  The first and most common one is static apnea, the second is you can practice your kicking by pushing up against the wall and simple kicking with or without fins. The next exercise you can do is your stroke, specially if you like to do no-fins.

The final one that I like to practice is the Exhale or FRC breath hold. There are many definitions of what an exhale dive is and I am by far not an expert in this as I will learn more about this in the advanced course however I practice this so that I can get better times on my normal static apnea and it makes me very negatively buoyant so I can stay at the bottom of the pool and do dynamic no fins without weights or without having to fight to stay down in such a shallow pool.

Since I practiced this method of breath hold I have been able to get basic breath hold times to mid 3 minute mark very easily, get to mid 4’s OK but have not yet been able to beat my PB of just over 5minutes. I think though this is more mental and probably just need to work on keeping calm more towards the end of a breathe hold.

I know that with exhale there is a lot of risk and hence I don’t forcefully exhale, I simple exhale just till my body gets negatively buoyant and I sink to the bottom of the pool. I have seen some of the diving champions reverse pack, and exhale to get complete empty lungs but because I don’t know the effects and haven’t officially learnt it I wont experiment to much other then to exhale enough to be negatively buoyant and swim dynamic and some not to deep < 10m dives. When I officially learn the risks and what to/not to do then I will experiment more.

Anyway, its a great way to train in a shallow pool and still get a lot out of each training session even though the pool is not deep or long.