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Years of training to dive that deep and hold your breath that long tell me this is something beyond the abilities of most people. Compared to everyone else they

Years of training to dive that deep and hold your breath that long tell me this is something beyond the abilities of most people. Compared to everyone else they are certainly "marvels". Give yourself some credit for having the discipline to accomplish such things! One could say "it just takes training" for anything that someone becomes really good at. It just takes training to become an Olympic athlete too, but there are only so many of those and their abilities seem almost super-human at times.

curun1r 9y ago
FWIW, it took me ~9 mo to go from reasonable swimmer with a 90 second static breath hold to achieving my personal best depth. I think my point was that freediving skill is often attributed to natural aptitude because we go beyond what doctors used to believe was possible in the human body. But having been through the training, I don't think I have any specific natural advantage. I think anyone who's reasonably healthy could achieve what I have in a single year of training. That's a very different situation from an olympian where decades of training are often needed and some sports require a specific body type. And just for some perspective on what someone who is naturally predisposed to the sport can achieve, I took AIDA 3 with a guy who had taken the courses nearly back-to-back. This meant that he went from untrained to diving to 40m and a 4+-minute static hold in a matter of three weeks. I guess my overall point is that people with no experience in diving over-mythologize diving ability because the human body is so adaptable that fairly routine changes appear super-human to those that have never experienced them.