Guide

Improve your freediving for spearfishing

The qualities to train, the frequency, and what really turns into bottom time.

In spearfishing, performance isn't just about "holding your breath a long time". What matters is staying comfortable on the bottom, descending without a fight and, above all, being able to chain dives for hours. These three things are trained differently.

The 3 qualities to develop

1. CO₂ tolerance — for bottom time

What makes you surface, most of the time, isn't the lack of oxygen: it's the urge to breathe, triggered by the build-up of carbon dioxide. A spearo who tolerates CO₂ better stays put longer on the ambush and recovers faster at the surface.

You train it with CO₂ tables: breath-holds of constant duration, separated by shorter and shorter recoveries.

2. Hypoxia tolerance — for maximum duration

It's the ability to function with less available oxygen. It raises your ceiling and makes deep dives calmer. You train it with O₂ tables: longer and longer breath-holds, with full, complete recoveries between each one.

3. Technique and flexibility — for depth

Going deep depends far less on your breath than people think: it depends mostly on your ability to equalize easily and on the flexibility of your rib cage. A spearo who stalls at 12 m because of their ears doesn't have a breath-hold problem, they have a technique problem.

Start by measuring your baseline

You can't calibrate training without knowing where you start from. The method: a maximal dry static breath-hold, lying down, after a few minutes of calm belly breathing. Note the time when the urge to breathe becomes strong — no need to push to the extreme.

That time becomes your baseline: all your tables are expressed as a percentage of that value. A CO₂-table hold will sit around 55% of your max, for instance. When your baseline goes up, the whole program goes up with it.

What a good week looks like

There's no point stacking maximal breath-holds every day: it's the best way to plateau and burn out. A sensible week alternates the qualities and leaves room for recovery:

And above all: a day at sea counts as a big session. The cold, the effort and the repeated dives tire you far more than a dry table. After a big outing, the next day should be light.

The mistakes that stall progress

• Hyperventilating before a breath-hold. It doesn't give you more oxygen: it only delays the alarm telling you to breathe. It's the main cause of blackout. Calm, normal breathing, always.
• Doing only maximal attempts. Costly to recover from, not very productive. One true maximal every two or three weeks is enough.
• Skipping recovery. Progress is locked in during rest. Chaining without recovering means plateauing.
• Mistaking discomfort for danger. Diaphragm contractions are normal and signal that the work is beginning. On the other hand, dizziness or blurred vision: you stop.
• Neglecting equalization. Many spearos hit a depth ceiling for a purely technical reason.

Safety, non-negotiable