Spearfishing Training

I've been waiting for this video that Sam Mase created about my Freediving Training at Troy Springs FL.


Last week I had the privilege of training with Ryan Meyers and Samantha Mase.  Ryan is the 2017 North American Spearfishing Champion and Samantha "Sam" is a member of the Women's USA Spearfishing Team who are the reigning World Spearfishing Champions.

Head Down into Troy Spring

We traveled to the Blue Grotto in northwest Florida to dive the springs as there were 5 foot seas off of Palm Beach.  The Grotto is a great training facility for both SCUBA and Free-diving.  The night before our first session, we spend 2 hours on safety training.  Ryan had some great videos showing divers getting into trouble, and how their buddy's were able to quickly make them safe.  There's lot's of inherent dangers in holding your breath and diving deep, but proper training really minimizes the risk.

Diving the Line

Training in the pool is all about safety.  It is possible to black out during a long deep dive.  The 3 hours in the pool was how to rescue your buddy if he blacks out.  In the pool, my longest breath hold was 3 minutes.  At Troy Spring, my deepest dive was 54 feet.

The Spring at Blue Grotto had risen 3 feet which caused the visibility to drop to 6 feet, so once we finished the pool section of training, we went to Troy Springs on the edge of the St Johns River.

I had trouble equalizing my ears, so anything over 25 feet, I had to go down feet first.  The equalization for free-diving is called Frenzel, which is completely different from the Valsalva technique that everyone uses for SCUBA.  Frenzel requires you to use the back of your tongue as a piston to pressurize your eustachian tubes that equalize the pressure behind your eardrums.


Day 1:  Training in a Spring was intimidating the first day.  The process is to "breath-up" for 2 minutes which stabilizes the CO2 in your body and get you relaxed.  Once ready, you clear your ears and start the dive.  For a long, deep dive you have to be relaxed.  How the heck was I going to relax having never done a deep breath hold before?  Just like anything else, it takes practice and patience.  The problem with equalizing my ears was a limiting factor.  I could Frenzel right side up, but I couldn't do it past 21 feel head down.  We tried various techniques for most of the first day, but nothing worked.  My deepest depth day 1 was 21 feet with a 37 second breath hold.

Ascent from 54 feet

We got back to the Blue Grotto and Ryan called up his old friend Ted Harty for coaching on my Frenzel issue.  At Ryan's request, I had worked with Ted a few weeks earlier to learn Frenzel, and now he had new training for me that was going take a few weeks.

Day 2: We headed back to Troy Springs and Sam joined us for the training.  Both Sam and Ryan are amazing divers.  Ryan's deepest dive is 230 feet and he routinely hunts big fish at 150 feet.  Sam is just a natural in the water.  On her first dive, she dove to the bottom of the spring and disappeared for over two minutes coming back up slowly taking pictures.  She spent a good part of the day filming our training session.

The second day was a whole new experience.  I knew I wasn't going to heads down equalize past 25 feet, so Ryan had me work on 25 feet hunting techniques with the Pole Spear, Hawaiian Sling and Spear Gun.  The video above shows the "newbie" results of that training.  At the end of the day, Ryan wanted me to go to the bottom of the Spring which was 60 feet.  These would be feet first dives down the line.  The first two dives were 31 & 42 feet.  By then I had enough confidence to relax for the 1 minute breath hold needed to get to the bottom.  I descended down feet first and saw the bottom of the spring for the first time.  My feet touched bottom, but my dive watch said 54 feet.  The total dive time was 57 seconds.

At the end of the day, Ryan and Sam headed south back to Miami, and I headed north back to Top Shelf in Hilton Head.  Free Diving and Spearfishing are both the new gig for me.  Just in time for the Bahamas.   Plans are for Ryan and Sam to meet us in Staniel Key after Thanksgiving.  I can't wait.

Next:  Positioning the Boat for Florida.