And of course, we knew this already, but we’ve also seen a big increase with families sharing their love for freediving. We regularly have fathers and sons visiting us, their mom travels with them, and everyone has a lot of fun. But it doesn’t happen that often that the whole family is freediving.
Last Saturday, we were lucky enough to host the lovely Barbier family. The Barbier family are on a year-long trip around the world and now landed in the Philippines to enjoy the beautiful Philippine waters. Dad Cedric and Mom Isabelle and their 3 kids Ludivine (14), Florence (12) and Jules (10), all wanted to learn how to freedive.
From all the freediving courses we offer, we could only have them do the Basic Freediving Course. The minimum age for the Level 1 Course is 12 year, while it is 10 years for the Basic Freediving Course. We couldn’t have 5 people in one group when there are two kids 12 or younger, but this was quickly solved by having Vincent and Sebastian both in the water and splitting up the group in smaller groups.
We had an amazing day. In the morning, we did a fun classroom session about the respiratory system. We did the breathing session, followed by the breath-hold attempt – both Dad Cedric and Mom Isabelle had a breath-holds of over 3 minutes the youngsters had at least 1:30. After the breathing and breath-hold session, we went in the pool for a session about buoyancy and practising rescue drills. After lunch, we did a little bit of theory in the classroom again, where we talked about amongst others the duck dive. And after the classroom session, we did some diving on the line (max. -5 meters), and then we all went to practise our newly learned skills by freediving with the sardines.
Dad Cedric said at the end that during their travels, it isn’t as easy as you would think to find things to do for the whole family – and that the whole family would enjoy! But their day of freediving in the Philippines was an absolute highlight of their trip. And it was one of our highlights too. We wish the Barbier’s an amazing trip, and we are very happy and proud to be part of their adventure!
