Freediving Log: What to Record After Every Session

A freediving log is a simple record of each training session or dive day: what you did, the numbers, how it felt and the conditions around it, from sleep and food to water temperature. One entry tells you very little. A few months of entries show patterns that no single session can, such as which warm-up gives you your best dives, the depth where your equalisation starts to fail, and how much a bad night’s sleep really costs you.

It takes about two minutes after a session, which is less time than you will spend rinsing your fins.

What a log tells you that memory can’t

Memory is a poor training partner. It remembers the one great dive and quietly edits out the three warm-ups where your left ear wouldn’t clear. It also can’t tell you that your best static days all followed seven hours of sleep and a light dinner.

A log gives you:

• Trends. Contraction times in a CO2 table, the depth where equalisation gets hard, kicks per 25 metres.
• Cause and effect. What changed before a good day or a bad one.
• Early warnings. Repeated ear discomfort, coughing after deep sessions, headaches after dry tables.
• Something to show a coach. A coach can help far more with ten honest entries than with “it’s been going okay”.

The fields worth recording

You don’t need every field every time. Pick the ones that match the session.

Field	Example	Why it matters
Date, time, place	14 March, 7:30 am, Swaraj Dweep	Time of day affects performance
Session type	Dry CO2 table, pool dynamic, depth on a line	Lets you compare like with like
Sleep	6 hours, woke twice	Often the biggest single factor
Food and caffeine	Idli at 5:30, one coffee	Heavy or late meals show up in your holds
Conditions	Water 28°C, 15 m visibility, mild current	Explains the odd days
Gear and weighting	3 mm suit, 1 kg neck weight	Tracks changes that affect buoyancy
Warm-up	Free immersion to 5, 8 and 10 m	Shows what prepares you best
Main set	3 constant weight dives to 18 m	The core of the entry
Contractions	First at 0:50 in round 6	The best marker of CO2 tolerance
Equalisation	Left ear slow at 12 m	Pinpoints recurring problems
How it felt (1–5)	4, relaxed until the turn	Subjective, but revealing over time
Issues	Slight ear discomfort, cleared	Never leave this blank if something happened
Buddy	Name	Who saw the dive

Sleep deserves its own note. If your log shows your worst sessions clustering after short nights, take that seriously; our post on sleep and recovery for freedivers explains why.

Example entries

A dry training session

• 19 September, 6:45 am, at home in Pune. Slept 7 hours. Chai at 6:00, no food.
• CO2 table, 1:05 holds, rest from 2:00 down to 0:15.
• First contractions: round 4 at 0:55, round 6 at 0:40, round 8 at 0:25.
• Jaw tight in round 7. Relaxed it and the contractions eased.
• Felt: 3/5. Mild headache afterwards. Neighbour’s drilling started during round 5.
• Next time: same table, focus on the jaw.

A depth day

• 12 November, 8:00 am, boat dive, Andaman. Slept 6 hours after a ferry the day before. Banana and toast at 6:30.
• Water 29°C, visibility around 15 m, light current. 3 mm suit, 1 kg neck weight, neutral at around 10 m.
• Warm-up: free immersion to 5, 8 and 10 m.
• Main set: constant weight to 15, 18 and 18 m. Left ear needed two attempts at 12 m on the second dive; went up a metre, tried again and it cleared.
• Turn felt rushed on the last dive.
• Felt: 4/5. No coughing, no ear pain afterwards.
• Next time: start equalising earlier and more often from the surface.

Paper, app or spreadsheet?

• A small waterproof notebook works best on boats and beaches, where phones die and hands are wet. Write the entry before you leave the boat, while the details are fresh.
• A spreadsheet is best for spotting trends, because you can chart contraction times or depths across months. Copy your notebook entries in once a week.
• Notes on your phone are fine for dry sessions at home.
• Breath-hold apps often save table results automatically. Add a line of your own notes, because the app has no idea you slept badly.

Pick whichever format you will still be using in six months, even if it is less elegant.

Using a dive watch with your log

A freediving watch or computer records depth, dive time, surface intervals, water temperature and a profile of each dive. That is precise data you would never remember on your own, and it shows things like how long you actually spent near the bottom, or whether your surface intervals shrank as the session went on. Our guide to freediving computers and watches covers which features are worth having.

The watch records numbers. It can’t record that you felt tense at 12 metres or that the turn felt rushed. Download the dives, then add the human notes beside them.

Reviewing your log: trends to look for

Once a month, spend 20 minutes reading back through your entries. Look for:

• First-contraction times in comparable dry tables drifting later.
• Sleep and food lined up against your better and worse sessions.
• Equalisation trouble that keeps appearing at the same depth or in the same ear. If it does, our guide to why you can’t equalise is a good place to start, and an ENT is the next stop if it persists.
• Surface intervals getting shorter through a session, which is worth fixing before it becomes a habit.
• Warning signs. Coughing, a tight chest or blood-tinged spit after diving deeper than usual can be signs of lung squeeze and need medical advice, not another dive.

For dry training, our dry static apnea programme uses exactly these notes to decide when to make your tables harder.

Safety: Log every incident honestly, including any samba or loss of motor control, blackout, squeeze or ear problem, and share it with your instructor or doctor. A log is a record of how you are doing, not a scoreboard. Never use it as a reason to push past a warning sign to beat last week’s number.

Starting your log this week

1. Choose a format today: notebook, spreadsheet or notes app.
2. Copy the fields from the table above that fit your training.
3. Write an entry after every session this week, including the short ones.
4. At the end of the week, read them back and write one line on what you noticed.

Stay tuned for the freediving.in community, launching soon.