Freediving Training Plan for Beginners: An 8-Week Schedule

A good freediving training plan for beginners has four or five short sessions a week: two dry breath-hold sessions, two of flexibility and equalisation drills, one pool session if you can find a buddy, and some easy cardio, with at least two rest days. Over eight weeks it builds gradually, eases off in week four, and finishes with a lighter week and a retest. Everything in it happens on land or in a pool, so it works whether you live in Kochi or Kanpur.

The plan assumes you are a healthy adult who has done a beginner course or is about to. If you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, asthma, epilepsy or any other medical concern, see a doctor before you start breath-hold training.

The five ingredients of a training week

• Dry breath-holds. CO2 tables, relaxation holds and, from week three, a weekly O2 table. All lying down, all on land.
• Flexibility. Thoracic openers, side bends and gentle diaphragm stretches. A flexible chest makes deeper dives more comfortable and lowers the risk of injury later on. See our guide to stretching for freediving.
• Equalisation drills. Five to ten minutes of Frenzel practice with a nose clip, at your desk or on the sofa. These equalisation drills you can practise at your desk are a good starting set.
• Pool work. Finning technique, duck dives in the deep end and short dynamic apnea swims, always with a trained buddy watching.
• Cardio. Easy aerobic work such as cycling, swimming laps or brisk walking, rather than punishing intervals. Our post on strength and cardio for freedivers explains why.

Rest is the sixth ingredient, and the one beginners skip.

What a typical training week looks like

Day	Session	Time
Monday	CO2 table, then 10 min of stretching	30 min
Tuesday	Easy cardio	30–40 min
Wednesday	Flexibility and equalisation drills	25 min
Thursday	Pool session with a buddy (or relaxation holds at home)	45–60 min
Friday	Rest	–
Saturday	O2 table or relaxation holds, then stretching	40 min
Sunday	Rest, or a long walk	–

Move the days around to fit your life. The fixed rules: keep breath-hold sessions at least a day apart, never put a CO2 table and an O2 table on the same day, and don’t do a hard dry session the evening before a pool day.

The 8-week freediving training plan at a glance

At the start of week one, test a relaxed dry static best: two warm-up holds and one calm attempt. Every table in the plan is set from that number.

Week	Focus	Dry breath-holds	Pool (with buddy)	Extra notes
1	Habits and baseline	Baseline test, 1 relaxation session	Easy finning technique	Start your log
2	CO2 tolerance	2 CO2 tables, stopping at the 0:30 rest	Technique, a few short 25 m swims	5 min of equalisation drills daily
3	Add hypoxic work	1 CO2 table, 1 O2 table (70% ceiling)	Duck dives, 25 m swims	Add a second flexibility day
4	Recovery	1 light CO2 table, relaxation holds	Easy swim, technique only	Sleep more
5	Build	2 CO2 tables, +5 s on holds if controlled	Repeats with long rests	Keep stretching three times a week
6	Build	1 CO2 table, 1 O2 table (up to 75–80%)	One longer, easy swim	Watch for headaches
7	Consolidate	2 CO2 tables, 1 relaxation session	Technique, ask your buddy to film you	Read back through your log
8	Taper and retest	1 light CO2 table, retest at the end of the week	Easy session	Compare with week 1

The tables themselves are explained in detail in our guide to CO2 tables for freediving, which also covers the signs that mean you should stop a session.

How to progress without overdoing it

Beginners usually go wrong by adding too much, too soon. A few rules keep progress steady:

1. Change one variable at a time: hold length or rest length, never both.
2. Add five seconds, not twenty. The signal is the last round of a table feeling controlled two sessions in a row.
3. Slept badly? Swap the table for relaxation holds. It still counts as training.
4. If you get headaches after sessions, or your times go backwards for a week, take three days off.
5. Never test your best more than once every two weeks.

Some weeks will feel worse than the week before. Heat, deadlines and a cousin’s wedding all show up in your numbers, and the built-in recovery week exists for exactly that reason.

Pool sessions, and what to do without one

If you have access to a pool and a trained buddy, the Thursday session is where you work on everything that can’t be done dry: finning, streamlining, duck dives and short dynamic swims. Our guide to dynamic apnea training in the pool has session templates and tips on explaining breath-hold training to lifeguards.

No pool, or no buddy? Replace the pool session with a second relaxation session and an extra flexibility session. Do not swim underwater alone to make up for it. You will lose some in-water technique, but the rest of the plan still works.

Adjusting the plan for monsoon, travel and festivals

Monsoon. Outdoor pools may close in heavy rain, and commutes stretch. Move pool days indoors where you can, or swap them for dry sessions. If you catch a monsoon cold, skip equalisation drills and breath-holds until your sinuses clear. Our post on monsoon freediving suggests how to use those months as a longer training block.

Work trips. Dry tables travel well: a hotel bed and your phone are all you need. Make your rest days fall on travel days, since flights and overnight train rides leave you tired and dehydrated.

Festivals and family events. Late nights and rich food will cost you a few seconds. Treat those weeks like week four: lighter work, more sleep, no tests.

If you miss a week, repeat the previous one rather than jumping ahead.

Safety: Every dry breath-hold in this plan is done lying down on land. All in-water breath-holds, including short pool swims, need a trained buddy watching you from the surface, with only one person underwater at a time. No hyperventilation before any hold, wet or dry.

Your first week, day by day

• Monday: Baseline test. Two warm-up holds and one relaxed best attempt. Write the number down.
• Tuesday: 30 minutes of easy cycling or walking.
• Wednesday: 15 minutes of stretching and 10 minutes of equalisation drills.
• Thursday: Pool. 20 minutes of easy finning, focusing on a relaxed kick from the hips.
• Friday: Rest.
• Saturday: Relaxation holds, three of them, each to 15 seconds past your first contraction, followed by stretching.
• Sunday: Rest, and set up your log for week two.

The freediving.in community is coming soon. Stay tuned.