Discover the underwater world in the most natural way by holding your breath. The Molchanovs Wave 1 Beginner Freediver course will take you through a fun and relaxed experience yet with a strong focus on making you a safe freediver. Everyone can access the Wave 1 course. You just need to be healthy and able to swim 200 meters. By the end of this course, through passing pool, depth, safety and theory requirements, you will become a complete Wave 1 freediver.

In this course, you will get all the basis of freediving and will become an autonomous freediver able to explore the underwater world comfortably. You will learn how to practice freediving safely, what happens with your body when you hold your breath, how to dive more efficiently and how to handle freediving mentally, but also any other life situation. By the end of the course, you should be able to dive safely and comfortably between 12 and 20 meters — which is the depth limit for this course — experiencing both using fins or pulling on a rope to go down. You will also learn distance disciplines in the swimming pool, with and without fins, with a focus on technique and efficiency.

You will learn about the physics acting on your body, pressure, Boyle’s law, Archimedes principle and their applications in the water. You will also learn to check if you are properly weighted in the swimming pool and in open water and you will learn equalization of your ears and how to perform it. Tips, tricks, exercises, and techniques, you will learn all there is to know about equalization at a beginner level. The basic physiology is one of the most important topics to understand in order to dive safely and use your full potential. You will learn how the body adapts to this challenging environment.

What do we have in common with marine mammals? What happens with oxygen, what role plays carbon dioxide, how exactly do we need to breathe, how do we practice it and how much is too much? So many questions that you will finally get answers to. You will also learn how to minimize energy use and become efficient while holding your breath. For this we introduce mental skills helping you to achieve deeper relaxation and visualization to help prepare and execute dives with greater ease.

Safety is imperative, and a big part of the course is learning how to dive with a buddy, perform rescue procedures and prevent potential injuries. With proper knowledge and training, freediving is a very safe activity. To make it safer and more comfortable, you will learn about specific freedive gear and how to use it properly, how to train and progress.

You also get to connect with a worldwide community through our Dashboard platform where you can access your education materials, get our weekly Base Trainings, log your badges, find freedivers near you, connect, exchange, train and learn from the best in the world.

Freediving is a lifelong learning experience and yours starts here.

As a Molchanovs Wave 2 Advanced Freediver you will extend your limits further in all disciplines (up to a depth of -30m), become more proficient in no fin techniques and learn about the monofin technique, the fastest and most powerful way to navigate the underwater world. You will learn the history of freediving, how it all started, where, why and how we got where we are now. You will dive deeper into the physics of freediving, how it affects your body, learn about Dalton’s law and Henry’s law, and their relation to safe freediving. You will go into detail about depth and distance dives and understand the main differences and adaptations of our body. You will continue your breathing education and improve the Frenzel equalization maneuver with specialized drills, tips and guidance.

As you progress with your technique skillset and performance, you also work further on mental training introducing mindfulness techniques tailored to different contexts. You will also be introduced to injuries related to freediving in the middle ear, inner ear, sinuses and lungs, learn how to prevent and treat them. Safety is also brought up to a new level with details on blackouts, decompression illness, learning how to avoid them and mastering advanced rescue techniques.

A Molchanovs Wave 3 Master Freediver is truly half way to an aquatic mammal. Comfortably diving up to 40 meters deep, demonstrating proper technique in pool and depth disciplines and understanding advanced physiology implications like nitrogen narcosis. In this course you will reflect on ancient practice and how it transformed into modern freediving, explaining in detail how are things done today. .

We go into physiological extremes and explain nitrogen narcosis. We get in depth understanding of hyperventilation and its effects to the body and brain, as well as detailed anatomy of O2 transportation organ systems and tissues.

Our mental toolbox will expand with learning how to use attention deconcentration, and advanced techniques to prepare your dives. Our diving will also benefit from advanced equalization by combining the mouthfill technique with the Frenzel maneuver and exercises to master both of them. We learn how to simulate depth with Functional Residual Capacity (FRC) dives and how to prevent depth related injuries. We go through advanced breathing techniques such as packing and reverse packing and see how to apply them to expand your limits, work on flexibility and train for performance.
Wave 3 is a semi-professional certificate which enables you to be an assistant instructor, and equips you with the according level of knowledge and skills. It is a very complete course designed for advanced freedivers willing to refine their technique and go deep. It is also the last step towards instructor course for people who want to make a career out of freediving.

This course is designed for advanced competitive freedivers. Being certified W3 and very comfortable with the W3 performance requirements is a prerequisite. From W3 a freediver willing to teach may decide to advance to Instructor level. However, not everyone wants to teach and for freedivers who have a drive for competition and performance and want to move their freediving to the next level, W4 is the right choice.

In W4 course we address in details competitions approach, dive tactics, performance training, fine technique tuning, tapering for max performance, diet, basic periodization principles. We break down dives into segments and analytically approach each phase. Freedivers will become athletes and have an understanding of body energy potential and energy systems after completing the course.

The W4 course also includes personal approaches shared by champions. The theoretical knowledge from previous courses is upgraded in terms of prevention, adaptation, special EQ techniques for deep diving, dry training principles, technique tweak, etc… Athletes on this course should be diving 50+ meters.

Never tried freediving but would like to take a sneak peek inside this amazing sport in safe and controlled conditions?

If you’re not sure the full course is for you, or you have only one day of your time, it is still possible to discover freediving as a sport and a recreational activity. While it is in no sense a replacement for a proper 2 day course, discovery can give you an idea on what you could learn. In the 4-5 hours you get some basic knowledge on history, development of freediving and the background of our body that is enabling us to dive to remarkable depths.

After a short breathing tutorial and relaxation session you try your first breath holds, and after gearing up you hit the rope and test your diving skills on some fun dives up to 10 meters. Get to try it out like a pro, choose your discipline, feel the effects of water and relax or why not make a small competition simulation if you’re in a group and are looking for some active fun?