Author: ALFC Team
When we opened Alchemy Freediving Center on May 1st, we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted the place to become. Of course, we wanted great diving, great training and a center where people could come to Kalamata and make real progress. But just as important was the environment around all of that. We wanted people to feel relaxed when they got on the boat. We wanted them to trust the instructors and safeties around them. We wanted serious training without unnecessary pressure. Five months later, there is one thing we are particularly proud of: since the day we opened, we have had zero blackouts during our training sessions.
We don't say that to make a big claim about safety or to suggest that blackouts don't happen in freediving. They do. Anyone who has spent enough time around the sport knows that. Freediving involves hypoxia, and when people are pushing their limits, a blackout is always a possibility. This is exactly why we train with safeties, why we have protocols and why nobody should ever freedive alone. So we are not celebrating the number zero because we believe a blackout automatically means somebody did something wrong. We are proud of it because we think it says something about the way people have been training with us.
Since May, we have had all kinds of freedivers at ALFC. We have had people taking their first course and discovering depth for the first time. We have had experienced freedivers coming to improve specific parts of their diving. We have had instructors, athletes preparing for competitions and very strong divers training at serious depths. They arrive with completely different goals, abilities and personalities, but we try to give all of them the same thing: an environment where they can train properly without feeling that they constantly have something to prove.
That last part is important to us. Freediving is full of numbers. You know your PB. You know the depth you want to reach. You know what your friends are doing. You know what people you follow online are doing. Before you know it, a perfectly good training dive can start feeling disappointing simply because the number on the dive computer wasn't the number you had in your head that morning. We don't want training at ALFC to feel like that. Of course we want people to improve. Of course we love PBs. There is nothing better than watching somebody come back to the surface after finally completing a dive they have been working towards. But there is a time to push and there is a time to simply train.
Sometimes you go down and everything feels right. Sometimes it doesn't. Maybe equalization isn't working the way it normally does. Maybe you didn't sleep well. Maybe your legs feel heavy. Maybe your head simply isn't in it. There doesn't always need to be a complicated explanation. We want the people diving with us to feel completely comfortable saying, "Not today." Turn around, come back up, talk about it and dive again when you're ready. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, knowing when to turn is one of the things that comes with becoming a better freediver.
We also don't believe that every session needs to end with a maximum dive. A lot of the best training we see here happens comfortably below someone's PB. Someone works on their freefall. Someone spends a session fixing head position. Another diver repeats the same depth several times because they are working on equalization. An athlete might come to the surface with plenty left and be perfectly happy with the dive because they achieved exactly what they went down there to do. These sessions might not produce exciting numbers for Instagram, but they are often the sessions that eventually produce the big dives.
And then there is trust. This is probably the biggest part of it for us. When you are diving deep, you need to trust the people around you. You need to know that the person meeting you on your ascent knows what they are doing. You need to know that the people running the session are actually watching you, not simply checking a depth and waiting for you to come back. When people train with us for several days or weeks, we start getting to know their diving. We know how they normally move, how they look when they surface, how quickly they recover and sometimes even when something seems slightly off before they say anything themselves.
That relationship works both ways. The diver also starts trusting us enough to be honest. They can say they're tired. They can say they don't feel like pushing today. They can change the target. They can turn early without feeling like anyone is disappointed. That sounds like a small thing, but we think it makes a huge difference. When you remove the need to impress anyone, people start making better decisions.
The atmosphere on the boat matters too. We take what we do very seriously, but that doesn't mean everybody needs to sit in silence looking terrified before a dive. There is plenty of laughing, talking and messing around between dives. You can have serious athletes training for competitions sitting next to somebody doing their first 20 metres, and both are there for exactly the same reason. They want to enjoy being underwater and become better at it. We like that mix. It keeps things human.
Kalamata helps as well. We are lucky to have incredibly good conditions here. Deep water is only a few minutes away, the sea is often calm, visibility is excellent and we can train consistently throughout a long season. When the conditions are stable, there is less pressure to force a dive because "today is the only chance." If today isn't your day, there is tomorrow. And if tomorrow isn't your day either, that's fine too. The sea isn't going anywhere.
So yes, five months after opening, zero blackouts is a number we are proud of. But we don't want it to become a number we chase. We would never want someone diving with us to think they couldn't push themselves because they might ruin our record. That's not the point at all. A blackout can happen, and if one happens tomorrow, it doesn't suddenly mean that everything we have done until now was wrong. What matters is that the right people are there, that everyone knows what to do and that the diver is never alone when it matters.
For us, the number is simply a reflection of what the first five months at ALFC have felt like. People have trained hard. They have gone deep. They have prepared for competitions, reached PBs, struggled with bad days, fixed problems and come back the next morning to try again. But through all of that, the general feeling has remained relaxed, controlled and supportive.
That is exactly what we wanted when we opened the doors on May 1st.
Serious training doesn't have to feel stressful. Progress doesn't have to happen every day. And pushing your limits doesn't mean ignoring them.
Five months. A lot of dives. A lot of different people.
Zero blackouts.
We think that's something worth talking about.
Zero Blackouts Since We Opened
Author: ALFC Team
When we opened Alchemy Freediving Center on May 1st, we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted the place to become. Of course, we wanted great diving, great training and a center where people could come to Kalamata and make real progress. But just as important was the environment around all of that. We wanted people to feel relaxed when they got on the boat. We wanted them to trust the instructors and safeties around them. We wanted serious training without unnecessary pressure. Five months later, there is one thing we are particularly proud of: since the day we opened, we have had zero blackouts during our training sessions.
We don't say that to make a big claim about safety or to suggest that blackouts don't happen in freediving. They do. Anyone who has spent enough time around the sport knows that. Freediving involves hypoxia, and when people are pushing their limits, a blackout is always a possibility. This is exactly why we train with safeties, why we have protocols and why nobody should ever freedive alone. So we are not celebrating the number zero because we believe a blackout automatically means somebody did something wrong. We are proud of it because we think it says something about the way people have been training with us.
Since May, we have had all kinds of freedivers at ALFC. We have had people taking their first course and discovering depth for the first time. We have had experienced freedivers coming to improve specific parts of their diving. We have had instructors, athletes preparing for competitions and very strong divers training at serious depths. They arrive with completely different goals, abilities and personalities, but we try to give all of them the same thing: an environment where they can train properly without feeling that they constantly have something to prove.
That last part is important to us. Freediving is full of numbers. You know your PB. You know the depth you want to reach. You know what your friends are doing. You know what people you follow online are doing. Before you know it, a perfectly good training dive can start feeling disappointing simply because the number on the dive computer wasn't the number you had in your head that morning. We don't want training at ALFC to feel like that. Of course we want people to improve. Of course we love PBs. There is nothing better than watching somebody come back to the surface after finally completing a dive they have been working towards. But there is a time to push and there is a time to simply train.
Sometimes you go down and everything feels right. Sometimes it doesn't. Maybe equalization isn't working the way it normally does. Maybe you didn't sleep well. Maybe your legs feel heavy. Maybe your head simply isn't in it. There doesn't always need to be a complicated explanation. We want the people diving with us to feel completely comfortable saying, "Not today." Turn around, come back up, talk about it and dive again when you're ready. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, knowing when to turn is one of the things that comes with becoming a better freediver.
We also don't believe that every session needs to end with a maximum dive. A lot of the best training we see here happens comfortably below someone's PB. Someone works on their freefall. Someone spends a session fixing head position. Another diver repeats the same depth several times because they are working on equalization. An athlete might come to the surface with plenty left and be perfectly happy with the dive because they achieved exactly what they went down there to do. These sessions might not produce exciting numbers for Instagram, but they are often the sessions that eventually produce the big dives.
And then there is trust. This is probably the biggest part of it for us. When you are diving deep, you need to trust the people around you. You need to know that the person meeting you on your ascent knows what they are doing. You need to know that the people running the session are actually watching you, not simply checking a depth and waiting for you to come back. When people train with us for several days or weeks, we start getting to know their diving. We know how they normally move, how they look when they surface, how quickly they recover and sometimes even when something seems slightly off before they say anything themselves.
That relationship works both ways. The diver also starts trusting us enough to be honest. They can say they're tired. They can say they don't feel like pushing today. They can change the target. They can turn early without feeling like anyone is disappointed. That sounds like a small thing, but we think it makes a huge difference. When you remove the need to impress anyone, people start making better decisions.
The atmosphere on the boat matters too. We take what we do very seriously, but that doesn't mean everybody needs to sit in silence looking terrified before a dive. There is plenty of laughing, talking and messing around between dives. You can have serious athletes training for competitions sitting next to somebody doing their first 20 metres, and both are there for exactly the same reason. They want to enjoy being underwater and become better at it. We like that mix. It keeps things human.
Kalamata helps as well. We are lucky to have incredibly good conditions here. Deep water is only a few minutes away, the sea is often calm, visibility is excellent and we can train consistently throughout a long season. When the conditions are stable, there is less pressure to force a dive because "today is the only chance." If today isn't your day, there is tomorrow. And if tomorrow isn't your day either, that's fine too. The sea isn't going anywhere.
So yes, five months after opening, zero blackouts is a number we are proud of. But we don't want it to become a number we chase. We would never want someone diving with us to think they couldn't push themselves because they might ruin our record. That's not the point at all. A blackout can happen, and if one happens tomorrow, it doesn't suddenly mean that everything we have done until now was wrong. What matters is that the right people are there, that everyone knows what to do and that the diver is never alone when it matters.
For us, the number is simply a reflection of what the first five months at ALFC have felt like. People have trained hard. They have gone deep. They have prepared for competitions, reached PBs, struggled with bad days, fixed problems and come back the next morning to try again. But through all of that, the general feeling has remained relaxed, controlled and supportive.
That is exactly what we wanted when we opened the doors on May 1st.
Serious training doesn't have to feel stressful. Progress doesn't have to happen every day. And pushing your limits doesn't mean ignoring them.
Five months. A lot of dives. A lot of different people.
Zero blackouts.
We think that's something worth talking about.