This isn't just a course

At Deep Med, courses or coaching start at a week — and many people come back to stay longer.

We start dry — breathing, equalisation, understanding what your body is doing and why. Then we get in the water, whilst Fabrice and the team observe you on every dive. They watch how you move, how you breathe, where you tighten up, where you lose it.

Alexey Molchanov, a world record holder and son of the sport’s greatest ever freediver, puts it simply:

“Without joy it doesn’t work.”

 Which is why we don’t build courses around certifications, but rather around you.

Your time with Deep Med is structured, yes. But the aim isn’t to churn out certifications. It’s where freediving becomes something you feel genuinely comfortable with — in the pool, on the line, in open water.  The certification arrives as a natural consequence of that comfort. Not the other way around.

Depth or comfort in the water is a byproduct. What we’re really training is this:

• Relaxation. Umberto Pelizzari — one of the greatest freedivers who ever lived — put it plainly: “Especially at the beginning, freediving is relaxation.” Every moment of tension burns oxygen. Every moment of calm extends your dive. We spend more time on this than anything else, and most students are surprised to discover how unrelaxed they actually are until someone points it out. Even those students who claim are ‘advanced’.
• Equalisation. This is where most freedivers plateau, and where most schools gloss over the detail. Fabrice has spent more time studying and teaching equalisation than anything else. If you’ve come from a previous course with unresolved EQ problems — and a significant number of our students have — this is probably the main reason you’re here.
• Repetition. Skills don’t stick from being told once. They stick from being repeated until they’re automatic — until your body does it without your brain having to think about it. This is why our courses are longer than most. Even by the end of the week, things only begin to click and it’s for this reason our diver return. For even longer than a week.
• Fixing what’s broken. Many of our students arrive having already done a course elsewhere. Sometimes that course left them with bad habits, unresolved issues, or a vague sense that something wasn’t right in the water. We see this often enough that it’s become a core part of what we do — not just teaching freediving from scratch, but unlearning the things that are quietly holding people back.

Yes, you’ll get one, assuming you meet the requirements. But it’s worth being honest about what it means.

Natalia Molchanova didn’t just break world records. She built an education system around a single belief: that the card is evidence of a transformation that has already occurred, not a target to chase. The Molchanovs Wave system encodes this into every level — the Wave 1 breath hold requirement is deliberately accessible, designed to build confidence rather than anxiety. The skills at each level are genuine prerequisites for the next, not arbitrary checkpoints.

At Deep Med we chose Molchanovs because it aligns with how we already think about teaching. “Don’t look at marks, examine your inner state” — that was Natalia’s coaching principle. It’s ours too.

By the end of the week, the card is the least interesting thing you’ll take home. What lasts is the technique that’s become muscle memory, the safety habits that are now automatic, and the feeling — as Trubridge puts it — that the ocean is somewhere you belong rather than somewhere you’re visiting.