In this episode I share how I went from wearing a suit and tie in Atlanta to a scuba instructor in the Florida Keys to a professional freediver. I have a body built by beer, bourbon, and bbq, if I can be good at freediving so can you.
During the show I had mentioned two websites, both are listed below.
www.FreedivingSafety.com
https://www.freedivelive.com/resources
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Immersion Freediving
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Ted Harty - your trusted online freediving resource.
Ted Harty: So the big question is this, you're a free diver or a spear fisherman and you have a strong desire to improve your freediving abilities, you're just not quite sure how. That is the question. And my podcast Freedive Live is your answer. Join me as I take a deep dive into all things freediving and discover even more about this amazing sport that has given me so much. My name is Ted Harty, I teach people to freedive deeper, stay longer and become safer.
Ted Harty: Welcome to Freedive Live Episode Number Two. My name is Ted Harty and I teach people to freedive deeper, stay longer, and become safer. So the first episode of the show was about the show. So this seems reasonable the second one should be a little bit about me. This episode will be how I went from wearing a suit and tie in Atlanta to becoming a professional freediver. If you look back when I was growing up, what I was taught was you went to school to get good grades, and you got good grades so that you could get to a good college. Then you try to get good grades in college so you could get a good job.
Ted Harty: Then you put a suit and tie on and you started at the bottom and then you worked your way up the ladder. That's what I knew. That's what my family did. That's what all my friends did. I was not good at any three of those things. I'm not good at the grades in high school, I'm not good at the grades in college, and I'm not good at wearing the suit and tie and working in an office. Probably a lot of reasons for that. Definitely one of them, I consider myself a high functioning attention deficit disorder, ADHD, whatever the heck, I don't even know the difference.
Ted Harty: I would also say I, for sure, have what I refer to as a personality defect. And it's probably related to the other stuff, I don't know, but whatever. I know that I have it. Now this what I call my personality defect. When other people describe it, they describe it as a positive. For instance, I've heard my brother say this countless times, and I'm like, "Oh my God, my little brother, it's so crazy. When he gets excited about something, he gets obsessed about it and he learns everything about it and he has to master it. It is the craziest thing, it is the coolest thing to watch him do. I've seen it with so many different things." When you hear him describe it that way, it sounds like a positive yet, what did I refer to it as? A personality defect. And it is because I have zero control over what it is I'm going to obsess over. Something just goes across my radar and then it's on. I can't say I don't want to do it.
Ted Harty: For instance, for freediving, that has been the most beneficial thing for me to obsess and learn and try to master. It's been great for me. But when I was in the Florida Keys and I became obsessed about backgammon, that was ridiculous. I became so obsessed. I played a couple games of backgammon and then I'm on Amazon buying the Backgammon Bible, it's like this 300-page book and I'm reading it and then I'm playing online and ranking in tournaments. And I'm buying some software, this artificial intelligence that can analyze my moves, I'm annotating my moves. I had no control over that but I just spent so much of my time obsessing about backgammon.
Ted Harty: So one of the reasons that I got to where I am is that obsession, whatever you want to call it, that thing got turned on during my scuba class. I remember being in Atlanta, I was underwater breathing off a regulator for the first time, and I remember thinking, "Holy cow. This is awesome. This is it. This is it. This is what I want to do." To this day, right now, I can remember the pool I was at. I can remember the orientation that I was. I can remember who was around me. I was so amazed what it felt like to breathe underwater.
Ted Harty: I remember going back to the classroom and looking at that awesome patti chart of all the different levels. I was open water, I'm like, "Hey, I'm going to do that." The next one was advanced level, "Yeah, definitely going to do that right." Then above that was rescue diver, I'm like, "That sounds cool." Then above that was masters. I'm like, "Yes, I want to be a master. That looks awesome." Then there's a line to the left and there was a whole another section and it was at a box, it was all silver and metallic and it was divemaster. I'm like, "Of course, I want to be a divemaster." Then there was assistant instructor, and instructor, and there was master scuba diver trainer. I'm like, "I want that, right." Then there was like staff instruction course director.
Ted Harty: Eventually, I worked my way all the way up to staff instructor, didn't get course director, I got obsessed and sidetracked by that freed everything so that's okay. I became obsessed with scuba diving. Now, my father lived in Florida Keys, which is known for excellent scuba diving. Being the dutiful son that I was, I started visiting him a lot more than normal. I was going down on the weekends and I'd go scuba diving down there and then I'm like, "Dad, mind if I come down?" And he's like, "You're just here last weekend." I'm like, "I just thought it'd be good to visit." So I was visiting dad a lot and scuba diving a lot.
Ted Harty: I used to go scuba diving in a place called Tilden's Scuba Center. I was so proud because I dove there so often that I was a part of the boat briefing. So when I was on the boat, they would say, "Guys, this is Ted. He comes out with us a lot. He's a good diver. He's a cool guy. But just be aware, those red stripe in the cooler, those are his. They are not for you. He is really cranky if you take his beer." I remember thinking I was so cool that I was part of the boat briefing. One of the days I was out diving, the Tilden's windy, one of the owners came up and said, "Ted, you've turned into a pretty good diver. If you wanted, we'd hire you and you could come work for us if you just went and got your instructor license." I'm like, "What? I could get paid to do this?"
Ted Harty: And like many a scuba instructor, all it took was beers and bikinis, paychecks and paradise, "Sign me up." I went across the street, I got my instructor license. Literally, I graduated and the next day I started working at Tilden's Scuba Center. Then my obsession was learning how to get as good as possible at teaching scuba as fast as possible. I love teaching. I'd never done anything like that before. But I was really lucky because two things helped me a lot. Number one, I worked at a busy dive shop. We did tons and tons of classes so I got a lot of opportunities to get better. Secondly, I had two instructors that had been in the industry for 20, 30 years and they were a wealth of knowledge, and I used to drive them insane with all my incessant questioning and stuff. But they were very, very helpful to help me learn how to get good at teaching scuba.
Ted Harty: I was getting into teaching scuba and at the time, I knew what freediving was. I wasn't an idiot. I understand what freediving is. I wasn't a freediver and I've never really seen freediving. I knew it was out there, I just didn't know anything about it. I remember one day, I had two free divers come on the boat. Crazy long fence, camera wetsuit, teeny tiny mass. I'm out there watching these guys are with sombrero reef, it's 20, 25 feet. And I'm watching them stay down there. I'm like, "Wow, that seems like a really long time." I'm going to grab my stopwatch and I'm stopwatching them and it's a minute 15, a minute 30 they're down there. And I'm like, "Holy cow." I can only hold my breath 30, 45 seconds that was like not moving. I was totally impressed with these guys. I remember thinking the next day, I'm like, "I'm going to try this freediving thing."
Ted Harty: I remember very specifically that first freedive. I remember exactly where on [inaudible 00:07:40] I was. I could go there right now I could go to the exact same spot. I jumped off the boat and kind of my first freedive. I'm wearing two six-pound weights and no wetsuit so stupidly overweighted. I remember kneeling down in the sand. And immediately, two things I noticed. The first was I was mesmerized by the sound of the ocean, the pops, the crackles. I could hear the swell moving back and forth. It was amazing. I'd never heard it before, but I'm a scuba instructor, I spend every day underwater. Well, as a scuba instructor, the sounds of the ocean, you hear that through, that sound of that regulator. I had no idea that regulator is really loud. And it wasn't until I was freediving and didn't have it that I really got to hear what the ocean sounded like. I'm like, "Wow, this is really cool."
Ted Harty: The second thing was as a scuba diver, I was always interested in the little stuff. Like the teeny tinies, the creepy crawly stuff. Blennies are these little fish, they're a little smaller than your pinky finger. And what they do is they find these holes and they back into them. So as a scuba diver, you want to see a blennie, you got to find where they are, you got to basically stand perfectly still for a minute or two. Then they'll start to slowly poke their head out. Because you're making all that noise, they hear all that stuff so they're not sure what's going on.
Ted Harty: Now as a freediver, I was down there and I saw the little holes where the blennies were. And immediately, it was a third of the way out of the hole. I didn't have to wait two minutes, and I've never seen it that far out of the hole so I'm like, "Wow, these creatures are reacting differently to me because I'm not this crazy, loud sounding machine." So I was like, "Wow, this freediving's pretty cool." So I'm having this moment. Now granted, this moment lasted for 10, 15 seconds, but I was like, "Wow, this is really cool." And then things changed because I felt ... I'm like, "Oh my God." I have this panic, this urge to breathe. I fly to the surface.
Ted Harty: I remember hitting the surface and breathing and thinking, "Freediving, that's just the dumbest sport ever." Why wouldn't you wear a scuba tank and stay down for an hour? I literally just dismissed the entire sport and that was that. Like most scuba instructors, I ended up developing a minimal amount of freediving ability because if the customer drop something at 20 foot, 15 foot, it's just easier to freedive down and get it than put all the gear on. I developed a minimal amount of freediving ability, but I was certainly not interested or was not a freediver. The other thing I have beside that personality defect I talked about, I also am super competitive and not in a level that's healthy at all.
Ted Harty: So we're at this reef called Shrimpboat Reef, which is a 50-foot reef, and someone bet me that I couldn't come up with sand. Basically, I take that as the double dog dare. So I'm like, "Here we go." I go down, but before I got to the bottom, I felt like I was going to die. It was just a so awful feeling but I got my hand over my head, I'm not stopping until my hand got sand. I grabbed the sand and I'm flying up to the surface. I'm really looking up and seeing the surface. It was awful. I felt awful. My lungs are burning, my legs were burning. It was awful. I hit the surface and yeah, yeah, I won the bet.
Ted Harty: But I remember thinking about freedivers and I was like, "They must have some monk trick or yoga trick where they just have immunity to pain." Because they must have a really high tolerance to pain. Because that's all that I thought of, this is the only way I thought you could be good at freediving wasn't ... I felt like I was going to die. It was awful, and that was only 50 foot. So I figured, the good freedivers must be able to tolerate pain. At the time, I was mildly intrigued by freediving. I hadn't focused on it yet. I tried to train, I mean, whatever. But I would try to hold, I'm like, "Well, I think freediving so maybe I just need to practice holding my breath on the couch." And I would try that and it was just awful. It was uncomfortable, it was awful. I hated it. I didn't feel like I was getting better. It just was totally ... It just didn't work.
Ted Harty: Now, at the time, there are some other things going on. So if you look at every family, typically every family has the black sheep. Let's be very clear. In my family, it's me. My dad started from nothing and created a successful company. My sister, she's been in the financial planning industry all her life and super successful in that. My other sister is a professional photographer and she owns all these rental properties that she rents out. My brother, he's been in a credit card processing industry his entire career. Recently, they had a start up and they sold it and much of money. And here I am in the Keys teaching scuba. Whenever I was around the family, I always felt lesser than. They had already done so much more or less stuff than me. They never made me feel that way but that's the way I felt because I was super competitive. But that was just, it's a me thing.
Ted Harty: What happened in the Keys is when I was teaching scuba, I loved it but I realized that I couldn't go up anymore. There are no more levels to go up. I started as a scuba instructor, and then I was the head instructor, and then I was managing the shop. One of the reasons I was managing the shop was my ears were so messed up, I could hardly dive anymore. So here I am managing this diving shop, I'm working 60, 70 hours a week, I'm barely even diving anymore. I got my friends in Atlanta that are working 40 hours a week. They have health insurance, they have 401(k)s, and they're making a ton of money. I was like, "I don't know how this works." I know what the next step is, I don't know what the next level is so I was a little frustrated with where I was.
Ted Harty: Now, I am always obsessed about something. If you ever see me and say, "What are you obsessed over?" Well, actually, that'd be really dumb question because I'm going to just go, "Oh my God," blah, blah, blah. I'm telling you whatever it is that I'm obsessed about, you're like, "Oh, my God, I wish I never asked him that question." But I'm always obsessed about something. So I was trying to figure out what I was going to do and what it was back then, and I started to realize that I was obsessed about learning how to teach scuba in the beginning and you'd learn a lot in the beginning. So you make all these improvements and you get better and better and that's exciting and addicting. But then, after three years, I'm not saying that I had mastered teaching scuba, but the things that I would learn and the improvements I get, they get less and less and less so then I become less interested in the process.
Ted Harty: I'm thinking what's the next thing. I'm like, "Maybe this thing is going to work for me." Then I'm like, "Technical diving. It's what I do but it's more." Recreational scuba divers go to 100, 130 feet. Technical diver, they go to 200 feet. And they got all this extra gear and you had all these extra classes and the more levels and I'm like, "I think that's what I'm going to do." I remember looking at a tech diving class and I looked at the course and I'm like, "Holy cow, that gear is so expensive." I'm like, "What? No." Then the freediving class went across my radar, I'm like, "Mask, fin, snorkel, already got that. So freedriving class, that's what I'm going to do."
Ted Harty: I knew that if I wanted to get better at freediving, I had to do something else. What I knew is what I was doing wasn't working. I mean, you have to understand back then, this was 2007, 2008, they weren't a bazillion YouTube channels, they weren't blog posts, they weren't podcasts, they weren't online courses. I mean, at the time, there was maybe two freediving instructors in the entire United States. I am incredibly lucky that I decided to take a freediving class. And I can tell you with absolute certainty, had I not, I would have absolutely killed myself freediving because I was doing the dumbest, most dangerous freediving training I've ever heard of anyone doing. If I had not taken that class, I, for sure, would have killed myself.
Ted Harty: Here's what I was doing. Let me be very clear. Do not do any of this. Don't do this unless you want to kill yourself freediving because that's what's going to happen. I remember asking the captain. I said, "Look, those guys, they stay down there for so long a minute, 15-minute, 30. I've actually never like 20 seconds. How do they do that?" He goes, "Well, if you want to get better at holding your breath underwater, you just got to practice holding your breath underwater."
Ted Harty: I'm like, "Damn, it makes so much sense. I practice holding my breath in my couch, no wonder it doesn't work." So I would set up a downline, again, we'd be at sombrero 20, 25 feet, kind of put a downline down, which is the line with a weight on the bottom. I would wear my two six-pound weights, wetsuits to be overweighted. I would go down to the bottom, get my stopwatch out, hold on to the line and then do underwater statics 25 feet underwater with no supervision, grossly overweighted and wait until I feel these contractions and then flap to the surface.
Ted Harty: Now, just to make sure I was going to kill myself doing that because that's not good enough, I would then go into the dive shop and I would write down my time on the board, "Ted, 45 seconds." So the next instructor comes in the next day and he's like, "I can beat Ted." So he goes down there, beats my time. I show up to work the next day and it says, "John, 53 seconds." I'm like, "Who the hell does John think he is? I can do 53 seconds. I can do a minute." I'm down there in a minute or three and I write the ... So this was going on. We were constantly doing underwater unsupervised statics. And before I took that freediving class, the last time I wrote on that board was two minutes and 13 seconds. Now, if that wasn't good enough ...
Ted Harty: I remember going to the captain, I'm like, "Man, this first one was so great. Give me some more. What else you got for me?" He's like, "Well, I'll tell you, Ted, the thing that happens with freediving is the urge to breathe, do you feel them?" I'm like, "Yeah, I know." He goes, "It's actually not because you're out of oxygen." I'm like, "Well, of course it is. It's oxygen." He goes, "No, no, no. It's actually your carbon dioxide levels are rising so high. It's actually that high carbon dioxide, that's what gives you the urge to breathe." I'm like, "Oh my God, this guy's the smartest guy ever. Oxygen and carbon dioxide. Tell me more, captain."
Ted Harty: He goes, "So if you want to improve, you need to dive in such a way so that you have high carbon dioxide." I'm like, "Yes, that makes sense. How? What do I do?" He goes, "Well, what I want you to do is you're just going to go in the shallow reef like sombrero, you go touch the bottom, you come up, and you're only allowed to take one breath, and then you go back down. And you see how many times you can do it." I remember going out there, I go to the bottom and touch the sand, come up, take one breath, go to the bottom, touch the sand and I'm just done. I could do it twice. By the time I took that freediving class, I could do that seven times. I can't imagine a more guaranteed way to kill yourself than what I was doing.
Ted Harty: I was a dive instructor that was extremely safety conscious. I knew more about physiology than the average Joe, and I was actively trying to kill myself. I mean, it's embarrassing to say this because this seems really dumb, I didn't think of it that way. On a side note, me and my captain, we basically invented the Wonka Tables way before the Wonka guy because I think the Wonka Tables came out way after that. We were already doing that. We just did at a much dangerous, dumber way. Eventually, I decide to take a freediving course. I hear about this guy, Kirk Krack from Performance Freediving International. He's got this course, it's 650 bucks. I looked on the website and it says Intermediate Freediver.
Ted Harty: And I read the description, and it says, "The average student does a four to five-minute breath hold and a 100-foot dive." And I'm like, "That is a bunch of nonsense. That is ridiculous." I mean, that's like the ... I can't believe you can say that like that. I'm like, "There's no way that's true." I mean, I understood that it's possible that there might be a person out there that could do that but you can't teach people to do that, and you certainly can't to do it in four or five days. It should be four days. So I started researching and at the time, it was Spearboard. I'm on Spearboard, I'm reading these reviews of the program and they're saying it's true.
Ted Harty: And I'm like, I was so confused. I'm like, "I know that statement can't be true yet here I am reading people saying that it is true." And I was just like, "Huh." So I signed up and I go to Miami to take this course. I can tell you with absolute certainty, that was the single most life-changing, altering thing that I ever did. For those of you out there, you go, "But Ted, what about meeting Kathy?" I would never have met Kathy if it wasn't for this course so it's all tied in together.
Ted Harty: There are two things that I was blown away with. Now, number one, I was an instructor nerd, I was always interested in how to teach better, all this sort of stuff. I was blown away by how Kirk structured this very complicated program. It was really interesting. You learn all these things and they build on the next one. I was just totally impressed with the way it was structured. And he was the best instructor I'd ever ... I mean, it was hands in a way I'd never seen anyone teach that good. I couldn't believe how much of a phenomenal instructor he was.
Ted Harty: The second thing outside of all that, there was all the information that I learned. I mean, I was blown away by all that. I was flabbergasted. All these things that we learned in the program just blew me away. I remember, he talked about the mammalian dive reflex, which is kind of it's a cheat code. In video games, put in the code, it makes you hold your breath longer and do all this stuff. He starts talking about how well there's this the mammalian dive reflex, it causes bradycardia, which means your heart rate slows and then it causes your spleen to compress and it puts more red blood cells in your system.
Ted Harty: Then he was talking about how the way we breathe is important, because if we breathe in this way, a certain way, it's going to change the pH levels of your blood. And what that does is it increases the strength of the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen. And that's a problem, because now the oxygen is stuck to your hemoglobin where you can't use it and it increases your risk for having a blackout. So we breathe the other way, the way I want you to breathe, it's going to weaken the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen. It's all called the hemoglobin association.
Ted Harty: I'm going, "What?" I mean, I just can't believe how cool this stuff is. And then he's like, "Well, we've got this certain other type of way we breathe, it's called hook breathing. The reason we do that is when you breathe this way, it makes the capillaries in your alveoli compress so that there's less likely to have pulmonary dumping, you're less likely to blackout of the surface." And I'm like, "Holy cow." I was so impressed with all the things that I learned in that program. We go to the pool the first day, I had a four-minute breath hold. And it was easy. It was easy. I was doing two minutes and 13 seconds, it was my maximum, and I felt like I was going to die. And the first day of this class, I did a four-minute breath hold. The second day, I did five minutes. Now that one was uncomfortable and hurt. But the four minutes was absolutely easy. I think I did a 60, 70 foot dive. I didn't do the 100-foot dive.
Ted Harty: But I realized that I thought there is something wrong with me. I thought I couldn't become a good freediver and I thought that ... I remember thinking that it was because you had to have this high tolerance to pain, and I realized that that wasn't the case at all. The reason I was not a good freediver was I just didn't have access to the information. Once I got told all the stuff, I was able to do quite well. I didn't know how to take the biggest breath possible. I didn't know how to breathe in such a way to increase my breath hold ability. I didn't know between Valsalva and Frenzel. I didn't know how to be super streamlined. I didn't know how to train and improve my abilities. And once I knew all those things, there's no reason I couldn't be a good freediver.
Ted Harty: So I left that class, I went back to the Keys, and it was full on freediving obsession. Now my job was scuba diving. That was my job. But on my day off, as soon as I got off work, it was all freediving. I was going spearfishing, I was going freedriving, I was going training. I was trying everything I can to improve. A year later, Kirk offered a PFI Instructor Program, and I'm like, "Yes." I flew out to Hawaii. I passed. Not only did I pass, he gave me a job offer on the spot. He's like, "Ted, we'd like to hire you. We'd like to fly you around on the weekends and put you up in a hotel and we're going to help me and Mandy teach these programs." And I'm like, "Absolutely, yes."
Ted Harty: So for the next two to three years, that's what I did. I flew around with Kirk and Mandy and help them teach that intermediate program, and it was amazing. I learned so much getting a chance to work directly with Kirk and Mandy to be mentored by them. I never realized really how lucky I was to have that experience. Because as PFI has grown and grown, all the instructors that are being brought up for a long time ... Kirk, he wasn't even teaching those programs. He was doing the Hollywood stuff and the movies and the big stuff. So many instructors, they didn't have the opportunity to work under him like I did for two, three years. It really helped me immensely. I mean, almost everything I do as instructor is the stuff that I learned directly from Kirk.
Ted Harty: After working for them for two, three years, I started Immersion Freediving. What I wanted to do was I wanted to teach PFI classes on my own and not have the expense of the hotels and the planes. I'm, "If I can just plant my flag here in Fort Lauderdale and not move and make the students come to me, that's going to start to make a lot of sense." So I was all excited. I started Immersion Freediving, and it failed miserably. When I say failed miserably, you can't do any worse than putting courses on the schedule and no one's signing up. That's what happened. None.
Ted Harty: So the business wasn't working. And I think at the time, I figured out why. At the time, this is like 2010, 2011, there're basically two freediving instructors in the US. You could take a course from Kirk, the head of performance freediving, the guy that's trained all these people, all these world records, and in my opinion, advented the freediving educational industry. Or you take a course from Martin Stepanek, a 13-time world record holder and the creator of the Freediving Instructors International. Or you can take a course from Ted Harty, the overweight, out of shape scuba instructor that you've never heard of.
Ted Harty: Yeah, of course, it didn't work. I wouldn't take a course from me, I would've take it from Kirk or Martin. And so I was like, "Okay, in order for this to work ..." all I knew was the only successful freediving instructors I knew were all world record holders. I knew I wasn't going to get a record, but I'm like, "At least I can get a national record. I got to become a somebody in the freediving world and everything." So I have to get a record and I have to be a 200-foot diver. That was the plan.
Ted Harty: I looked through all the US freediving records, and I picked the target. My target was the dynamic apnea, which is how long you swim for distance in the pool. That was the longest standing US record at the time and I said, "That's the one I'm going to get." So performance freediving, Kirk could train multiple people to multiple records. Man, he has seven world records so I had access to the training that they use and that's what I did. I followed the program and it was hard. Training at that level, it's just difficult. But I was singularly focused, I put the work in. It was hard but it worked. I went to the World Championships. In 2011, I ended up breaking the record in dynamic apnea with 170 meters.
Ted Harty: Not only that, my claim to fame was at the World Championships, I made it to the finals. And I got to go head-to-head, mano a mano, against William Trubridge, arguably the best freediver on the planet. So we would have heats and there are two people on the heat. I'm in one lane and William Trubridge is in the other. And not surprisingly, I lost. But that's my claim to fame, is I got to go head-to-head against William Trubridge. And William was very nice to me, he actually helped me before we even made it to the finals. He saw me training and he was helping me. That's kind of the first time I got exposed to any other type of freediving knowledge.
Ted Harty: I definitely believe that a lot of instructors, especially beginning instructors, and this is true for everything, scuba, freediving, yoga, martial arts, whatever, you learn a system. I call it the box. You learn this box. Everything you learn is in this box. And anytime that instructor counters anything outside of that box, it's like, "No, no, no. You don't do that." I know that I was wrong. I do it like this. So I know this one way. That's what I did. I only knew the PFI system. The PFI system is awesome. I love the PFI system. It served me very well. I teach it to my students and teach it to instructors.
Ted Harty: But when I started traveling and going to all these competitions, the World Championships and interacting with literally the world's best freedivers, I saw a lot of different stuff. Some of it was crazy. I remember I looked at this people, I'm like, "What in the hell are you doing? That's the dumbest thing. Why would you ... Oh my God, that's so stupid. I would never do that." And then I'd see some people doing stuff and I'm like, "That's really cool." So then I tell them, "What are you doing? Does it work? Why does it work?" That's when I started being able to expand my level of knowledge outside of just the stuff that I've been exposed to.
Ted Harty: I remember talking with William Trubridge. And to this day, he told me some ... Of course, he won't remember, but I remember he told me a technique that he uses and I still use it to this day and teaches it to my students in how to deal, a psychological how to deal with the uncomfortableness of the long things like dynamics and statics. I firmly believe that that was one of the things that helped me so much, was being able to get exposed to lots of different things. And I always encourage you, one of the best things you can do in freediving is get exposed to different types of things, learn from different mentors, and learn from all of them instead of just glomming on to one and that's the only thing that you learn.
Ted Harty: I've been fortunate enough to learn from literally some of the best freedivers on the planet. Obviously, I've worked with Kirk extensively. He's trained countless world record holders. I got to work with Mandy, his wife is seven-time world record holder. I met William at the World Championships. I met him, he was super helpful for me. Then I went and took one of his master classes because I was terrible at no fins, and he is literally the best no fins person on the planet. I figured, why not learn from him? So I went to Masterclass, it was amazing. I learned so much about no fins and a lot of other things.
Ted Harty: I've also work with Sarah Campbell, she's a four-time world record holder. I always had equalizing problems throughout my entire career. And once I worked with her, I learned the three stage mouthfill and all the things, I've never had a problem equalizing the plate anywhere ever since I worked with her. I've also worked with Gordon [inaudible 00:30:17]. He's a 12-time world record holder. He held a program in Miami. He's more of a pool specialist and I learned some really cool pool techniques from him. But the thing I was most excited about the course is the course was designed to teach you how to generate a training program so I was really interested in that.
Ted Harty: I was able to combine that kind of core framework that I learned from Performance Freediving, and then add in all the other things I learned from all these amazing freedivers, and basically combined all that, and that's kind of the system that I use to train for myself, that I teach my students and as well as developing my online courses. Ultimately, the result of all the training and all the things that I learned was my deepest freedive today is 279 feet or 85 meters. Longest breath hold is seven minutes. I'm a pass US freediving record holder, and was captain of the US Freediving Team at the World Championships. Eventually, the business did take off. I've had over 1,000 students and most of my students are spear fisherman and recreational freedivers. I've had countless students do 100-foot dive, countless students do 45-minute breath holds in the program.
Ted Harty: I know when I started I was always super excited to hear when one of my students would save someone's life from a blackout. I remember I stopped counting after once I got over 10 and that was pretty quickly. But that's always, as a freediving instructor, that's the coolest thing ever to hear, that a student took your program and was able to save someone's life from what they learned in the program. I've had a lot of my students go on to be national record holders and high end competitors. Then I've also had some students become instructors with a variety of different agencies. And I always think that's really cool. Because I learned from Kirk, I was able to take the stuff I learned from Kirk and teach them, and then they're taking those things and then teaching it to their students, which is really cool.
Ted Harty: Somehow, I was able to transition from an overweight, out of shape scuba instructor into a successful freediver. And the one thing I always try to tell my students is there is no reason I should be a successful freediver. There's nothing special about me. When I get my blood drawn, I'm either labeled as anemic or right on the borderline, which means my body sucks at transporting and storing oxygen. And you're going, "Well, isn't that ..." That's the thing, that's a problem. There's no competitive advantage of me being anemic. It just sucks. It's a detriment. So the fact that I have anemia and can be good at freediving, that should be encouraging. When I started my freediving career, I remember, I was managing the dive shop because I couldn't barely dive anymore. My ears were shot. So I've had constant equalizing problems through my career.
Ted Harty: I tell my students that I have a body built by beer, bourbon, and barbecue. I am not an elite athlete. I'm not in amazing shape. There is nothing special about me at all. When I showed up to my first freediving competition, I had to get a medical. And the medic, John Shed, said, "You're obese." And I said, "Did you just called me fat?" He goes, "No, but your height and weight, you're obese." And I was still able to do well. For the first, probably two to three years of my career, I had massive and constant uncomfortable contractions anytime I was below 33 feet or 10 meters. I remember talking to Kirk and Mandy, and they're just like, "That makes no sense. I have no idea what's happening to you."
Ted Harty: My students show up for class, it's not uncommon for my students to be in better shape than me, lower body fat than me, better athletes in every way yet I can freedive circles around them. How is that? Because I'm really stubborn. I wanted to make this freediving thing to work. I was obsessed with it. I'm like, "This is my thing. I'm going to make this thing work." I tell my students that, "My mess is my message. I don't want you to have to go through all the stuff that I did. You shouldn't so I'm here to, so that you don't have to." I learned everything the hard way. By the way, it's the best way to learn. They should teach it in school. But I can't tell you how many times I've done things and been like, "That's why Kirk said don't do that." Kirk's always right, you should just be aware of that.
Ted Harty: The good news, all of that makes me very relatable as an instructor. Because the students look at me and they're like, "That joker can be good at freediving?" There's no reason I couldn't and I think that's a good message. When you're a freediving instructor, we'll tell you that every single decision that they make is based on, "Will it make me a better freediver? What am I going to eat? What time am I going to get up? What am I going to do? What am I going to train? What time I'm going go to bed?" That's how you become a world record freediver but that's not very relatable. My students sign me easy to learn from because I'm just a normal guy. There's definitely nothing special about me.
Ted Harty: Ultimately, the business started to work. And I remember the first time I sold out a class. I remember I was in that blue house that I was renting. I was jumping around the house and I was like, "Kathy, look, look, look, look, look. It's a sold out course." Back then, my course schedule had a hyperlink for the dates. And then next to it, there's a parentheses and it was a five spots, four spots, three spots, two spots. And I said, "It says zero spots." If you click on it, it doesn't even work. I couldn't believe that me, that's nobody no one ever heard of, sell out a freediving class. Then maybe six, seven weeks later, I still had another one. So it was so exciting that I would sell the class.
Ted Harty: Now eventually, it got to where every class would sell out. That wasn't super exciting anymore. It was just kind of normal. So then the next challenge or the next way I was testing myself was how fast can I sell all that course. I post the course and two weeks later, it would sell out. Now, every course sells out in 24 hours or less. So then the thing was, "Well, how quick can I sell out the entire season?" The business has been taken off, and it's definitely been a wild ride. Because of the emergent freediving [inaudible 00:36:11], I've got to do some really cool things.
Ted Harty: So I've got to work with Ben Greenfield. He's a podcaster, biohacker, I got to do a private course with him, which was super cool. I've appeared on the Discovery Channel with Tim Kennedy for his show Hard to Kill. I got to work with the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, I worked with Special Forces guys. I've also, I counted it up and I think I've been interviewed on 14 or 15 different podcasts. And that's when I'm like, "I should do a podcast. I've got an idea of how it works, I should create my own," which is part of the reason I created Freedive Live.
Ted Harty: Now, when I hang out with my siblings, I don't feel like a lesser than. I have created this my own business and it's doing this thing right, and I feel super proud of that. Unfortunately, my father passed away last year but he was super proud of what I had done with Immersion Freediving and he was always up to ... His favorite thing to do was talk business but Immersion Freediving. He was really fascinated by the whole process. I've got a little Apple Pencil I got engraved on it, "Make dad proud." Because what I'm doing with Immersion is I always wanted to make him proud.
Ted Harty: At this point in my career, my goals for Immersion Freediving have completely shifted. For the longest time, I just wanted to teach as many classes I could. I want to teach more classes than anyone in the United States. I was just focused on this, classes, classes, classes. There was a while when I was doing ... I would do 25 students in a three-week period. I would do the courses, I'd do one from Tuesday to Thursday, and immediately another one starting Friday morning and that was just crazy. It was too much teaching, too much classes. Now, my goal is how can I have the biggest impact on the freediving industry even though I'm just one guy. I'm not a big company, I'm not an agency, I'm just the freediving barbecue guy.
Ted Harty: A few years ago, I started developing online freediving courses. I've got courses on how to increase your bottom time, how to equalize properly between Valsalva and Frenzel, how to hold your breath longer, at-home training programs and all these things. But the one that I'm most excited about that shifted everything for me is freedivingsafety.com. It's a free course that goes over the truth about shallow water blackout, how to minimize your risk, how to save your buddy's life if they were to have a blackout, and how to tell if you're wearing too much weight. This website, in two years, has taught way more people about freediving safety than I have in my 12-year career and that gets my attention.
Ted Harty: In the next episode, I'll be going into great detail about why I created the course, what my plans for it are, how I created all this sort of stuff. But I will tell you, the whole website came about because of a single question that Chris Bustad asked me well after midnight at a bar at one of the trade shows and because of that question, basically led to me creating the course. It's been a fun 12 years. Freediving has given me a lot and I've enjoyed every minute of it. When my students show up for the intermediate class, I tell them, "I was sitting in your shoes, in your seat in 2008 taking the same class with the same manual sitting in front of you. And that class literally changed my entire life to such an extent that you're sitting in my house right now learning for me."
Ted Harty: That's a wrap for the second episode of Freedive Live. Now you might be wondering, "Okay, Ted, Freedive Live, what does that even mean? It's a podcast, it's not live at all. I'm just listening to the recording." You'd be right. What I am going to be doing is adding a live component to the show. So I'm going to be doing live Q and As where you can ask me questions about the episode, something didn't make sense or you want to learn more about it. I'm going to be doing those on clubhouse and possibly Twitter spaces.
Ted Harty: To learn when I'm going to be doing those, the best place to see that is going to be go to freedivelive.com/resources and that'll get you up to date on when I'm doing those live events. My name is Ted Harty and I teach people to freedive deeper, stay longer and become safer. I hope you enjoyed the episode, and be sure to tune in to the next one where I take a deepdive into freedivingsafety.com and what my plans are moving forward.
Ted Harty: Thank you for joining me today and listening to this episode. I hope you took something away from the show whether it was a little nugget that you're like, "Wow, that was so cool." Or maybe you had a big aha moment to help you improve your freedom and performance and ability. If this episode helped you in some way, be sure to share this episode with someone you believe it can help. I help you and you pass it on and then help someone else. I'm in the process of creating a resource list. This will contain many of the freediving and spearfishing brands that I believe in as well as many other tools that you will need as you continue to grow your freediving abilities. This resource list will be constantly growing and evolving. You can see it at freedivinglive.com/resources. Dive safe out there. It's not even that hard.