Competing Against Yourself: The Real Mental Game of Freediving

Every time I step onto the pool deck for a personal best attempt, I feel it.

Not the nerves.
Not the excitement.
But that whisper in the chest. The quiet question:

Will I be enough today?

This sport—freediving—wears the mask of competition, with judges and white cards and rankings. But that’s not what I’m here for. Not really. What I’m doing is entering a conversation with myself. And sometimes that conversation is loud. Sometimes it’s cruel. And sometimes, it’s just a breath held long enough to uncover the truth I’ve been avoiding.

There are no opponents in the water. Just you, your breath, and the weight of your expectations.

The Myth of the White Card

For outsiders, freediving looks like a battle of numbers. Who held their breath the longest. Who swam the farthest. Who surfaced the cleanest.

But for most of us inside it, it’s far more personal. It’s about confronting the voice that says, You could have done more. Or the one that whispers, You’re not ready.

That voice isn’t silenced by training. It gets quieter, maybe. More familiar. But on competition day, when the countdown begins and the world goes still, it always returns. And if you listen closely, that voice is almost always your own.

In a 2019 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers found that elite freedivers experience a unique psychological state before dives—a mix of heightened self-awareness, altered time perception, and disassociation from external stressors. Source

In other words, it’s not about beating someone else. It’s about managing the space between your thoughts.

The Dive Isn’t the Hard Part

It’s not the 100 meters you swam. Or the 6 minutes you held still.

The hard part is walking to the edge of the pool knowing you might fail.

That you might surface early. That your legs might cramp. That your mouth might dry up and your hands might shake. And still—you show up.

You do it with the camera in your face.
You do it with the memory of your last red card burned into your muscles.
You do it even if no one else is watching.

That’s the part that counts.

That’s the part that shapes you.

Letting Go of the Outcome

I’ve written before about recovery after pushing too far and the toll that doubt takes on the body. The lessons from those moments echo here.

Every dive teaches me the same thing: you cannot force your way to peace. You can train. You can sharpen your technique. But in the end, you have to let go of control. Let go of how it should look. Let go of how others might see it.

That’s where the real freediving begins. In surrender. In trust.

Competition as Ceremony

What if the competition isn’t a test, but a ceremony?

A sacred space where you get to meet yourself again and again. Not to prove anything, but to remember what you’re capable of. What you’ve already survived. How your body still shows up for you, even when your mind runs.

When I surface, it’s never about meters.
It’s about honesty.

Did I dive from pressure, or from choice?
Did I listen to my instincts, or chase a number?
Did I treat myself with dignity, even if it didn’t go to plan?

That’s the real competition.

Not against others.
But with the part of myself that forgets I am already enough.

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Want to learn how to host your own comp? Read: How to Start Organizing a Freediving Pool Competition