Pool Training Essentials: Four Things You Actually Need

Freedivers love overcomplicating gear. Monofins, nose clips, specialized wetsuits, fluid goggles - the list never ends. But for pool training? You need four things. None of them are expensive. All of them will make you better.

A watch that saves laps

This one seems obvious, but most people skip it.

Without lap times, you might be learning the wrong thing entirely. I only realized I was going way too fast in the first half of my dives when I started sharing times with training partners. The watch doesn’t lie.

You don’t need anything fancy. A basic Garmin or any sports watch that saves lap splits works. The point is having data you can review after the session, not just glancing at a clock between dives. Patterns emerge when you track consistently - you’ll notice which rest intervals work, which pacing strategies hold up, and where you’re losing efficiency. (This is exactly why structure beats random effort every time.)

An underwater camera

You can’t see yourself underwater. Most freedivers train for months - years - without ever watching footage of their own technique.

A cheap action camera changes everything. GoPro alternatives run €50-100 and do the job fine. Have a buddy film you, or prop it on the pool bottom. What you think you look like and what you actually look like are rarely the same thing.

This ties directly to the next item on the list.

A proper adjustable neck weight

Buoyancy is probably the biggest low-hanging fruit for beginners and intermediate divers. If your weighting is off, you’re fighting physics on every single dive. That costs meters, costs oxygen, costs mental energy you should be spending elsewhere.

The problem is you can’t feel when your buoyancy is wrong - it just feels like “hard.” You need to see it. Film yourself. Watch where you float, how your body position changes through the dive, whether you’re kicking to stay down or fighting to not sink.

Then adjust. Then film again.

Most freedivers avoid dealing with this because it’s fiddly. Getting an adjustable neck weight - one where you can add or remove small increments - makes the whole process less annoying. Dial it in once, check it occasionally.

The difference between “close enough” and “actually correct” weighting is measurable in meters. For the cost of a decent lunch, you’re buying free performance.

Short fins

Here’s where people waste the most money: expensive carbon fins for pool training.

Look, those beautiful Cetma blades? They’re for testing. For competition. For seeing where your performance actually is on a given day.

But most of your training isn’t testing. That’s the whole point of periodization - you spend 80% of your time building capacity, not measuring it. And for building? Short fins are better.

Short fins force you to work harder. They build leg strength, cardiovascular capacity, and technique under load. You can’t muscle through bad form with short fins the way you can with long blades. Every inefficiency shows up.

Get a cheap pair. €30-50. Use them for 90% of your pool sessions. Save the fancy fins for when you’re actually testing performance - which, if you’re training intelligently, is maybe once a month.

The boring truth

None of this is exciting. A watch, a camera, a weight, and some stubby fins. No one’s posting this gear haul on Instagram.

But these four things - used consistently - will improve your pool training more than any expensive equipment upgrade. They give you data, feedback, and the right training stimulus. Everything else is optional until you’ve maxed out what these basics can teach you.

Track your laps. Film your dives. Dial in your buoyancy. Train with short fins. The boring fundamentals are boring because they work.

(Speaking of tracking: this is exactly why logging sessions in Appneist matters. You’re not just swimming - you’re building data that shows patterns, progress, and problems. Stop wasting your pool time on random efforts.)