For Christmas my wife and I paid for our 15 year old son Brandon to attend the PFI Free diving course offered January 10-12th 2014. Before the class started I had several phone conversations with Instructor Ted Harty who consistently stressed that the course was about free diving safely and how the course would teach our son to recognize different types of emergencies and then perform rescue techniques. The Skype equalizing session before the course had our son well prepared for equalizing using the Frenzel technique in the pool and ocean sessions. The pool sessions had a life guard sitting right over the students supervising as well as Ted in the water giving instruction. When our son got out of the classroom and pool session the first day he couldn’t stop talking about all the wealth of information he learned that day. The second day pool session improved techniques from the first day and added more. During the second day open ocean session my son was able to reach the 50′ limit several times. On the third day Brandon continued to work on his technique and was able to reach the course limit of 66′. Brandon then performed several real life based rescue scenarios in which he had to recognize there was a problem and rescue the instructor utilizing the rescue techniques he was taught. For any parent thinking about whether or not enrolling their child into this class our answer would be yes you definitely should, the class sizes are small so the student has plenty of one on one time with the instructor. Ted is the consummate professional who always stressed safety and talked to us after each session about Brandon’s progress. I believe Brandon has become a much safer free diver who has the skills to recognize and save someone from a potential life threatening blackout.
Brandon Kissel 15 years old Jan 10-12,2014 Freediver program