Why Delphy Pool Is One of the Best Places to Learn Freediving and Spearfishing in the UK
- sfsdiving
- Jul 4
- 2 min read
Learning to freedive in the UK presents a unique challenge: finding suitable depth.
Along much of the UK coastline, reaching even 20 metres often requires a long surface swim, which can be physically tiring before you've even started your dive. The alternative is teaching from a boat, but boat charters can cost hundreds of pounds per day, making courses significantly more expensive. Even then, you're still dependent on the weather, tides, swell, and currents. If the conditions aren't suitable, training can quickly become difficult or even impossible.
For new freedivers, feeling safe, comfortable, and relaxed is one of the most important parts of the learning process. If you're worried about waves, current, or surface conditions, it's much harder to focus on breathing, relaxation, and developing good technique.
That's where Delphy Pool is different.
As the UK's deepest purpose-built freediving facility, with a depth of 37 metres, Delphy provides consistent training conditions every day. There are no waves, no currents, no tides, and no long surface swims to reach depth. Instead, you can focus entirely on learning and building confidence in a safe, controlled environment.
Delphy also offers excellent on-site facilities, including changing rooms, hot showers, classrooms, a café, and relaxation areas, making your training experience comfortable from start to finish.
For those wanting to take their skills into the open water, our extended AIDA courses combine the best of both worlds. You begin by learning the core freediving skills in Delphy's controlled environment before spending an additional day in the ocean, applying those skills while exploring Cornwall's incredible marine life.
Being centrally located in Bodmin gives us another major advantage. We have easy access to both Cornwall's north and south coasts, allowing us to choose the best dive site based on the conditions. This flexibility gives students the best possible experience while maintaining high safety standards.
A Better Way to Learn Spearfishing
Safe and successful spearfishing starts with becoming a competent freediver.
Before learning hunting techniques, it's essential to develop the foundations of breath-hold diving: breathing efficiently, equalising comfortably, relaxing underwater, moving through the water with minimal effort, and understanding safe diving practices.
At Delphy, we teach these core freediving skills first in the pool, where students can learn without the added challenges of waves and currents. Once these fundamentals are established, we move into the ocean to introduce spearfishing techniques in a progressive, structured way.
This step-by-step approach allows students to build confidence gradually and safely, creating a stronger foundation than trying to learn everything at once in open water.
Learn from Experienced Instructors
Your instructors bring together decades of diving and teaching experience.
Matt Hill is the UK's deepest freediver and current UK No. 1 freediver, bringing experience from international competition and years of coaching divers of all abilities.
Alongside him is Oliver Cacioppo, one of the UK's most experienced freediving instructors and an AIDA Master Instructor who has introduced hundreds of students to freediving over many years.
Combined with Delphy Pool's world-class facilities, this level of experience creates an exceptional environment for anyone looking to begin or advance their freediving or spearfishing journey.
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