Maybe you’ve just finished your Level 1 Wave 1 course, or your PADI Freediver, and you’re stuck. On land, sitting upright, equalising is easy. Flip upside down in the water, though, and nothing happens, no matter how hard you push with your throat or tongue. This is one of the most common freediving equalisation problems we see, and if it feels like something in your body is broken, we promise it isn’t. There’s a proven way through it, and it starts with turning yourself the other way up.
What’s actually going on when you can’t equalise upside down
When you invert to dive head-down, your soft palate, the soft tissue at the back of your throat, can close involuntarily. This blocks the passage between your oral and nasal cavities. No matter how much pressure you build with your throat and tongue, the air simply can’t reach your middle ear to equalise.
Why your soft palate shuts when you flip upside down
Your soft palate is the gate between your oral cavity and your nasal cavity. It’s the same flap of tissue that vibrates when you snore. Sitting or standing upright, keeping that gate open comes naturally, since you’ve done it your whole life without ever thinking about it. You can read more about how the soft palate works if you want the full anatomy.
Flip upside down underwater for the first time, and your body doesn’t always cooperate. The soft palate can clamp shut as a protective reflex, the same instinct that stops water or foreign objects entering your airway when something feels wrong. It isn’t a sign you’re doing anything incorrectly.
Tension and unfamiliar positions trigger your body’s stress response, and increased muscle tension is a normal part of that reaction.
Your ears equalise through your Eustachian tubes, the small canals connecting your middle ear to the back of your throat. If your soft palate won’t open, air has nowhere to go, and those tubes never get the airflow they need.
The feet-first fix we use to solve this
One of the tools we use to problem-solve this on our courses is having a diver wrap their legs around the line and descend feet-first instead of head-down. The beauty of this position is that the air sitting in your oral cavity naturally rises, and your soft palate stays open. You’re still in the orientation your body has spent its whole life in.
As you descend feet-first, the same push with your throat and tongue that did nothing head-down is suddenly enough. Air shifts through your Eustachian tubes and into your middle ear. For a lot of divers working through equalisation problems, this is the first time they feel a proper, pain-free pop, and it’s a genuine turning point.
It’s worth being clear about what this fixes and what it doesn’t. Descending feet-first removes the soft palate obstacle, but you still need to be using the Frenzel technique, not Valsalva, to get anything out of it. Valsalva relies on pushing air from your lungs using your diaphragm and stomach muscles, and it stops working properly below about 10 metres regardless of which way up you are. Feet-first diving simply gives you the clear passage you need to feel a correct Frenzel movement for the first time.
My own equalisation story: feet-first to 31 metres
This is exactly what happened to me. During my own first freediving course, and for weeks afterwards, I couldn’t equalise head-down at all. My soft palate shut every time I inverted, and no amount of pushing with my throat, tongue or diaphragm made any difference.
So for those first few weeks, every dive I did was feet-first. It’s worth remembering that every diver starts from the same place, no matter how experienced they look now. My body needed time to feel safe being upside down before the soft palate would stop closing on its own.
With a fair bit of dry training on land, using the same exercises we’ve linked below, my nervous system slowly got used to the sensation. Once that happened, equalising head-down came together within a matter of weeks. While I was still working through it entirely feet-first, I reached 31 metres. That’s proof you don’t need perfect technique to get real depth and real enjoyment out of freediving while you’re still learning.
Moving from feet-first to head-first
A few things helped me, and help our students, make that transition:
- Pre-equalise at the surface before you start descending, don’t wait until you feel pressure
- Start feet-first, then try descending at a slight angle before moving to fully vertical
- Keep your chin tucked, since tilting your head back stretches your Eustachian tubes and makes them harder to clear
- Stay relaxed through your neck and shoulders, tension is what closes the soft palate in the first place
- Progress gradually, and don’t force a head-down descent before your body is ready
Practising Frenzel on land between sessions
Dry training is where most of this work actually gets done. Practising your Frenzel technique on land, away from the pressure of holding your breath underwater, gives your tongue, throat and soft palate a chance to learn the movement. There’s no added stress of being inverted while you do it.
We’ve put together a video walking through this exact problem-solving process, and it’s worth watching a few times if you’re stuck on the same point we were.
Working through this with a good freediving buddy also helps. They can watch for the physical signs, like a tensed stomach, that tell you you’re still reaching for Valsalva instead of Frenzel.
Don’t give up after your first course
Equalisation problems are one of the biggest reasons people stall after their first freediving course. But this is a mechanical hurdle, not a talent problem, and it responds to structured practice, feet-first descents and time in the water.
If you’re working through this right now, our Level 1 Wave 1 course and follow-up coaching sessions are built around exactly this kind of problem-solving. Progressing at your own pace is built into how we teach. Once head-down equalisation clicks, courses like our Level 2 Wave 2 build on it with deeper technique and mouth-fill equalisation.
There are good wins just around the corner if you keep at it. If you’d like some one-on-one help sorting out your equalisation, get in touch and we’ll get you there.