Molchanovs · Deep Week
Seven days on the line: Wave 1 and Wave 2 material with proper coaching, at your own pace.
Go all in
Deep Week gives you seven days to progress properly, covering Wave 1 and Wave 2 material with daily coaching. Ideal even for complete beginners, with no experience required.
Most freedivers progress fastest with consistent water time and a coach who knows them. Deep Week gives you both: seven days covering the Wave 1 and Wave 2 material, with daily sessions and one-to-one attention.
All prices in IDR · Marine Park fee of IDR 100,000 applies to reef sessions.
What is Deep Week?
Most freedivers progress fastest with consistent water time and a coach who knows them. Deep Week gives you both: seven days covering the Wave 1 and Wave 2 material, with daily sessions and one-to-one attention.
Whether you are starting from zero or building toward serious depth, you move at your own pace, with the coaching to turn technique into real, repeatable dives.
A short course asks you to learn a technique and perform it almost immediately. A week does not. You can spend a whole session on nothing but equalisation, take a lighter day when your ears or your head need one, and come back to the line fresh, which is usually when depth arrives.
Days pair dry work, theory, breathing technique and a look back at the previous day's video, with a session in the pool or on the line, then a debrief. The order and the intensity shift with the conditions and with how you are diving that morning.
Three phases rather than a fixed timetable: the pace follows your progress and the conditions.
Breathing fundamentals and physiology, mental technique and relaxation, static and dynamic apnea, equalisation, and the buddy and rescue protocols. First dives on the line with free immersion, duck dives and finning.
Free fall, the first stage of deeper equalisation, refined finning and relaxation, longer breath-holds and deeper dive planning, on a line in the blue rather than over the reef.
The part a short course never has room for: repeating dives until they feel ordinary, working one weak point at a time, and reviewing your GoPro footage with your coach between sessions.
Message the freediving crew on WhatsApp to plan your Deep Week.
Everything you need is included, so you can focus on the diving.
Daily sessions with a Molchanovs instructor covering the Wave 1 and Wave 2 material, in small groups with one-to-one attention.
Wetsuit, long fins, mask and everything you need, for the whole week.
Footage of your dives through the week, to review with your coach and to take home.
Theory sessions, pool time and boat sessions on the line. The sites sit a five to fifteen minute boat ride from the centre.
Before you book
Deep Week starts from the beginning if you need it, so the list is short:
Why Gili Air
Gili Air is a place to slow down and dive every day. No cars, no scooters, warm water year-round and depth a short boat ride away make it an ideal base for a week of freediving.
The water sits at 27 to 30 degrees all year, so a 3mm suit is all anyone wears, and visibility runs from around 10 metres in the wet season to 35 in the dry. The sites are five to fifteen minutes out by boat, which means seven days here is seven days of diving, not travelling.
The dry season, April to October, brings the calmest sea and the best visibility, with September and October a particular sweet spot. The wet season still dives well.
Ocean-obsessed, and patient with it.
Real, personalised attention at every step.
Warm, calm, clear water on your doorstep.
Safe and supportive: become a family member.
No. Deep Week is built to work for complete beginners as well as for certified freedivers chasing depth. If you have never held your breath in the ocean, the week starts with the Wave 1 material from scratch. If you already freedive, bring your certification card and we start where you are.
The week covers the Molchanovs Wave 1 and Wave 2 material with coaching, and certification is part of it when you meet the standards. Wave 1 asks for a breath-hold of at least 1 minute 30, a 30m dynamic, a 12m dive on free immersion and constant weight, a rescue from 6 to 10m and a short theory exam. Seven days gives most people far more room to reach that calmly than a two-day course does. Tell the crew what you are aiming for when you book.
Same material, far more water time, and a coach who has watched every one of your dives. The difference is repetition: a course teaches you a technique, a week lets you practise it until it is yours.
Dry work first, theory, breathing and a look at the previous day's video, then a session in the pool or on the line, then a debrief. The order changes with the conditions and with how you are diving that morning. The schedule bends around the weather and your progress, not the other way round.
It depends mostly on equalisation and relaxation, which is why the week is built around them. Wave 1 certifies from 12m and Wave 2 goes to 30m. Plenty of people cover both in the week, and some spend most of it getting genuinely comfortable shallower than that. Neither is a wasted week.
It is the single most common thing that limits depth, and it is not a fitness problem. Equalisation is taught in the first theory session and drilled dry and in shallow water long before it matters at depth, and your coach will spend as long on it as you need. Freedivers who reach the point where the classic technique runs out move on to mouthfill, which we teach on a dedicated Mouthfill Mastery day.
Nothing in the week asks you to push past what feels right. You dive with a buddy and an instructor watching every dive, you learn the rescue protocols before you go deep, and turning early is a normal, respected part of freediving. The whole approach is inclusive and non-competitive: there is no leaderboard.
Gili Air dives all year and the sites are minutes away by boat, but the sea still has off days. Over seven days there is plenty of room to move sessions around: a rough morning becomes a theory or pool session and the line waits for the afternoon. Water is 27 to 30 degrees year-round and visibility runs from about 10 metres in the wet season to 35 in the dry.
The Gili Matra Marine Park fee of IDR 100,000 per person applies to reef sessions. It is a one-off, valid around 30 days, and paid to the park rather than to us. An optional IDR 50,000 donation to the Gili Eco Trust funds reef restoration and clean-ups. Accommodation, meals and insurance are yours to arrange, as is any personal gear you would rather bring than borrow.
There is no hyperbaric chamber on the Gili Islands. The nearest are in Mataram on Lombok and in Bali. We recommend travel insurance that covers freediving, and DAN is the usual choice, and we teach safety and rescue from the first session rather than tacking them on at the end.
Freediving and scuba are separate disciplines and plenty of people do both while they are here. If you plan to, tell us when you book so we can order the days sensibly, and mind the scuba rule on the way home: at least 18 hours between your last scuba dive and a flight, 12 hours after a single no-decompression dive, and a full 24 hours before any flight or the Mount Rinjani trek, which climbs to altitude.
Swimwear, a towel, reef-safe sunscreen, a water bottle, and your certification card and logbook if you already freedive. Wetsuit, long fins and mask are included. Leave the jewellery at your accommodation.
Most people leave with a certification and, more usefully, with a way of training they can repeat anywhere. From here you can book training sessions to keep your own line time going, add one-to-one coaching to work a specific weakness, or take the Mouthfill Mastery day when equalisation becomes the thing holding your depth back.
