How To Get Started With Spearfishing and Why It's So Good For Fitness & Food: The Kimi Werner Podcast

Ben Greenfield (0:01)

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Kimi Werner (0:04)

The woman that walked out of the water that day was a completely different woman than the one that walked in. I just remember when I walked out of that water, I just felt so proud of myself.

Physically, I think the first things you're gonna have to address is just how to be comfortable with this. You know, how to retrain your brain to know that we really are designed to do this. Because we are. It's just that we're not living in it anymore.

SPEAKER_3 (0:34)

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition. Voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

All the information you need in one place. Right here, right now. On the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Ben Greenfield (1:24)

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield, and I actually don't follow that many people on Instagram, but there's one gal who I've been following really for the past several months based on my huge interest and passion for water and for freediving and for spearfishing, and her name is Kimi Werner. And I forget who told me about Kimi. It may have been my former podcast guest, Daniel Vitalis, but she's like a huntress. She's like a spearfisher woman. And considering that, I interviewed the author of the book, Deep, James Nestor, about freediving and all of the cool physiological and also mental things that happen to your body when you're under the water and you're immersed, and even if it's not just for fishing, you're diving around, not with scuba gear, but on your own breath.

And then I followed that up and I interviewed the guy I took my own freediving course from down in Fort Lauderdale, Ted Hardy, who taught me, I couldn't even equalize at 15 feet, and he brought me down to 80 feet and taught me how to increase my breath hold time from under two minutes to almost five minutes, and then hooked me up with the editor of Spearing Magazine, and we went fishing, and now I'm hooked whenever I go, pun intended, anytime I go anywhere where there's nice water and fish, I love to spear fish, and I really wanted to open you guys up to one of the kind of like the inspirational leaders of the spear fishing movement, Kimi Werner.

And as you listen in, anything Kimi and I talk about, along with her Instagram account and her webpage, and the previous episodes that I've done on freediving and spear fishing, I'll link to all of that over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/kimi, like K-I-M-I is how you spell her name, bengreenfieldfitness.com/k-i-m-i. She's a United States National Spear Fishing Champion. She's a certified culinary chef. She's an award-winning artist. She's a softer speaker, and she pretty much spends her life in Hawaii, freediving and making amazing food out of it and taking really great photos of it. So Kimi, welcome to the show.

Kimi Werner (3:34)

Thank you so much, Ben. Thank you for having me.

Ben Greenfield (3:37)

Yeah, I'm stoked to talk. And from what I gather by reading about you and I guess kind of like stalking you leading up to this interview, you grew up with a dad who like, is it true that he was like freediving and spearfishing to provide food for the family?

Kimi Werner (3:54)

That's exactly right.

My parents, they both worked really hard, but they still had a very, very tough time making ends meet. And so my dad took up spearfishing and freediving just to literally put food on the table.

Ben Greenfield (4:11)

So when you say he was speardiving to put food on the table, like he would just kind of head out before dinner and bring back fish, or how did that actually work out?

Kimi Werner (4:22)

I mean, well, my earliest memories, I mean, he would come home with dinner, and I always just loved seeing what he caught, learning the names of them and just touching them, eventually helping my mom clean them.

And then when I was about five years old, he started taking me with him. And so I got to go out with him firsthand, and it was always just like pretty crazy gnarly adventures where my mom would drive us to the top of a cliff, and my dad would put me on his back, climb down the cliff. We would jump off the lava rocks into the crazy deep blue and just drift the coastline down while my dad would take these dives and come up with octopus or lobster or fish, and we would go all the way to a bay down the coast where eventually we get out and my mom would be there waiting for us.