Underwater Hockey: How Dubai's Filipino Expats Are Growing a Sport Worth Training For

Down at the bottom of a Dubai swimming pool, two teams of six chase a puck across the tiles on a single breath. The sport is called underwater hockey — or Octopush — and a group of Filipino expats is quietly turning it into one of the city's most unusual fitness communities, Gulf News reports. It sounds like a curiosity, but the training behind it — breath control, core strength and repeat-effort conditioning — is exactly what pays off for anyone who trains on dry land.

What is underwater hockey?

Underwater hockey is a limited-contact team sport played on the floor of a swimming pool. Players use a short curved stick to push a weighted puck into the opposing goal — all while holding their breath. In competition each side has six players in the water at once with rolling substitutes, and a match runs over two halves of about 15 minutes with a short break, according to Gulf News and public sport references. It is played in a deeper pool, roughly two to four metres, so every possession is a quick dive, a burst of effort, and a return to the surface for air.

The sport is recognised by the International Olympic Committee, though it is not yet an Olympic event, and it made its multi-sport-games debut at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games — proof that a niche pursuit can still build a serious competitive scene.

A Dubai community built from scratch

The club — Filipino Attack Force Underwater Hockey Dubai — was founded in 2024 and has grown from a handful of friends into more than 20 active members, Gulf News reports. Founding member Emerson Guzman says the appeal is that the game blends swimming, teamwork, strategy and fitness in one, and the group welcomes anyone who can swim, with no prior experience needed. They are not the only ones in the country: back in 2021, The National covered the Abu Dhabi Ducks, a club started by British player Lewis Cocks, who called it "a very fast-paced, intense, energetic sport."

The training that carries over

You do not need a pool to borrow what makes underwater hockey players fit. The sport was invented in England in the 1950s as off-season training to keep divers in shape, and the demands are surprisingly transferable. Repeated short breath-holds under a heavy workload build calm and control when your lungs are screaming for air — the same feeling you get in the back half of a hard interval set. Swimming horizontally along the floor is a core-and-hips job, and finning for position is pure leg drive.

On dry land, that translates into a few honest priorities. Build an engine with high-intensity conditioning so short, maximal efforts stop leaving you gassed. Add core and posterior-chain work for the horizontal power that moves you through water. And if you want that breath-and-brace control without guessing, a personal trainer can build a plan around repeat efforts and recovery rather than random hard days. Breath-holding itself is its own skill, though — learn it with a proper club, and never practise breath-holds alone in the water.

Fancy testing your own engine?

Underwater hockey works because it rewards the boring stuff: breathing, bracing and showing up. You can build the same base in any of our gyms across Dubai, no snorkel required. Come see how it feels — grab a free day pass and put your conditioning to the test.

Sources:
gulfnews.com
thenationalnews.com
en.wikipedia.org

The opinions shared in the GymNation blog articles are solely those of the respective authors and may not represent the perspectives of GymNation or any member of the GymNation team.