I just want to thank you guys for your replies. The way I see it, a personal experiment is in order to try these different ideas out. Because of my science background I usually don't just accept ideas on faith, but instead plan to test them using experiment and observation in order to validate them. The good thing is that now I know there was something very unfavorable about my preparation due to your feedback (I'm glad I was keen enough to question it; I really thought I had a good method down). The possibility of drastically improving my preparation phase by breathing much differently makes me optimistic that I will reach much better performances now. The original motivation for my inquiry is that I hit a 5:46 (dry) static a few weeks ago, in only my second attempt at a static, so I thought I'd surely surpass 6:00 in the next attempt, but a few attempts have gone in which I couldn't do any better. My contractions have always been hitting me as early as before 2:00 (whereas on my best time they didn't start until ~3:00), so I knew I was doing something wrong.
Trux, I read the Murat article you mentioned. Very interesting stuff. My only problem with trying that is that I am so cold in the water already, and it doesn't seem to help me at all! Throughout my freediving thus far (in the arguably balmy waters of Hawai'i), I have been cold to some degree (usually to the point of shivering), in spite of upgrading wetsuits multiple times. A 3mm two-piece still doesn't do the job, so I've gone so far as to order a 5mm now (which I had to order because they don't even sell 5mm in Hawai'i!). My problem most likely stems from my relatively low body fat percentage, 5.1%. In addition to my bottom time becoming very markedly reduced, I have routinely dealt with a very alarming condition that comes on once I get cold. It is similar in description to lung squeeze (my lungs begin to feel heavy, my breathing is impaired, eventually I can hear "rales" and feel the fluid building up in my lungs), except that it doesn't necessarily come on with diving to significant depth. I experienced it bad once while diving only to 12m, and another time in only 5m of water. The only thing it seems closely associated with is my becoming cold early in the dive. Perhaps I did experience a lung squeeze early on (first time was that 12m dive, described
here), and now I am very susceptible to it, but the weird thing is that it doesn't happen every time. I have had some dives to 35m where it didn't come on. So it's been very hard to understand and a nuisance to deal with.
I know this is getting off topic, but I always wanted to present my "leaky lungs" case. It might just sound like lung squeeze to you, and you might just reckon that I have been a fool to keep diving with it, but it seems a bit different from lung squeeze and not as severe...I just accept it and deal with it carefully. To me it doesn't sound like the cases of lung squeeze I read since mine can come on with very shallow diving (I remember reading that lung squeeze was defined by diving past your residual volume), and since it happens sporadically (why would it happen one week in 15m diving, then not happen the next week in 35m diving?). The only clear association is that I am cold when it happens. I was once suggested to inquire with the Divers Alert Network (DAN) about it, and they quickly replied back that it was "immersion pulmonary edema". Pulmonary edema doesn't necessarily sound distinct from lung squeeze, but may be a component of it. Anyway, I don't recall anyone pointing out that lung squeeze was associated with being cold, whereas everything I've read about immersion pulmonary edema mentions that while it is not well understood, it is closely associated with the subject being cold when underwater. It is my hope that when I am toasty in my new 5mm suit, I'll never have to deal with it again.
Sorry for wandering off into this topic, but in my desperation to seek answers about it I thought I'd go ahead and mention it. I could move this message into a more appropriate forum.
Thanks.
