Mouthfill reloaded (equalisation )

[stef]

Hello everybody. First of all let me quote an old post from Eric Fattah that really changed my freediving life, and may help those of you who found themselves in the process of learning.

" You're missing the point. Filling the mouth itself is very easy, you can stop if you want, and turn horizontal if you want.
The hard part is equalizing your ears with the air in your mouth, without allowing the air to escape back into your lungs.
Further, getting a nice, BIG mouthfill requires a complicated body position. A small mouthfill will still get you deep, but not nearly as deep as a big fill.
The secret in general is to decouple the epiglottis and soft palate. You must be able to keep the epiglottis closed, and relax the soft palate, whereas the reflex is to close the epiglottis and raise the soft palate, which makes equalizing impossible. Thus, the average person fills the mouth, finds the air STUCK in every sense of the word (won't go anywhere), then, in trying to DE-STICK the situation, the air escapes back into the lungs."

It's all so true, and those of you who have gone through the complicated process of learning deep equalisation with a mouthfill will agree.
Now the million dollar question. HOW do you learn to decouple the epiglottis and soft palate consistently ? Are there any exercises we can do on land (like while we work) to practice it ? I've notice that after a few days diving it all clicks into place as magic: I fill my mouth at the right depth, lock the epiglottis, relax, thrust my jaw forward and do nothing else, and I equalize effortlessly. But every time I'm away from the water for a period of time, I can't do it anymore, and the last paragraph of Eric's post fully applies. It's frustrating. Any advice ?

Cheers.

[rslomkow]

Exercise you can try on dry land.

#1

Stuff you cheeks with air.
Open your nose (soft palate)
Squeeze your cheeks

You should get air out your nose, by squeezing you cheeks. This just checks that you can open your soft palate.

#2

Stuff you cheeks with air.
Hold your nose (or use nose-clip)
Squeeze your cheeks

Now this is the try playing with rocking your jaw and trying to stop your "throat" (epiglottis)

If you have have the epiglottis open, you will not feel any pressure on the ears. The same with the soft palate. If you play with this you should be able to get some sensation pressure on you ears (ONLY when you squeeze the cheeks)

You can play around with this and eventually begin to get the feel of it. At first it will be hard *not* to blow with your lung if that is what you are used to.

[Scorp]

Hi stef,
i found this link by searching deeperblue

The Frenzel Technique :: FDTF :: Freediving Team of Finland

this document about frenzel and mouthfill technique is quite detailed and there is a nice exercise for decoupling soft palate and epiglottis, using an inflatable ballon. i started to do it recently, the result till now is rather a pain in the cheeks from hours of blowing the ballon than a real mastering of the technique . anyway i hope i will improve with time

The fact is that i think i CAN do the techique already when in the water and diving, the only thing i am sure i can NOT do is to take a real full mouthfill and aply the technique with it. as soon as i fill my mouth till the cheeks blow up well i am not able anymore to keep the epiglottis close and force air in the tubes by using cheeks or tongue. with just a little air in my mouth all works well, but of course i dont get very deep with the pour mouthfill.
Any suggestions? Just more training needed?

cheers,
Ivo

[stef]

Thank you all.

I tried the exercises you suggested and they're were easy enough to do. The inflatable balloon was a bit trickier, but it worked well after a couple of minutes (by the way, good link that one, thank you).

I think I have decent control of epiglottis/soft palate, on land ! The point is it's just so hard to reproduce on land the real diving conditions, when you freefall quickly, and need to equalize in a hurry (i use BTV by the way) while fighting the negative pressure inside the lungs which builds up and wants to rob you of the little precious air you have in your mouth.

Doing the excercises on empty lungs on land with and without noseclip helps a bit to train muscle control, but when I go diving I have a hard time using the mouthfill correctly. And I don't have access to a pool, otherwise empty lungs with a mouthfill to the deep end of the pool would be more than enough to keep in shape.

I'm probably looking for something that does not exist, i.e. how to train deep equalising with a mouthfill while on land...

[laminar]

Stef,

Great question!

First of all, I think it's important to recognize that this is one of the more advanced and complicated freediving skills to learn. I learned the mouthfill from Eric in 2000 and I still find that every year after a long break of a month or two that I have lost the ability to do it perfectly. I think I know it by heart, but when I unexpectedly run out of air at a shallow depth, then I know I've let my concentration waver.

How to practice the mouthfill for deep dives?

Do it as often as you can. If you dive recreationally on FRC, then you will be doing it a lot since it makes diving past 20m much more comfortable if you use the mouthfill. If you are an inhale diver, then I would advocate using "circular equalizing" (a term coined by Tylerz). That is use a mouthfill from the surface, then when it runs out, do another one, so that you always have air in your mouth and you are always having to close the epiglottis and open the soft palate. If you want to do a deep dive, you could do your first mouthfill at 5m and then do a second one at 25-30m, which should last you to the bottom. Only by practicing it as much as possible will you get better. Not every mouthfill is perfect, but the more you do them, the more you'll get a sense of what makes a perfect one.

You could also do the mouthfill practice with focal points, things you concentrate on to improve different aspects of the action.

1. Focus only on the jaw thrust and widening your eustachian tubes
2. Focus only on head and body position for driving air into your cheeks
3. Focus only on fillling the cheeks until they are bursting
4. focus only on returning your head to the neutral position and keeping your epiglottis closed
5. Focus only on staying as relaxed as possible while doing all of the above,
etc, etc...

You can develop your own focal points based on an aspect of the technique that gives you trouble.

My favourite dry land decoupling exercise is simply to alternate breaths through the mouth nose so I can isloate the soft palate muscles, then I stop and close the epiglottis and continue opening and closing the soft palate so that it makes a clicking noise.

Pete

[stef]

Thank you Laminar. "Circular equalizing" is definitely the way to go. I mean, the mouthfill is so relaxing, why not using it from the surface already ? And the focal points also should help a lot in refining the techniques.

But I'd like to share what I found really helped me so far. I waited until I went diving 2 times before replying, just to make sure. It is the ballon exercise Scorp pointed out to us, which is described in The Frenzel Technique :: FDTF :: Freediving Team of Finland
What I do is I use 2 or 3 very forced exhales to fill the balloon (so I train my diafhragm at the same time...) then do the excersice described above maintaing the last forceful exhale. It kinds of recreate conditions at depth to be able to keep the epiglottis closed for a long time (well, maybe 40 seconds...) in spite of the strong negative pressure in the lungs created by the exhale, while at the same time you need to keep the soft palate neutral otherwise the air from the balloon will not exit through your nose. I actually play with the soft palate as well during the exercise, repeatedly stopping the flow of air from the ballon to my nose (like an on-off switch).
Well, I did that a couple of times during the past 2 weeks, and when I went diving things worked much better. It is actually now much more clear to me that the epiglottis is way down your throath, and far away from the soft palate, which I now can clearly notice it is basically at the back of my nose.
I think we're on to something here...
Cheers.

[mrfreeze]

Guys,

Above mentioned freediving Finland Frenzel technique document seems to be unavailable right now. I found it pretty useful when I started to read it some time ago. Unfortunately it seems it is no longer available on Freediving Finland site. Do you have an updated link for this document or maybe know any other place to find it?

Regards,
Wojtek

[rbsub]

Here you can find the original document (and a video): Liquivision X1 Home

[mrfreeze]

rbsub,

Thanks for your reply but I wasn't thinking about Erick Fattach's document (I already have it and it helped me a lot) but a similar one posted a few months ago at REDIRECT It's consisted of 10 parts and also pretty detailed, with very useful exercises.

Regards,
Wojtek

[trux]

I have several documents about Frenzel linked in the Freedving Media Base. There is also the one from Jome (Vocal Frenzel Training) - not sure if it is the one of Freediving Finland, but it is quite interesting anyway: Frenzel @ APNEA.cz

[trux]

Ah, I found it - it is here: Freediving Team of Finland - The Frenzel Technique

[jome]

Unfortunately the linking on that document doesn't currently work...We recently updated our site and that got a bit messed up.

Hopefully sorted out soon...

Man I had forgotten about that vocal thing...Hehe, it's at least good for a laugh (in fact I tried to listen to the clips now but couldn't finish because I just keep bursting in laughter).

You just don't miss a thing do you Trux - almost scary

[trux]

Originally Posted by jome

Unfortunately the linking on that document doesn't currently work...We recently updated our site and that got a bit messed up.

Well, I've been able to access them all, but it is true I went through Google - you can get working direct links to the individual chapters here:

frenzel site:freedivingfinland.net - Google Search

[mrfreeze]

Thanks trux
Unfortunately I can only view chapters description that way - not a whole chapters. Maybe there is something wrong with my browser.
Simo - could you be so kind to send me this document on mrfreeze@op.pl

Regards,
Wojtek

[jome]

I've made a new copy of the article here:
Freediving Team of Finland - The Frenzel Technique

The layout is a bit messed up, have to fix it once I gather the energy. I've drawn better pictures too but finding those will take some digging