Static with no warm-up

[juka]

Originally Posted by trux

What is the BO experience then good for? The best approach is avoiding it, and learning to approach your max from the safe side, not vice versa.

how will you know it was your max then? every freediver and even the beginner has to be aware of the truth - one moment after their max for that particular day comes samba or bo. and i am not proposing to go that far nor oboy did i guess oboy:"I agree that it is not a good idea to advice beginners to hold their breath till SAMBA or BO. My sentence sounded like that and for that I appologize. I am not advising anybody to have sambas or BOs....
I wanted to say that this method delivers the best results when you are able to get as close to your MAX as it gets (and stay conscious, of course)."


I have never had a samba or bo yet, but I know it can happen every time i push.

my experience is that I feel much cleaner after an attempt with no warm up. in my opinion to do a no warm up attempt is safer (for sure not easier) than an attempt with breath up = cheating the body with hyperventilation.

juka

[laminar]

I guess it all depends on what every person's goal is.

I've blacked out a couple of times but only in static training when I was trying to set new personal bests after a few years of competition experience.

I would agree that training to cheat the blackout has not much going for it from a training or psychological preparation perspective for someone just starting out. Many novice competitors practice exactly that and then have to deal with the mental shadow of blacking out in competition or in training. They and their buddies have to be ready for that and often are not.

Training for max on the first static doesn't mean you will be able to black yourself out. If you don't over breathe, it in fact may be one of the few ways to stay clear headed closer to your max for that day vs. any other method that I know of. Vasoconstriction will also be vital for success.

One last thing: For me the goal was to get as close to my intended time as possible but to also learn HOW to know that you are close enough to your max to pull up. Letting your natural breathing reflex do its thing was one method. Another was to do lots of near-100% effort statics. And, at some point, experiencing a samba or blackout with a good spotter did add to the progress in knowing my own body and allowed me to develop an early warning system that worked most of the time (I wouldn't call it a guarantee - my ears would start to ring as I got close to a big time, no doubt from rising blood pressure).

One more last thing :
What is this obsession with knowing our max for the day? You'll NEVER know. Even if you hold your breath until you blackout. That wasn't your max. Your max was a time you could only have reached when everything was perfect given an inifinite host of variables. Your max, in my opinion, is the actual time you make in your attempt. If you gave up early because the contractions were too hard, that was your max. If you started to get tunnel vision because of over ventilating, that was your max. Or put another way, we should be thinking about intensity and effort, instead.

You can only really go by how you feel and the time on the watch. Static apnea (the sport) is essentially about the final result. If I do 6:15 in competition clean and then tell everyone, that sucked, my max today was more like 9:15, it doesn't make any difference.

In my mind, if holding your breath longer is your goal, you are better off working at the following things:

-Gaining experience with long breath holds that really challenge you
-Learning how to actively relax your body and stay still for long periods of time before your attempt and during it
-Building good aerobic and anaerobic fitness
-Good rest and nutrition, especially if you are training/cramming for a competition. A lot of people burn out really fast.
-And above all, keeping track of how your body reacts to all of the above.

IMHO, of course and my three cents.

Pete

[trux]

Originally Posted by juka

how will you know it was your max then?

By doing it. Without BO, of course. If you black out at 6:30, you cannot tell your PB or max is 6:29, or 6:20, or 6:00. You failed. And next time it can be completely different.

I feel that the freediving philosophy goes the wrong direction here. The main purpose of the sport is not setting new records, and winning competitions. That's only very small and rather unimportant part. The main purpose is (for me at least) the pleasure of diving. Increasing the performance is welcome, and setting new PB's is nice and motivating too, but not for the price of knocking myself out regularly. On my mind, blackout is a failure, a sad accident, and I do not consider it the necessary and unavoidable part of the sport. Well, accidents happen, but the problem with blackouts and sambas is that many freedivers here on DB consider them far too normal, and do not bother about them at all.

Fortunately, in France I rarely see this level of extremism. Having a samba in training is already considered serious incident here. And having a samba or BO at a competition is still not looked at well at all. Club that comes to a competition and half of their members get disqualified, will be looked at as "crazies". Fortunately, the main focus in freediving clubs here is not on setting records and winning competitions, but on teaching the safety, technique, relaxation, improving physical condition, and enjoying diving.

In our club there is around 50 freedivers, but only about 10% ever compete. During 5 years (4 sessions per week), there was only one single blackout during the training, and only couple of sambas (I know about 2). Well, it is true that most of us are just average intermediate freedivers, but still Fred Sarzier from our club was ranked very close to the French top in 2006 and should actually have been on the WCh in Egypt (he had to refuse for professional reasons). Even Fred, our #1, never blacked out, not even in a competition. And as far as I know he ever had only one smaller samba. So I really believe you can go pretty far without needing to K.O. yourself.

[juka]

[quote=trux;633136] " The main purpose of the sport is not setting new records, and winning competitions. That's only very small and rather unimportant part. The main purpose is (for me at least) the pleasure of diving."
yes, I totally agree. but not for static. what is static if not pushing for longer times and PBs?
btw that's the reason why I don't like it that much and focus on the cwt instead.

[naiad]

Originally Posted by laminar

I guess it all depends on what every person's goal is.

One last thing: For me the goal was to get as close to my intended time as possible but to also learn HOW to know that you are close enough to your max to pull up. Letting your natural breathing reflex do its thing was one method. Another was to do lots of near-100% effort statics. And, at some point, experiencing a samba or blackout with a good spotter did add to the progress in knowing my own body and allowed me to develop an early warning system that worked most of the time (I wouldn't call it a guarantee - my ears would start to ring as I got close to a big time, no doubt from rising blood pressure).

I agree. I like to push the limits, but that doesn't mean I am blacking out all the time! There is no certain way to know the limit, that is why a good spotter is always necessary. When I do dry statics, I often go to near 100% (with adequate rest in between sessions).

There are many things I do that I wouldn't recommend to beginners (and that I didn't do when I was a beginner). That is why I think beginners should start off with the beginner threads, 'How to Start Freediving' etc, and not go straight into the advanced techniques such as packing, hard training and empty lung diving. I think we should be able to discuss these techniques freely, and direct beginners to a more appropriate thread.

[trux]

Originally Posted by juka

yes, I totally agree. but not for static. what is static if not pushing for longer times and PBs?

What? Easy: learning to cope with hypoxia, hypercapnia, contractions, training your body to react with a quicker and stronger DR, learning deep and quick relaxation, learning the mental preparation, proper breathing, safety, but especially learning to listen to your body signals and being so able to hold your breath without blacking out. All that is much easier (especially for beginners) during a static training than at dynamics where you may be too focused on the physical part or on the distance to be able to care about the above mentioned aspects.

I am sorry, but static training is not at all about setting new PB - that's the last. Just a cherry on the cake. We have two wet static trainings a week, but only one max session per year, in the club. And that's quite sufficient. Who wants to compete, can take part on the numerous competitions, where he/she can set his/her new PB. That's not the purpose of the training.

Personally, I love static trainings. I'd compare them to lessons of yoga, with similar effects of relaxation and understanding your body and psychics. If you hate it, I suspect there is indeed something very wrong with your training methods. If you push yourself regularly to LMC or BO, then I am not surprised, though.

[juka]

Originally Posted by trux

If you hate it, I suspect there is indeed something very wrong with your training methods. If you push yourself regularly to LMC or BO, then I am not surprised, though.

yes, and if I don't like green colour, there is indeed something very wrong with my way of looking at things

btw, you seem to be reading my posts through some kind of glasses:

me : I don't like it that much
you : if you hate it......

me:I have never had a samba or bo yet, but I know it can happen every time i push.
you: if you push yourself regularly to LMC or BO, then I am not surprised, though

[trux]

Sorry, Juka, this was not addressed to you personally. I am sorry if you felt offended. It was addressed to all freedivers who advocate extreme breath-holds until BO, and consider the BO and LMC inavoidable part of the sport.

[juka]

no problem trux. i don't have any reason to feel offended.
just wanted to show, that there exist many different views on issues in freediving.
safe diving

[tylerz]

For any given day, I would say my max static is as long as I can hold my breath without having an LMC or BO. However, for the most part I can hold my breath until LMC/BO. There is not much use in having an LMC/BO and then in hindsight determining some arbitrary time of when the LMC/BO began to state that as your limit, since we can not know when we would have safely recovered. However, theoretically there is a point when your body entered the state of no return from LMC/BO, and therefore it seems theoretically accurate to claim that point is the exclusive limit, therefore the infinitely closest value prior to that limit is your "Max" if you have the tolerance to arrive there.

I think the argument here about max abilities is simply talking about different things. One is a theoretical max and the other is a moral max. They have no relation.

[SEDATE]

when we get BO , the brain notes it into a sector in brain(memory cortex) and when she find itself same condition again it first uses this coded info as a runaway point ..brain is complex but some times it is very simple and sometimes it is a little bit sutiped we all have be aware of it
mneanwhile, thnxs pete for info

[naiad]

Maybe there are just several different reasons for freediving. These could be:

1. Recreational open water diving, with no concern about time, distance or depth.

2. Spearfishing

3. Recreational pool diving

4. Competitive freediving, but not taking it too seriously

5. Serious competitive freediving, where the aim is to do extreme time, distance or depth.

I would say I do 3 and 4, hoping to do 1 and 5.

I don't think any of these is right or wrong, but that it can be hard to see others point of view.

Lucia

[naiad]

Back on topic...

Although the no warm-up static approach doesn't work for me, I do something similar for dynamic. My best dynamics are done with minimal preparation. I don't do any dry statics, relaxation or anything else. I just get in the pool, maybe do a few short distances, then a 2min breathe-up, then go. It is much harder without the breathe-up, so I usually do that.

Most people I know do some kind of warm-up for dynamic. Has anyone else tried the first-attempt approach?

Lucia

[perow1]

I do it, and i must say that i feel that you can reap more physiological advatages doing this in dynamic than in static.

I try not to get into the water until 1min before top and then go. Contractions and a general wish to quit starts at 1/4 of the total distance but in the end it is the burning lactic acid that is my main concern.

[naiad]

I thought the same. I haven't yet found anything to do before a dynamic that really helps, except the breathe-up that I already do.

Interesting that several freedivers have said that their struggle phase starts relatively early, at 1/4-1/2 of the total distance. For me it starts at about 3/4 of the total distance, or not at all. I try to avoid it altogether because it is much worse than the struggle phase of a static, and I don't know at all if I am near the limit. I don't have lactic acid pain during dynamic, and I don't think I have ever been very hypoxic at the end. I just feel very out of breath.