Static with no warm-up

[derelictp]

Today I did an attempt in the following way:

Relaxed 12min and I thought about my breathing and did sub-neutral diafragmatic breathing but I considered the breathing normal.

My first contraction came at 2'38'' so it seemed that the breathing I was doing took away more C02 than when I did not think about my breathing.

I think that we are slightly hypoventilated normally, the C02 level probably varies between the level where the breathing is stimulated and the level where it turns to not stimulating the breathing.
This cause me to belive that a breathing where the diver takes control is the optimum, at least a part of the preparation. That makes the ppCO2 at a stable level and at the level the diver wants. (I state that a good diver can feel different stages of ppCO2.)

The question remains which level of ppCO2 is the best to start with?

Slightly below normal has been my belief for some years.

Have anyone measured the ppCO2 at the start of a breathhold?

[O'Boy]

Did a new PB in 'First hold' yesterday:

4'16" (@1'54", 25 contractions in 2'22")

This was done after 6 minutes of relaxing and not controling my breathing. I was loosing a lot of air with every contraction (overpacking), which I found a bit disturbing. I am slowly but surely approaching to my static PB, but I believe my progress not to stop after reaching it.

Thank you guys for your inventions in this sport. Hope that I too will contribute with my results to the proof that your theory is right.

[derelictp]

4'16'' first hold and not controlled breathing is better than my dito pb.

My 4'00'' dito was one of my toughest breathholds ever. My contractionrate seems higher though... 50 contractions in 2'10'' or something..

O'boy; What is your pb with warmup?

[O'Boy]

My PB with warm-up (dry) is 5'44"(@2'55", 33 contractions). I did it 2 months after I'd started freediving and I was not able to reach it again since.
I had some problems over that time with Sambas and BO (competition). I think that time has come to make some changes.
I really do believe in this 'No warm-up' approach. I'm not dreaming about Tom's 9 minutes, but I want to find out where are my limits. Performing 6 minutes, cleanly, in every competition would be enough for me.

This static is unbelievable! You just sit, relax and hold your breath for 5 minutes or so. That's what I like it for. It gives you such mental strenght. I remember me suffocating after 30 seconds of exhale apnea(first in my warm-up) month ago and now after just 2 weeks of training without warm-up I can do 4'16" in my first hold.
Would be interesting to test what I can perform now after warm-up and breath-up.

[jome]

I had 110 contractions in 2:20 yesterday. I know some people are even more frequent and in fact on a normal day I would get over 3:10 with that amount.

I think my contractions have gotten more frequent with training. Too bad I don't have data from early on to back this up. Very early on I would barely even get them. Propably has to do with how acidic you are to begin with, which varies from day to day. But with training it seems they are more frequent, but easier to deal with (both in time and number of).

[kingohyes]

I do a 5 minute rest and a 5 minute breathup and go.. I do this 3 times, arent you supposed to do breathup?

[O'Boy]

Originally Posted by kingohyes

I do a 5 minute rest and a 5 minute breathup and go.. I do this 3 times, arent you supposed to do breathup?

All this thread is about doing static without breath-up and warm-up.

There seems to be a lot of contraction kinds among freedivers. Mine are strong but occur less frequently (I'm also delaying them with my mind). I believe, that your (Jome) are somewhat weaker, but their frequency is so high that the unpleasant feeling is the same. I wonder, which of these kinds is a bigger oxygen eater.

[kingohyes]

Damn, I have to start over again... But this is just for training, right?? In a competition you would use a breath-up, like Tom Sietas do??

[O'Boy]

I forgot to mention my yesterdays training.

1st hold after 8 minutes of relaxing:
3'56" (@1'40"!, 20 contractions in 2'16")

1st contraction came so soon I wanted to stop. In the end I was happy with new PB in timing 20 contractions - 2'16"!

I'm doing dry statics always sitting in shavasana - sitting with crossed legs, hands relaxing on my thighs. I tryed my second hold yesterday, lying on my back, 8 minutes after the 1st one.

4'11" (2'03", 20 contractions in 2'08")

I felt more relaxed and the time was slightly better, but not as much as I expected.

[O'Boy]

No! This is not only training. This is completely new approach to freediving. If you are interested, find some time and reed whole this thread(especially posts of Laminar and EFattah).

I won't do any breath-up or warm-up in my competitions. Maybe I would include some light breath-up before static if I knew my body was in some acicic state. That I want to avoid with diet.

[kingohyes]

O'Boy, if your PB is 5.44, and you can do 4:20 with no warm-up or breathups, aren't you eager to see what you can do with breath-ups? I bet you could easily do a 5 minute hold.

My record is 5.15, but I actually dont think I will reach 3 minutes without breathup. Although I believe I will have a strong increase in time doing this method..

I will start using this method in apnea walking, and dynamic too. At this time, I can't get to the pool, so im training some apnea walking to keep my body maintenant..

I wonder what is a reasonable training amount per week.. At this moment my training schedule looks something like this:
Monday: Static
Tuesday: Dynamic
Wednesday: Nothing
Thursday: Static
Friday: Dynamic
Saturday: Nothing
Sunday: Static

[jome]

There are many ways to interpret what's been discussed here. Yes, some are suggesting a "no breathup, no warmup"-approach. Some are talking about only no warmup. Originally this thread started with the Tom-style approach, which I believe includes some form of light hyperventilation and then carried on to introduce "subneutral breathing", which supposedly eliminates all hyperventilation (although there's debate even about that).

Personally I use "no breathup, no warmup" as a training method. If I we're to go in a competition right now, I would certainly do some kind of breathup. For me it has been all about reducing hyperventilation, which I used to do quite much and trying to eliminate warmups all together...

kingohyes: I think the most hard part of this style of training is not to slip back to the old style and "see how I would perform now with warmup". The whole point is to kind of start over. Even if one can do pretty good times with the "old style", the assumption is that if you stick with the new method, you will, over time, beat your old times. It just takes a lot of time, motivation and patience. If you go and test your warmup-style performance, it's very easy to lose that motivation. That's why I would think most of the people discussing in this topic are careful about the temptation of doing that, I'm sure they're curious. You must resist the urge...I doubt that there are not many that will be successfull in this transition and will revert back to their old routine after a while.

In fact, it's kind of pointless of us even posting our results here after just a few weeks of trials. We should get back to it after some months or half a year or something.

And it may even prove to be a wrong hypothesis all together, and all of the people trying this approach will eventually fail to gain anything. We'll see!

[kingohyes]

I believe in this method.. I hope..
Let's try and post our results once a month. Im going to start on this method in 2 days, and I will post my first results.. In a month im going to post the new results. Did I improve my times? Different contraction rate? and so on...

[efattah]

Here is food for thought.

In June 2002, I spent 10 days in Turkey doing experiments and discussions with Trevor Hutton. We spent hours each day, discussing previous experiences, good and bad, trying to figure out 'why.'

The conclusion was simple, and incredible:

- The diving reflex is something which is supposed to happen DURING THE DIVE

The is OPPOSITE to the usual method of 'activating the diving reflex' by various warmups BEFORE THE DIVE (or breath-hold).

In all marine mammals, the diving reflex happens DURING THE DIVE. The seal is suntanning on the surface. His spleen is not contracted, his heart is beating rapidly, oxygenating all parts of his body. When he starts the dive, his heart slows, and eventually his spleen contracts.

Notice that the seal didn't do any warmups, negative pressure dives, or other tricks to slow his heart or contract his spleen BEFORE he started the dive.

This is what Trevor and I discovered after countless hours of talking & experiments. Trevor's decades of freediving experiences were instrumental in this discovery.

At the time, we were not quite certain WHY this conclusion should be true, but one of the answers came some time later, from Sebastien Murat.

Sebastien reminded me that when the spleen contracts at the end of the dive/breath-hold, the fresh, oxygenated blood of the spleen feeds only the critical organs and brain, because by then, the whole body is so vasoconstricted that blood is not feeding the extremities.

This 'optimizes' the use of the 'splenic' energy reserve (spleen blood).

If, on the other hand, you contract your spleen BEFORE THE DIVE, this will make you feel much better in the early stages of the dive, because you have all this extra oxygen in your blood, and more blood to buffer CO2. It makes you feel like you are doing great, that you have 'lots of air left.' But, this oxygen is feeding your arms and legs, because you are not vasoconstricted yet.

When the end of the breath-hold comes and your brain needs oxygen, there is no energy left, because all that 'reserve' was burned by your arms and legs, since the reserve was available to your whole body, even before you were vasoconstricted.

In the no-warm up system of diving, you shouldn't 'feel good' at all in the early stages of the dive. You should feel like you are running out of air early, allowing the spleen to contract DURING THE DIVE.

However, keep in mind that it takes training and adaptation to have a spleen which can contract in only a short time. A beginner will probably not reach 'full' spleen contraction if the spleen tries to contract during the breath-hold. So this is a diving method which must be practiced.

To teach the spleen to contract faster, the 'no-warm up' method must be practiced at 100% effort frequently. Theoretically, this method would also DRAMATICALLY INCREASE THE SIZE OF THE SPLEEN.

Humans have about 4-6 litres of blood. Elephant seals store 24L of blood in their SPLEEN ALONE!

Recall the conclusion:
- The diving reflex is something which is supposed to happen DURING THE DIVE

Another reason this may be true is that when breathing up for your apnea (or just relaxing), you want blood to oxygenate every cell, even in your arms and legs. If you are already vasoconstricted from warm-up dives/breath-holds, then not much blood will pump to your arms and legs. This means that your arms and legs will be O2 deficient BEFORE YOU EVEN START THE DIVE.

Keep in mind that when we say:
- The diving reflex is something which is supposed to happen DURING THE DIVE

We also mean just the 'apnea reflex', i.e. the response to holding your breath, because it is still unclear if all the effects (vasoconstriction, spleen contraction) are happening due to apnea or immersion/diving, but it doesn't matter, the conclusion is still the same.

So, the challenge to all divers is:
- Practice 100% effort apnea on the 1st attempt
- Give your body time to 'reverse' the diving/apnea reflex (perhaps 20 minutes)
- Then you can practice 100% effort apnea on the 1st attempt again, because you are almost starting from scratch
- Once you have practiced for weeks or months, your spleen should be able to fully contract on the duration of one apnea
- Then, attempt to do 100% effort apnea to the point of reaching samba/BO on the 1st attempt. You will probably find that you must reach an insanely long time to do it (but use SAFETY if you are in the water, of course)

Your spleen is not the only thing which must learn to contract quickly. Your arms and legs must learn to vasoconstrict very fast, during the 1st breath-hold/dive. This must also happen through training.

Many expert divers are able to get in the water, and dive to their maximum on the 1st or 2nd dive, without any warm up. In my early days of diving, I would need to dive ALL DAY to even start to have good dives. Now it only takes one or two dives to reach my maximum. BUT, if I dive WITHOUT A WETSUIT in cold water, the cold water speeds up the vasoconstriction, so I can do my max on the 1ST DIVE, with no warm up. HOWEVER, given the strong vasoconstriction, I must NOT do any warm ups, because my arms and legs are so vasoconstricted from the cold water that they will NEVER FULLY RE-OXYGENATE if I do a warm up......

[efattah]

One more idea:
- If you hyperventilate, you MIGHT feel so good during the apnea that the spleen will never fully contract. This is because it takes time for the spleen to contract.
- For example, assume it takes 2.5 minutes of hard contractions to fully contract the spleen.....

....wait a minute.... did you hear that...?

Is it possible that the purpose of a contraction is to contract the spleen? Perhaps the spleen needs to be crushed by the diaphragm/belly for its blood to be 'squeezed out'....

Suppose it takes 2'30" of contractions to fully contract the spleen. Then, if you go for 100% effort on the 1st attempt, with strong hypeventilation, and you get only 2'00" of contractions, then your spleen would not have fully contracted... (not to mention you would not have a strong bohr effect).

Mayol, in homo delphinus, said that because dolphins can tolerate higher CO2 (and then get a higher bohr effect), they can extract twice as much oxygen from their blood/lungs than we can. So, from that, it sounds like the ultimate difference between lots of CO2 and no CO2 would be a factor of two, in apnea time.

Interestingly, when the spleen contracts during a long distance running race, the runner is experiencing repeated 'shocks' as he hits the ground of every step, and he is BREATHING HARD, and the movement of his diaphragm and the shock of each step may help the spleen blood to get squeezed out of the spleen.

When holding your breath, there is no 'shock' from bouncing on the ground, and you are not breathing hard, so perhaps your body needs another method to force the spleen blood out. (not to mention that contractions increase the blood pressure in your brain, increasing the availability of O2 to the brain).