Difficulty maintaining air in lungs

[salibandy]

As above. Whenever I do a breathhold, the air seems to always want to come back up the trachea and into my mouth. Help?

[azapa]

i am not the one to answer this question, rather I am the first on the scene. You should be able to hold your breath with your mouth open. It is your epiglottis (valvey thing at back of throat) that closes everything in. If you over fill your lungs (packing) you could have quite some strain there, but hard to imagine it entering your mouth.

could you describe your problem a little better? does this happen at depth or on dry land?

[salibandy]

It happens on dry land. Underwater, depth compresses the air so it doesn't cause a problem. I always feel some form of strain around the top of my neck/bottom of my jaw after a dry apnea.

[wes]

Last winter when I was training lots of static tables my epiglotis would "tire out" toward the end of the tables and I would have to hold the air with my lips in my mouth. My epiglotis muscle got stronger after a while and I could do whole hold just with that. My advice would be to keep practicing holds and your epiglotis will get stronger (just like any muscle). Also if you swallow during the static it can tend to "reactivate" a tired epiglotis muscle to hold more (though swallowing burns oxygen so try not to swallow at all if you are going for PB).

Cheers Wes