New safety protocol? loosen weight belt AND remove mask?

[sebastien murat]

Your urgency to breathe is not the same as your breath-hold dive potential. Surely, stress will bring on contractions sooner but this has a positive effect on you O2 conserving ability and your ultimate potential. This can be easily demonstrated by means of blowing into an O2 gas analyzer or indirectly by means of HR.

S

[Fondueset]

My times definitely improve with the onset of a mild chill. This transitions to worse times with a full-on chill though this can be overridden up to a point.

I very much enjoy the overall sensation of diving without a mask - but I like being able to see stuff.

[naiad]

Originally Posted by azapa

Naiad,

Seeing as no one believes your cold=worse apnea scam , I will offer you a possible explanation from my very limited experience:

I guess you must be confusing cold water with the "scariness" of open water?? Murky, cold, deep, full of sharks and other imaginary beasties(!), the sound of outboard motors buzzing etc. My apnea is reduced by 50% when I can't see the bottom, diving into the murk. Just takes practice and a good buddy to overcome.

safe dives.

I meant even cold water in the pool doing static. Even if I am not scared, and the water is not particularly cold, my apnea time is reduced by at least 1:00. This is not because I get put off and decide to bail out early - I will black out if I continue.

I still don't understand why this happens. Surprisingly, being scared or stressed does not always have a bad effect for me. My easiest ever 50m dynamic was in a competition.

Originally Posted by fondueset

I very much enjoy the overall sensation of diving without a mask - but I like being able to see stuff.

Me too. It is very different from taking the mask off during the dive.

[shoutatthesky]

PS: Island Sands.....The notion of realizing your full O2 conserving dive response in a relaxed mental state, as some teach and continue to teach, is simply *******s; animal diving physiologists have known this since at least the 1940s. There's ample amounts of literature out there so this is nothing new.

Your urgency to breathe is not the same as your breath-hold dive potential. Surely, stress will bring on contractions sooner but this has a positive effect on you O2 conserving ability and your ultimate potential. This can be easily demonstrated by means of blowing into an O2 gas analyzer or indirectly by means of HR.

Sebastien, Strong words mate. Are you saying inducing stress in a diver can increase BHD. I find personally the more relaxed I am the better.
Why don't you get out and break some records and you can show us all first hand the supremacy of your philosophy???
I value highly your contribution to the study Apnea I just wish you could share your ideas without saying, in effect, that everyone else is wrong.

BTW - Data gained from the study of rats, dogs, monkeys, horses, etc. is not proof of the same results being found with Humans.

[azapa]

Originally Posted by naiad

easiest ever 50m dynamic was in a competition.

Naiad:
My best dynamics are at the end of say a 1 hour pool session in say 20 C water. I am feeling a bit tired, on the point of shivers. I would say I can make 20% further than on first jumping into the water.

This is the same in the ocean. My watch now shows it painfully clearly. The first 10 dives are 45 seconds. Next 20 or so 45 to 1:00. Then in full DR mode, I guess, up to 2:00. My very last dives, too tired, too cold and/or bored, are at about 1:00 again, and show me its time to go home. These are no stress/no comp/no peer pressure dives, I just stay down as long as it feels good.

What I still don't understand, in the Ocean, is how I can have good and bad apnea days?? In the pool my apnea is a standard "bad"

cheers!

[trux]

Originally Posted by shoutatthesky

Sebastien, Strong words mate. ...
Why don't you get out and break some records and you can show us all first hand the supremacy of your philosophy???

Adam, don't get fooled by Seb's attitude. Although I admit he often chooses stronger words than necessary, I think it is just caused by the size of his ego not matching well the size of the body (however big it is) - he is simply a great personality. He is also a great athlete, an excellent freediver, and although I do not know him personally, I bet he is much more lovely in reality than it sometimes may look like here on the forum.

Seb indeed already did set some freediving records, and I suppose he does not really bother too much about them today. He did/does train though several recent record holders and top competitors. And although I think he made no AIDA records, he is listed at ApneaMania in the section Other Records with an open-water dynamic apnea record of 146m from 1999, and in several other sources on the web I saw he also held a WR of 192m resp. 193m in dynamics. But especially: with empty lungs he can do longer statics and dynamic, or go deeper than the majority of the world top freedivers can do with full lungs.

So stay critical to his social behavior on the forum, (that does not always make the best echo here), but keep the highest respect for his performance, and especially for his teaching, which I believe revolutionized modern freediving more than anything else in the last few years.

[shoutatthesky]

From previous posts of Seb's I can tell he is very passionate about his studies. I was trying to match my writing mood to his.
I don't doubt Seb's ability and the effect his studies have had on the philosophies of many of the worlds freedivers. I do however take exception to him rubbishing other schools of thought and methods. Methods that seem to work as well if not better than his.
This may change but the proof has not been produced yet. Though I do admit that FRC is being emphatically embraced by many freedivers. I embrace any studies aimed at incresing performance and try to take from them what works for me.

[sebastien murat]

Good try...no cigar!

I hear this all the time: warm-up, relax, etc., but there's no physiological basis for it. I've been teaching for a while and we compare PAO2 with both methods and there results are always the same: in favor of no warm-up, elevated pre-dive HRs, and clear pre-dive stress.

Sometimes the truth is hard to swallow but it deosn't mean we should let otheres pull the wool over our eyes!
S

[harbour seal]

Originally Posted by sebastien murat

Mr Harbour Seal asked if I could elaborate further on this mask-removal thing:

....yeah, that's right--- it's MISTER to the rest of you.....

Originally Posted by sebastien murat

I hear this all the time: warm-up, relax, etc., but there's no physiological basis for it. I've been teaching for a while and we compare PAO2 with both methods and there results are always the same: in favor of no warm-up, elevated pre-dive HRs, and clear pre-dive stress.

once again, thanks for sharing your findings.

cheers,
sean
vancouver

[amihov]

Removing the belt can be very scary thing. The best thing is to balance the weight so you don't have to take it of. For me the belt is like part of my body. I don't play whit it . Taking of the mask may work . But if you are diving whit no rope in a murky water and you take out the mask and you lose direction it can be very dangerous. If you are using a rope and diving in clear blue water then you don't need a mask just a nose clip will do the job. But in Vancouver murky water whit under 5 m visibility whit no mask under 15 m you can easily lose direction and kill yourself bay going in the wrong direction and waisting all of your energy. So think twice before you tray to cheat your limits whit tricks . And again things that work for people diving in different conditions then yours can not only spoil your diving experience but kill you .

[Mullins]

I'm pretty confident that I know which way is up, even without a mask. It's really not that disorientating. The visibility makes little difference because your vision is poor anyway.

The association of comfort with performance does seem to come up time after time. My most comfortable dives have followed a long warmup period. But my best performances have come without any warmup and with high levels of discomfort. It's important to distinguish between the two.

If ditching your belt is to help, I think you need to do it early. I have done it once while spearfishing, at the beginning of an ascent from around 37m. I had been trying to untangle a kingfish which had tangled on a reef and as soon as I started the ascent I knew it was going to be tight. So I ditched the belt, no second thoughts. Possibly the smartest call I've made while diving.

[amihov]

I agree about the belt. But New Zeland diving conditions are much much better then in Vancouver. Some time the water is so bad on the surface that you can't even see the end of your fins. So again whit no mask is like diving only by the feeling. It's like driving by the feeling whit no map in a huge city.

[island_sands]

Originally Posted by sebastien murat

*******s = b o l l o c k s

S

Seb
I dont need to know what's between your ears! (Quote from: SNATCH)

Somebody i know read your post about this and said ooh!
"if you are about to blackout the safest thing to do is inhale water, poo your pants and do the can can…"

After all, you are able to remove your weight belt and mask as well, so why not drop your pants too?

Like fondueset, i also enjoy diving without a mask, but even more so with my pants down

[shoutatthesky]

Sometimes the truth is hard to swallow but it deosn't mean we should let otheres pull the wool over our eyes!

Seb, We are all trying to find the truth. I am happy to listen to your ideas, study them, and try them.
Maybe to "swallow the truth" we need to have it made clearer and have access to more experience of the technique.
I am happy to pull the wool away from my eyes.

[Kars]

Naiad,

I too have trouble with cold water, but only when my inner body has become too cold. When I'm shivering like a leaf and people think I'm already having a samba..., it's easy to swim into a bo. Also my performances are reduced in this cold state.

Having a warm inner body and than get into cold water is indeed a O2 safer, until I can no longer relax without shivering. Basically I dive now with a sufficent warm suit, keeping my body just warm enough for the whole dive session. For technique training I usually had some pasta or rice 4-6 hours before in order to have some digestion ongoing to keep my core warm. Ofcause being hydrated is importand as well.

As for preperation for PB's I don't have warm-up dives.
I do warm up my muscles, stretch them.
Go through technique and dive mentally.
Make sure I stay warm until I hit the water. The contrast warm cold feels beneficial, though I not yet into going deep seconds after I hit the cold water. I prefere to have a ~ 5 min acclimation and in water relaxing breath up, consisting of slow long belly breaths getting focused and in tune.

The NO mask diving is for me not yet a posibility because of the cold water. Water about 16c and colder, apparently has the effect off blocking my sinuses.

Thank you Eric Fattah and others for your self rescue tip(s).

Love, peace and water,

Kars