Increasing CO2 Tables

[bucksgill]

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere but I haven't managed to find it.

I've recently started doing CO2 tables and find them quite enjoyable (I'm not sure if this is normal haha). I'm in no rush to change what I'm doing but how long would you say is sensible to stick with a table before making it more difficult? And then what do you change first; the hold lengths or the breathing periods and by how much?

Thanks!

 

[Azrael3000]

If you enjoy your CO2 tables you are doing it wrong

Decrease the breathing periods until they are very short (15 seconds for the last few). Then if it is still easy, increase the hold times.

 

[bucksgill]

Thanks Azrael! Maybe I'll make it a bit tougher, I get uncomfortable but nothing overly major.

I've been doing 2 min holds with the breathing periods starting at 2:30 dropping 15 secs everytime to finish on 45 secs. My best (wet) static is 4:05 so I'm already at 50% of that therefore reducing the breathing periods first definitely seems logical.

 

[SimpleJ]

The problem with CO2 tables is that all over the internet you have CO2 tables for total beginners with small lung volume and no good advice how to adjust them. Most of them advise breath hold of 1:30 which is very short. My dry static is 4:30 and wet 4:05 (achieved during freediving course). So I went for 2:00 breath holds, but found it pretty useless since except for the 1st breath hold I didn't get contractions. Now I tried 2:15 and I get contractions at around 2:05 (during the last few breath holds, but not 2nd, 3rd). I only went down to 1:00 rest as thats what all tables show. Next time I will try 0:45 and later 0:30 rest periods.

Another problem of CO2 tables is that they take very long time and you get very few contractions. On course we did another excercise http://forums.deeperblue.com/threads/frequency-of-co2-tables-apneas.100912/ which is much quicker and in my opinion should also work better. The idea was to make breath holds shorter (about 1 minute) but have only single exhale/inhale between them.

 

[jschultzdanmark]

@SimpleJ
Use an app for your tables. There are many static apps available and they will let you go below 1min for the rest periods.
I have an app, Static Trainer, which does all the usual stuff but also includes 'mean CO2' which is timed breath holds with only one breath inbetween. I do these when I'm short on time, they are extremely hard but effective