Alomst died at my dynamic attemt

[laminar]

I've seen people have blackouts and sambas and deny that they even had one. By definition, your brain takes a hiatus from consciousness, so how can you tell, unless you wake up shaking or on someone's knee.

Blackout or sambas are an important signal. That you are doing something wrong.

Peter

 

[jome]

I try to teach people this simple rule:

"Safety diver is always right"

Meaning in training, it's pointless to dispute with the safety diver if you had problems or not. If he thought you do and acted, he did absolutely the right thing. As a counter I teach safety divers "if you find your self thinking should I act - act!". There is no such thing as an "unnecessary intervention".

If you had a problem, your judgement certainly cannot be trusted - and like mentioned already many, many times - it is entirely possible to have even a BO without realizing you had any problems.

That is why "debriefing" is very important in these cases - the safety diver must go through step by step with the victim what happened so no misunderstandings remain.


The subjective feeling is completely useless. If someone says I had a samba, then I had a samba.

Glad you're still with us Java - I've heard of very similar cases which did not end up so lucky. And I hope you will pass on what you have learned to new generations

 

[java]

Hello !
thanks a lot for your advices. I really appreciate them and fully agree with your statements.
Veronika - it happened in Doeblinger Hallenbad, but after that I have already been there to meet my savers. They are very kind and friendly, I don't think anyone will forbid me to make some diving trainings. They only asked me next time either to come with my instructor or do not try any record attempts any more.

Only thing, what is confusing me, is you and Markus talking about sambas and BOs of me in the past. It is correct that we have trained in the same pools at the same time, but you were not my buddy. Usually it was some other diver or diving instructor. And they have never ever mentioned anything about samba or BOs, they only stated my static times or dynamic results and asked me if I were OK. After every max. attempt I was breathing very intensively, but felt myself completely OK. If you have seen that I was having samba, why didn't you told me right away? I can remember we have spoken in person and discussed some issues of training. I am really confused, that I am getting such important information only after 3 months. Veronika, I will call you this weekend, please explain me your statements, as there are very important for me.
I am wondering, if I was so badly blacked out in the past, that I have completely forgotten the whole training session and your words that I was blacked out.

Nevertheless, it is a good lesson and I will try to be clever in the future. Good that I have shared my experience here and found out new facts about myself.

Another fact, which I have found, is that after reaching 100m point I stayed on my feet and blew out all air from my lungs. Was this the very point of black out?

Markus, concerning ORF-Interview I am still very angry with myself for saying that stupid things. It was my first interview ever, and I was some kind of excited and spoke only bullshit. very embarrassing.

Doctors haven't found anything strange yet. Now I have to visit to specialists more: neurologist and specialist for internal medicine.

But tomorrow I am beginning with my dynamic sessions again! Will try not to make distances more than 60-70 m.


Cheers J

 

[wes]

Thanks very much for sharing your experiences, made me rethink over my safety protocols for dynamic in pool which is good very good thing for everyone to do. Here is some feedback.

Safety Violations for you (in my opinion)

-Tried max attempt without trained and briefed buddy (very bad).
(obviously good you had guards involved though again lifeguards aren't trained and briefed buddies)

-Had something go wrong on attempt and did not abort (bad judgement).
(-On your max attempt you had issues, had to swim around some guy in pool, and decided you felt OK to continue to max PB anyway).

-Did not progress in small steps.
(because of above problem swimming around this guy your attempt was really max PB plus some extra hassle so really alot farther than previous attempt.)

-Did not know your limits (more on this below).

-Do not have good understanding of dive physiology.
(I say this as you mention that you did not have any acid burn in your muscles and that you took that as a sign that you are OK when in fact this is a sign that you are not OK and not getting good dive response).


My recommendations (in order of importance):

-Train always with a trained and briefed dive partner, for sure never PB alone.

-Abort a dive if anything goes wrong period, (lots of stories like yours start with "I had this small problem then . . .")

-Progress max attempts in small steps, in your case for DNF I would say in 5m increments max. Another way to do this that is safer in my opinion is to do your "easy" dynamic length and then do a static hold at the end of the pool for 10 to 60 seconds. This way your you can check how you feel and your partner can more easily see if you are hypoxic. If you do 75m DNF, then 75m + 10 sec hold, then 75m + 20 sec hold then 75m + 30 sec hold then try 100m for PB attempts this will give you small steps and feedback on your margin of reserve. It is easy to check your saturated oxygen too after these holds at the end of the pool. Have your partner time the hold and tell you when to breathe while you dry off your finger and check your O2 level. Its pretty cool to do it this way. For example last attempt I did was 75m + 30 sec hold and my SaO2 was still 65% so I had good margin (below 40% is sketchy for me)

-Learn what your limits are and how much margin you have.
I train with a Nonin fingertip pulse oxymeter and at the end of statics and dynamics check my saturated oxygen level. I have gotten excellent data from this that correlates very well with my experiences and my safety buddies view of how much air I have left. This device costs about $300 US so is spendy and is not waterproof so care must be taken to use it at the pool. Alternately you can have the same dive buddy check your lips for blue color or your head for nods or shakes to gauge air reserve.

-Use same protocol each time for max PB attempts, I recommend doing PB attempt on your first dive of the day for lots of reasons, biggest for safety is that it is consistent.

-Learn about freediving physiology, read all the posts by eric fattah and sebastion murat and jome. You can do this by going to their member profile and clicking on the link there. This will be fun DB reading for you too for a few months!! When you are done with that then pick and take a freedive course or if you have taken a basic one take an advanced one. I thought after reading DB I must know everything then took the beginer then intermediate then advanced PFI courses and learned a ton at each one.

Some notes on your BO (all my opinion):

-It is very possible that you did not have cardiac arrest and that your heart beat was only not detectable due to severe dive response. If the guards are checking your pulse at the wrist then they for sure would not get pulse, if they are checking at the neck then maybe they would still feel it, maybe not.

-It is probable from your description that you had some gas imbalance, either too much C02 or not enough, to feel "OK" and have BO. This is why I always do PB attempt now as my first attempt of the day. When you read Sebastion Murat posts you will understand that you should feel acid burn in muscles and feel C02 build up/strong urge to breathe as you get your dive response and this will give you more margin for dynamic for sure and better safety warnings. Maybe also you had some blood imbalance, either dehydrated or low blood sugar or both to have had a more "severe" BO.

-It is possible you had a larngyiospam and so initial CPR the guards gave you was ineffective to really give you fresh air. Kirk Krack told of one BO guy that did not respond to someone giving "weak" CPR and when this guy was given two very strong short breaths his larngiospasm (spasm shut of throat muscles that blocks airway) broke free and he recovered fine though was very "blue" and scared everyone. Kirk says that this larngiospasm will eventually open up on its own (like it maybe did for you) though that this can take 2-4 minutes which is a very long time if you are watching someone who looks to be dead so very scary for rescuers.

Again thanks for sharing. Just because you have had a bad judgment doesn't mean you are a bad person. A good person learns from their bad judgment. A bad person thinks they have only good judgment.

Cheers Wes and Safe Diving

 

[Mad Max]

Hi J.

Never said you had BO's in the past. I said Samba. And who were your partners in the past, the one Samba I saw, was with the guy I don't know his name, I think also a beginner. And I also thought he said that you had an Samba, Was a little Samba indeed. So it could be that he doesn't mentioned it, because he's also a beginner, and didn't saw much sambas in the past. Thats the problem.
But call Veronika, we are planning to train twice next week. I think we two have enough experience to analyse your dives and help you with your problems, and of course extend your static times.

See you next week.