Apnea Walking - Please Explain

[ShallowGuy]

I perform apnea walking from time to time. I can cover some distance but most of the time it's unpleasant experience. Now, I've few questions and would be grateful if someone could answer them:

- Once my diaphragm 'kicks' during my walk I almost straight away get this strange sensation in my legs. I did some research and it seems to be lactic acid. Does it mean I should stop? I've read opinions that I should continue my walk and learn to handle lactic acid. Others say it's a beginning of a blackout. Could someone explain? I have similar sensation in my legs during my DNF, somewhere about 40- 50m. I always stop my dive as I'm scared it's the blackout's beginning. Should I continue?

- Lactic acid seem not to build when I walk taking nothing but a little 'sip' of air, almost on empty lungs. To make it stranger I can cover distance not significantly smaller than on the full inhale. Why is it like that?

Thanks
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[baiyoke]

Just my 2 cents (I'm no "expert"):

1) The strange feeling is probably your dive response starting up, restricting blood from lungs/heart going to the legs and arms - That's when "freediving really starts" so to speak... That's why you get lactic.. because the muscles work with insufficiant amounts of oxygen.. On average I think most people would only be half of the way to a BO, but that is very dependent on the specific person. Without warmup, in a pool, I can sometimes get that feeling 20m into i dive, but can go on much further - if I don't bail out because of CO2/discomfort. You can read abot the mammalian dive reflex (wich should probably be called "respons" instead) on Wikipedia, type Mammalian diving reflex).

In the pool, you can continue after vasoconstriction, but you NEED a buddy to spot you continously... You can not feel when it's time for a BO. What you feel is CO2 buildup and the diverespons... (You know about CO2 right? Otherwise read about BO, type Shallow water blackout in wikipedia).

2) From your description right there, my guess is that you probably bail out from CO2 buildup discomfort... . Wich is approximately the same for you on full and empty lung (as far as I can figure out, perhaps a little bit higher on emptylung - if you can get used to the emty-lung feeling, though...) However I can not explain why you don't get lactic, since your dive respons and vasoconstriction "should" be stronger and kick in faster on emptylung... Perhaps some of the emptylung divers can explain.

Do you hyperventilate before the emptylung walk, because that might delay the dive respons significantly...

How far do you walk, meters/minutes?

Doing emptylung apneawalks can be hard work, be carefull you don't burn out psychologically... I once did get a little burned out, and changed for a more relaxing-orientated training scheme for a while wich helped (CO2/O2 tables in bed, focus on relxation)... Just a good advice: Be process-orientated, not too goal-orientated...

 

[ShallowGuy]

Thank you very much for your response baiyoke.

I can walk for around 2 minutes, covering around 200m.

I should be probably more precise - I get empty lungs vs full lungs result similar doing my training which for now is nothing more than covering around 75 - 100m on breath hold anytime I've got a chance to do it.

Know when I watch closely my approach I can see my heart rate increases significantly when I do the last full breath to pump my lungs. Perhaps this combined with rather fast pace of walk gives me fast diaphragm kicks and then lactic acid build up.

When I don't take any extra air I don't think about the distance, just walk. I'm calm, perhaps that benefits my performance. I've never attempted to check my personal best on empty lungs. Will try soon.

As for relaxation - I improved my static taking more relaxed approach, it's definitely a right choice.

Thanks