Breathing Techniques for Recreational Freediving

[run4fun143]

you guys need to watch the video, "How I held my breath for 17 mins" on youtube!! David Blaine is holding the record and his techniques followed the purging idea and alot of fitness training and exercise. Please watch this video, it's really interesting and it goes and goes against some of the things you guys are saying.

 

[titan]

run4fun143 welcome to DB but most people here review whatever techniques possible and some followed david blaine case in person, about fitness trainig must record holders don't use cardio training you can search in previous post the explaniotion why to many cardio can be deterimental, David Blaine set a record on pure oxygen wich is a whole other discipline from apnea with normal air. The tecniques sugested by older users works pretty well and are safe the same can't be said about Blaine style of diving. Cheers

 

[Siku]

Trux I accept your points about no breathe up (in order to avoid hyperventilation, reduced CO2, delayed urge to breathe & DR).

I have been taught that 1:2 breathing (i.e. the exhale is twice the duration of the inhale) decreases heart rate and induces relaxation before the dive. I understand this is because the vagus nerve activates during exhale only, and its action slows the heart rate. So in any breathing pattern heart rate come up during inhalation and lowers during exhalation.

Increasingly I have been trying to retain this 1:2 pattern WITHOUT hyperventilation, so this is a RELAXATION technique, not a BREATHE-UP op GAS EXCHANGE techinique. In fact I think we should drop the ter 'breathe-up' entire;y. It clearly suggests altered breathing patterns and hyperventilation.

Is unintended hyperventilation inevitable using this technique? I'm not sure... Any thoughts anyone? Anyone else using 1:2 breathing to reduce heart rate?

I also confused when doing dynamic tables. If I come up between lengths and breathe for 10 seconds then I'm coming up from an apnea with high CO2 and low O2, so does that mean it's ok to hyperventilate for those 10 seconds before the next length? I don't imaging that I can get back to resting CO2 and O2 levels in 10 secs, and definitely not to lower than normal O2 (i.e. hyper ventilation)! (And yes I know the point of tables is to train, not beat the table, but I'm just asking).

 

[Siku]

On the subject of the vagus nerve, interestingly the vagus nerve is also activated by immersing the face in water, and by experienceing compassion. Buddhists who practice the metta bhavana compassion meditation show increase vagus nerve activity.

The vagus nerve is the largest in the body, passing through all internal organs. It brings down inflamation and is therefore benificial for many many health problems.

Compassion = increased dive response?

 

[trux]

Siku, I am afraid you do not exactly understand the term hyperventilation. Hyperventilation is ventilating over the metabolic needs of the body. It means that when you ventilate deeply after a physical effort, it is usually not hyperventilation (unless you overdo it). In the same way, when you do your 1:2 breath-up, I bet that you ventilate deeper than you would normally. And if you ventilate deeper, even if it is much slower than the normal flat breathing, you are very likely hyperventilating. And then, reducing the heart-rate during the recovery is counterproductive. During the recovery, you need high heart rate to accelerate the removal of toxins and waste metabolic products from the body, and to improve the oxygenation. Relaxing the muscles and mind will help, but artificially reducing the HR by the stimulation of the vagus nerve will slow down the recovery.

@ run3fun143 - unlike at breath-holding with air, at breath-holding with oxygen, the hyperventilation is necessary - without it you would risk very high hypercapnia (excess CO2 level), and CO2 blackout. Unlike at air breath-holds, hypoxia is not an issue at oxygen breath-hold. Hence oxygen breath-holds have very little common with normal breath-holds.

 

[Andrew the fish]

It could have possibly been hyperbaric vertigo. If one ear equalises at slightly different rates to the other you can get the vertigo feeling. .

Bingo! I remember now, I had different rates, had to equalize repeatedly because of one "stuck" eardrum. Then I had vertigo, which I attributed to cold water, I had no hood and cold water was causing pain and then numbenss around my throat and behind ears. But then, water was extremely turbid too, I couldn't see up or down, was loosing the sence of directions every time while below certain depth. But then, maybe it was all those things together.

On a subject of breathing, not that I know much, but being naturally cut off of freediving community I take risks of diving alone often. I dive conservatively and avoid hyperventilation as much as I can. And, I think it doesn't give much if anything at all, like Trux said, counter productive thing. But then, I only disovered it at certain level, before then I couldn't do any good without at least some degree of hyperventilation. I guess it will be hard to convince inexperienced freediver that hyperventilation is bad, because he would feel quite opposite.

 

[Siku]

Trux, I'm not sure you understood my question. I know the body ventilates more or less in different circumstance. What I'm wondering is

a) During 'breathe up', how can I preserve 2:1 breathing without hyperventilating?

I guess you're saying its not possible?

b) Is it acceptable to hyperventilate (NOT 2:1) during a table to accelerate recovery, based on the assumption that the (short - 10") accelerated recovery will still not be a full recovery, i.e. I would still by hypercapnic?

Not sure what your answer is to that...?

Generally though, I think you're saying to hell with consciously controlling breathing at all, and, during 'breathe-up' use other techniques to relax? Thanks for your thoughts as ever.

 

[trux]

a) During 'breathe up', how can I preserve 2:1 breathing without hyperventilating?

First of all, why do you want to do it? As I explained, artificially reducing the HR during the recovery is the last thing you should try to do. You need a low HR during the dive, not during the recovery.

Then, you can preserve normocapnia so that you ventilate just as much as the body needs. However it would not be easy to control it without a blood pH analyzer. In the moment you start breathing deeper (what I suspect you do when slowing the exhales), you most likely start hyperventilating even if you reduce the number of breaths per minutes. There is no reliable formula to tell you how much you need to breath, because it depends on the situation, and the resulting level of CO2 is not depending only on the total volume of air exchanged, but also on the depth of the breaths - in the moment the volume of the breath is bigger than the dead space in the mouth/nose+trachea+bronchi, you are removing the CO2 much quicker than at normal flat breathing.

My opinion is that the best approach is letting the body controlling the breathing subconsciously. Just avoiding that it starts hyperventilating under stress.

b) Is it acceptable to hyperventilate (NOT 2:1) during a table to accelerate recovery, based on the assumption that the (short - 10") accelerated recovery will still not be a full recovery, i.e. I would still by hypercapnic?

Voluntarily hyperventilating during tables makes no sense to me - either you are doing a hypercapnic table, and then removing the excess CO2 is the exact opposite of what is the purpose of the table. Or you are doing a hypoxic table, and then the hyperventilation presents a high safety risk, and may also reduce your performance.

 

[Simos]

Hyperventilation during CO2 tables.... Cheating.... just do a bit less without hyperventilation. Not that the tables won't work with hyperventilation (if you make the tables harder, you'll still be hypercapnic) but the problem is that unless you measure hyperventilation and be consistent, you won't know if you are really progressing or if you just hyperventilated a bit more.

The main issue is that once you get into the habit of using HV, you then start using it here and there in certain situations and convincing yourself it's ok.

2:1 breathing (Siku means before the dive Trux, not for the recovery) seems to be quite widespread. While trux is right that it could lead to HV (depending on how much air you are taking in) I doubt that in practice it does lead to serious HV for most people. It depends how you practice it. I used to do it but dropped it in the last year - doesn't make a big difference for me and the extended exhale stresses me out a bit at times so I prefer to breathe normally and focus on relaxation..

 

[apneaboy]

How long was you taught to do 2:1 breathing for before the hold Siku?

Blaine was doing an O2 hold, don't compare it to air holds.

 

[Simos]

Just realised how old this thread is - I thought for a moment that someone hacked Wal's account and pretended to be a newbie lol

 

[trux]

(Siku means before the dive Trux, not for the recovery)

During tables and serial diving you have the recovery just before the dive And even at a single shot diving (i.e. competition), reducing the HR prior the dive just leads to worse oxygenation. and cumulation of waste metabolic products. Only slow HR as a result of slower metabolism may be desirable, not one introduced artificially.

 

[Narsil]

Always an interesting and somewhat charged topic.

My only controlled breathing before any dive (competitive freediving through to recreational spearfishing) is to ensure I'm only doing tidal breathing. Sometimes the body wants to take deeper breaths to help dissipate nervous energy (reducing heart rate), which I try to override.

I'm still surprised by the number of very experienced freedivers who teach students some form of light purging or heightened ventilation prior to apnea.

Yes, teaching techniques such as 'candle blowing' etc will help beginners surprise themselves regarding their breath hold capacity, but its a really bad practice/ habit to adopt in my opinion.

One use of hyperventilation that's 'safe' in my opinion, is for someone highly experienced (let's say with a 10 minute potential static) who doesn't feel like working too hard in a particular session :naughty. Under supervision it should be fine for this person to HV and do say a 7-minute static, with very few contractions.

Hey, what's the worst that can happen?!! :crutch

Guy

 

[Simos]

One use of hyperventilation that's 'safe' in my opinion, is for someone highly experienced (let's say with a 10 minute potential static) who doesn't feel like working too hard in a particular session :naughty. Under supervision it should be fine for this person to HV and do say a 7-minute static, with very few contractions.

Sounds like you have a certain someone in mind rofl

 

[Simos]

During tables and serial diving you have the recovery just before the dive And even at a single shot diving (i.e. competition), reducing the HR prior the dive just leads to worse oxygenation. and cumulation of waste metabolic products. Only slow HR as a result of slower metabolism may be desirable, not one introduced artificially.

True about the recovery Trux but in reality for serial diving etc, it's impractical to do 2:1 breathing as it takes too long and also, it's pretty hard. Recovery breaths feel a bit better lol

Again it probably depends on how you do the 2:1 breathing but you're probably right about the accumulation in some cases.

I stopped doing it because it doesn't help me much and as I said sometimes find it hard instead of relaxing but I do sometimes try to prolong the exhale especially if I am likely to be a bit nervous - otherwise I suspect that 'normal' breathing when nervous is more likely to result to HV than focusing on tidal breathing with prolonged exhale.

 

[Walrus]

Yup, this is a very old thread, the original posts I made nearly 10 years ago. I don't even remember it :blackeye

 

[cdavis]

Sometimes, ressurecting an oldie is fun and instructive.

Siku: you are on to the right idea, longer exhale than inhale (nothing magic about 1:2) is a good relaxation technique and you can use it without HV, but it very much depends on the circumstances. For example, I need to use a consciously developed "breath-up", because otherwise I will HV. When serial diving frc(almost all I do), the last half of my "breathup" is composed of very small breaths, 1/4-1/5th of a lungful, much longer exhale than inhale. The technique works, its just very sensitive to how you use it.

Trux's point, let your subconscious handle it, probably works well for most situations, but the world of freediving is so broad and people are so variable, that nothing should be taken as gospel.

Connor

 

[Siku]

apnea boy: I wasn't taught any particular length of time to do 1:2 breathing. At the club we don't have time for long breathe ups so it's normally only a minute or two.

cdavis: yes I try and keep tidal - I'm not defending HV! I would say my resting tidal breathing is even lower that 1/5th of TLC - maybe 1/10th? Don't know, but it'd be interesting to measure. No, nothing sacred about 1:2 - a friend claimed he was doing 1:50 during pranayama the other day!!

Trux: I thought lowered HR would lead to lowered metabolism, (I'm not sure why you distinguish between artificially and naturally lower metabolism?). Why do you think that a slower metabolism leads to worse oxgenation? Wouldn't both the production and elimination of waste products be reduced?

I see the point that HV during a CO2 table would reduce the tables training potential, but I could easily compensate by making the table harder. Again, I'm just thinking and asking, NOT about whether HV in a CO2 table is better for training, but whether it's 'safe' or 'OK' HV because it won't result in hypocapnia in the context of a table (but it might enhance performance?).

Another thing that I'm unsure of - if the LAST breathe before apnea is a FULL exhale and a FULL inhale, this won't count as HV, right? Because the purge only clears the CO2 in the lungs, and the lungful of fresh air won't be exhaled till after the apnea, by which time I'll be hypercapnic and hypoxic anyway?

 

[trux]

Trux: I thought lowered HR would lead to lowered metabolism, (I'm not sure why you distinguish between artificially and naturally lower metabolism?).

It is the other way. Lower metabolism permits lower HR, but if you reduce the HR without lowering the metabolism, you just cur off the supply (and the waste transport), so it leads to starving and waste accumulation. In consequence the metabolism will have drop too, but it is the wrong way.

Why do you think that a slower metabolism leads to worse oxygenation? Wouldn't both the production and elimination of waste products be reduced?

I did not write that slower metabolism leads to worse oxygenation. It is the lower HR (lower blood circulation), while your metabolism is still up that leads to worse supply and waste removal.

I see the point that HV during a CO2 table would reduce the tables training potential, but I could easily compensate by making the table harder. Again, I'm just thinking and asking, NOT about whether HV in a CO2 table is better for training, but whether it's 'safe' or 'OK' HV because it won't result in hypocapnia in the context of a table (but it might enhance performance?).

It is pointless to reduce CO2 artificially when the purpose of the exercise is high CO2. The only thing that you achieve is that the exercise will be more hypoxic, not more hypercapnic.

Another thing that I'm unsure of - if the LAST breathe before apnea is a FULL exhale and a FULL inhale, this won't count as HV, right? Because the purge only clears the CO2 in the lungs, and the lungful of fresh air won't be exhaled till after the apnea, by which time I'll be hypercapnic and hypoxic anyway?

Purge is hyperventilation.

 

[cdavis]

Siku, Trux had a good way to think about overall ventilation, think total full breaths per time period (minute). For example, a lot of 1/6 breaths might be more total ventilation than a few 1/4 breaths. Figuring out total ventilation is useful to see what you are really doing.

Full in/full out on the last breath: Of course its HV by the traditional definition. Whether that is good bad or indifferent depends on the diver and the diving. Full in/full out starts the diver with lung contents that at as high 02 and low co2 as possible and the body can feed off that during the dive. That's good. Fullin/fullout also requires effort, burns 02, makes co2, works against relaxation and puts off DR. All if that is bad. The net effect depends on the circumstances. I found, after lots of experimentation, that, for me and my kind of serial diving, a couple of 1/2 lung relaxed purges followed by a full in/ full out work very well with the minimal ventilation strategy. What works for you might vary.

Trux is making a VERY good point that you should not shift to low ventilation and/or long exhale until after the body has recovered. Doing so too quickly does exactly what he says. I played with this for quite a while (not fully realizing what was going on) until I could feel the point to shift.

Connor