• Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums, the largest online community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing. To gain full access to the DeeperBlue.com Forums you must register for a free account. As a registered member you will be able to:

    • Join over 44,280+ fellow diving enthusiasts from around the world on this forum
    • Participate in and browse from over 516,210+ posts.
    • Communicate privately with other divers from around the world.
    • Post your own photos or view from 7,441+ user submitted images.
    • All this and much more...

    You can gain access to all this absolutely free when you register for an account, so sign up today!

Question Breathing techniques question

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.

Traveler

New Member
Jun 26, 2018
5
2
3
56
Hello!

Firstly I am not really a diver, aspire to it but have a lot of dry and pool training to do first.

I have been practicing the breathing techniques which is going fine but ran into snag.

Without boring you all with all the whys; I am trying to increase my hanging-out time both horizontally and vertical at the bottom of a 8-10 ft. pool. I was told in order to sink as fast as possible: to purge all the O2 out on my way down. I do that and sink like a rock. So it works great; but my ability to stay under is a third of my dry training time. If I don’t release the oxygen, and hold it in I can’t stink and stay down like I want to. I am also having to fight to stay down at the bottom instead of being still. My goal is to be able to be still, or move around at the bottom for 2 minutes. But as soon as I get in the water I get about 20 seconds. I’d appreciate any advice or tips.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Davis
Thx SubSub...I looked into that but they are bulky and this is for photography, so hard to hide or edit out.
 
You're not purging O2, you're letting out air (bubbling/exhale) to be neutrally buoyant at the appropriate depth
for training purpose, it's not bad to to doing as much as your dry static (don't push yourself to your dry static limit underwater)
you're training your technic, and your body physiological adapation and diving reflex, to get better
So dont push yourself too much and beware of shallow water blackout in pool, (it happens)
I coudn't buy freediving neck-weights, so i bought 2x 2kg sandbags and attached them both to each other and around my neck
it's not good for streamlined DNF, but it helps me stay underwater on my full lung capacity a little
 
I agree! There are some great knowledgeable folks on this forum site; I guess Adam Stern is right there is apparently a very big freediving family around and I keep coming back to this forum for that reason :) Just wish i lived somewhere else LOL
 
-1
I do too Richard. Since I’m not near water even the two local dive shops do not offer classes..
 
I do too Richard. Since I’m not near water even the two local dive shops do not offer classes..

Yes - makes me wonder why i try to pursue it...it does have a magnetic "draw" for me though. I have some opportunities in the summer, but they are far and few between. I'll still keep trying though.
 
you don't have to pack your lungs full to train your dynamic apnea
people like Eric Fattah were advocating empty lungs dynamics.
the idea was to train while you're a bit hypoxic, you rarely reach that point when your lungs are full
so if you train while your lungs arn't empty, it will have a positive impact on your full lung dynamic performance.
 
you don't have to pack your lungs full to train your dynamic apnea
people like Eric Fattah were advocating empty lungs dynamics.
the idea was to train while you're a bit hypoxic, you rarely reach that point when your lungs are full
so if you train while your lungs arn't empty, it will have a positive impact on your full lung dynamic performance.

I will see if i can do this..so try to reach my measly 25m on half empty lungs, not breathing deeply (sorry i am such a novice)?
 
I also struggls to do a 42meters DNF
I can do 32meters DNF easily.
So recently i've changed how i do things
instead of tryin to do the 3rd lap (16meters long pool)
i spend 25seconsd at start (by exhaling till i'm neutrally buoyant), then push myself gently from the walls, do the mimimum number of strokes possible (2.7meters per stroke , and legs only) then at the other hand, i stay under for 15 till the end of 1min total.
i found this more relaxing than trying to push myself to cross more distance.
I intend to do a 2min dynamic like this before adding another lap to my full lungs DNF
 
Thank you for sharing that. Maybe I will try that except only trying to cross 25M at a time. Do you use a frog kick motion or a flutter kick? Do you use fins or no? (i dont have any yet). Sounds like you have a good plan for the dynamic 2m that would be superb!!
 
Frog kick obviously while my arms are in spear-like shape, to reduce drag, i find i burn less O2 this way than when i alternate between arm stroke and leg stroke, i don't know of anyone who is good at DNF and use flutter kicks and i don't think it's efficient.
Tho i have seen Bajou tribe divers use some form of reverse pedaling technic to dive underwater, and i was wondering if O2 efficient compared to frog kicks.
I tried it one, tho it propels me (and it works butter than flutter kick) but i didn't find it O2 efficient, tho i never used it before and i'm not sure i'm performing it as good as those sea gypsies.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Richard Bender
Just quick word of caution for anyone who is relatively new to freediving and training. Exhale holds, while with experience can be similar in safety and performance as inhale holds, they are potentially very dangerous for a beginner.

This is because; 1: your initial hypoxia limit will be much lower than with full lungs until your body fully adapts. 2: lung gas/blood gas ratios will be massivly different causing normal sensations to be unreliable meaning blackouts could come with much less warning.

From experience I can say that exhale can feel awesome, but the better you get at exhale diving the worse you get at inhale diving, so I wouldnt consider it a valid cross-training method for inhale.
 
-1
Thank you Nathan. I think the key for the rest of my life is "relax" it's my biggest challenge. If i can master that to some extent I think i will enjoy my dives much more, which is the end result I'm after. I just revere you guys for being such experts!
 
Nathan - "the better you get at exhale diving the worse you get at inhale diving" - That's interesting. I'd like to hear more on this. Do you mean you can go longer and on exhale? If you are doing equal length dives - say 2 minutes - which is more comfortable, the exhale or inhale?
 
Nathan - "the better you get at exhale diving the worse you get at inhale diving" - That's interesting. I'd like to hear more on this. Do you mean you can go longer and on exhale? If you are doing equal length dives - say 2 minutes - which is more comfortable, the exhale or inhale?

I think there are two separate questions there..

1) No, i cannot go longer on (passive) exhale than on inhale. What I meant was that during an exhale only training period although my longest performances were achieved on inhale, these inhale performances were much worse than during previous inhale only performances by around 15-20%. So although my exhale performances were increasing during exhale training, a sudden switch to inhale gave me worse results than I've had in the past.

2) Which is more comfortable. Again this really depends. Overall I would say inhale is more comfortable, but exhale has its moments. In the case of shallow snorkeling with no wetsuit or weights a 2:00 dive to 10m is way more comfortable on passive exhale. I wouldn't even try that on inhale because of positive buoyancy I would have to kick constantly to stay down. On exhale it is pretty much just a static until the last 15 seconds.
For deep stuff I have done a personal best of 50m CWT on exhale. This was the limit of my equalization, not hypoxia. Comparing 50m at both lung volumes for comfort is difficult, Inhale has much more urge to breath, but on exhale my legs were in pain and starting to fail at 25m. I've recently done a PB of 70m on inhale and this felt similar (to the legs) as the 50m exhale. Neither dive was significantly hypoxic but lets call them both 90% of true maximum. If % of max is the measurement, then exhale is more comfortable due to lack of urge to breath, but again, comparing volumes on a set depth, than inhale is more comfortable.
 
...
2) Which is more comfortable. Again this really depends. Overall I would say inhale is more comfortable, but exhale has its moments. In the case of shallow snorkeling with no wetsuit or weights a 2:00 dive to 10m is way more comfortable on passive exhale. I wouldn't even try that on inhale because of positive buoyancy I would have to kick constantly to stay down. On exhale it is pretty much just a static until the last 15 seconds.
For deep stuff I have done a personal best of 50m CWT on exhale. This was the limit of my equalization, not hypoxia. Comparing 50m at both lung volumes for comfort is difficult, Inhale has much more urge to breath, but on exhale my legs were in pain and starting to fail at 25m. I've recently done a PB of 70m on inhale and this felt similar (to the legs) as the 50m exhale. Neither dive was significantly hypoxic but lets call them both 90% of true maximum. If % of max is the measurement, then exhale is more comfortable due to lack of urge to breath, but again, comparing volumes on a set depth, than inhale is more comfortable.
Interesting.
So you're saying that thanks to reduced buoyancy, you don't have to expend O2 as often on passive exhale as much as on inhale?
So, you're saying that the extra O2 taken during an inhale compared to the exhale, end being used by more kicking downward?
i remember reading in Erika Schagatay's paper "predicting performance in competitive apnoea diving" that lungs account only for 54% of our body's O2
so, this makes that on exhale taking into account RV, you're only missing 45% of the O2 compared to inhale.
 
Sort-of?..

I'm saying that a lower lung volume (1/2 VC or FRC/passive exhale) can be advantageous over a large lung volume, under a specific set of conditions. This works when you are performing dives that have a particular profile [descent, STATIC bottom time, and ascent = Snorkeling, or spearing]. The maximum depth should be that you would be positively buoyant on full lungs, but negative with half lungs (If you would also be negative on full lungs at this depth, you are better off with full lungs). So keeping all that in mind, lets assume a 10m dive with no wetsuit+no weights and a 1:30 bottom time.

1) On inhale: Descent = high 02 consumption. Bottom time= medium 02 consumption (fighting buoyancy). Ascent = low O2 consumption (already positively buoyant).
2) On Exhale: Descent = Low O2 consumption. Bottom time = Very low O2 consumption (static). Ascent = Medium O2 consumption (negatively buoyant)

So comparing the two profiles for the same dive at different lung volumes (buoyancy) we have much lower overall O2 consumption on the FRC/passive exhale dive, Which in my experience is enough to offset the disadvantage of lower lung O2 stores.
 
DeeperBlue.com - The Worlds Largest Community Dedicated To Freediving, Scuba Diving and Spearfishing

ABOUT US

ISSN 1469-865X | Copyright © 1996 - 2024 deeperblue.net limited.

DeeperBlue.com is the World's Largest Community dedicated to Freediving, Scuba Diving, Ocean Advocacy and Diving Travel.

We've been dedicated to bringing you the freshest news, features and discussions from around the underwater world since 1996.

ADVERT