i would really appreciate if some one could give me some good tipps and tecniques about how to breath before performing the duckdive.I practice spearfishing for these last 10 years and all i know is just from my experience.before i dive,,i just breath deeply and slowly and relax as much as possible.My safety limits are 21 to 25 meters of depth.I really wish to go down to another 5 meters to reach the 30m.I have static apneas between 2.45 and 3.07 minutes.
thanks in advance
Have you read the breathing section here?
http://forums.deeperblue.com/beginner-freediving/64959-how-start-freediving.html
One obvious suggestion: go take a professional freediving class. There are great courses all around the world which can teach you tried techniques to improve all aspects of your freediving. Googling "freediving courses" could be a place to start. I think most freedivers who take such courses will tell you that they're absolutely worth it.
As other people have pointed out, there are lots and lots of different breathing techniques. Slow, relaxed, deep breathing seems to be a common thread. I agree: using a heart rate monitor can help to be a little more "scientific". There are also lots of different meditation techniques which can help to center and calm the mind/body -- these are often closely related to breathing technique; if you don't have a meditation practice, adding that (just about any one, imho) can help too.
A few things to be careful about:
-Any kind of hyperventilation (breathing more deeply or rapidly than your body _needs_ to) can have complicated results leading to blackout. There are many opinions about this, but one safe way to deal with it is: don't do it. There are very successful divers out there who never hyperventilate in any way. At the very least, I think most freedivers would recommend this: use any kind of hyperventilation carefully and sparingly - any more than 2-4 breaths, and you're definitely getting into very complicated and potentially dangrerous territory.
-If you don't already, get in the habit of timing your suface intervals, and taking _plenty_ of time on the surface to ventilate. A rule of thumb: vent on the surface for twice the length of your dive. The deeper you dive, the longer your surface interval should be; and if you're going past 30m, you should increase the interval to x3 your dive time or more. Also, if you tend to spend long hours in the water (more than two hours), you should periodically take 15 mins to really vent. There are lots of concerns here, but the big one is decompression sickness, or the bends. More and more data is coming out about the dangers of getting bent freediving. As you dive deeper and stay down longer, your risks increase.
Lastly, if you're pushing your depth limits, please make sure you have someone watching you very closely, especially as you get to the surface, and for at least 30 secs. after you surface. This is when blackout is most common, and frankly, if someone's not watching closely, it's pretty easy to die once you've blacked out in the water. On the other hand, all you need is someone within arm's reach to keep your mouth out of the water, and you'll more than likely survive the experience.
