Breathup

[patbrassil]

As long as i've been diving i've doon a relatively simple breathup fully inhaling, pausing for a second and then fully exhaling for whatever time i've deemed necessary (for spearfishing ussually 2-3x my typical bottom time.)

Is there a specific/recommended way to do breathups?

 

[trux]

Well, this kind of breath-up is called hyperventilation, and I would strongly advice you abandoning it. It not only very seriously increases the chance you black out, but paradoxally it also decreases the maximal safe bottom time. Use the forum's search function to get some information about heyperventilation and breath-up.

Basically, instead of focusing on breathing during the surface period, the most important is focusing on the recovery and relaxation, avoiding any motion as much as possible. Your body knows the best how to breath, so just let it do, and avoid any deep exhales/inhales which remove CO2 from your body - yoou need the CO2 for protecting you against the blackout.

 

[patbrassil]

Maybe i'm a little confused, but when i breatheup it's generally deep and slow. I don't consider it hyperventilation, i have never had any of the symptoms (tingling in fingers, dizziness, odd tastes, etc...) of hyperventilation. I'm just wondering if there is a better pattern then just breathing for an extended period of time. Or should i be taking shallow breaths?

 

[trux]

Any brething above the natural needs of the body is hyperventilation. And deep breathing, although slow is leading to excessive removal of CO2 from the body very easily, because besides the increased nminute volume, you additionally completely blow away the dead space in the trachea+mouth/sinus, so you are removing the CO2 quicker than with shallow breathing. Dizziness and tingling is sign of already very excessive hyperventilation, but it does not mean the CO2 level is on normal level when you do not yet feel any such symptoms.

 

[trux]

Just copying my own text from another thread, to avoid having to retype it all:

Most "breath-ups" lead to lesser or bigger hyperventilation. The exhale/inhale ratio is little important. What is important is the number and the volume of the breaths. In relaxed state you breath flatly (~0.5 liter) around 12 times per minute. If you breath up slowly (say 4 times per minute), but deeply (say 4 liters), you hyperventilate (in our case 16 liters instead of 6).

Also reducing the heart-rate prior the dive by slow exhales is questionable. In fact you need your heart running fast before the dive - that helps keeping the venous blood oxygenated. You want it low during the dive (and even that is not always necessarily true).

There is a certain trade off between the advantages and disadvantages of hyperventilation. Moderate hyperventilation helps keeping more oxygen especially in the venous blood, but decreases the hypoxia tolerance. Hence the ideal preparation would keep maximal possible level of CO2, while keeping the oxygen supply higher than consumption to increase the O2 saturation in venous blood.

However that's a bit contradictory. With hyperventilation it happens thanks to the high heart rate and the blood alkalosis (limiting the O2 discharging from hemoglobin). We do not want the later, since it means less protection against hypoxia, and because it can lead to depleting O2 stores in the tissue (namely in myoglobin) before the breath-hold starts. The maximal muscular and cerebral relaxation, while maintaining relatively high heart-rate seems to be the way. Certain level of moderate hyperventilation may be helpful too, but 100% of freedivers hyperventilate more than needed already without admiting it, so it should really never be tought to beginners, and never used when perfect safeguards are not in place.

 

[patbrassil]

Thanks, i understand what your saying better now

 

[cdavis]

Hi Pat, Welcome to DB. We don't have many Rhode Islanders, tough place to spearfish.

I'll assume you are diving fairly shallow in mediocre vis and suggest accordingly.

Hyperventilation is a tricky subject. Trux is right, you are hyperventilating by the traditional definition and it does reduce your safety margin. That's where it gets tricky. Most divers hyperventilate some, many way too much and don't know it, but most divers will also find that no hyperventilation at all means their dives are shorter and less comfortable than they want. The trick is too reduce it to a minimum, preferably zero, and still get your dives in. It is possible to go to zero.

IMHO, you are overbreathing way more than you need to. Try breathing normally, don't think about it, just relax. Just before you dive do 1 to 3 purge breathes. That should get you the same length comfortable dive with much less breathing effort and less co2 blowoff. Play with it, trying to reduce the purges to zero. At first,carrying down more c02 than normal may feel pretty weird and not very comfortable, but you will find that contractions are less intense, increase in severity more slowly, and your "comfortable" dive time will grow over time.

You might want to look into FRC diving with a minimal breathup approach. Works very well, especially in shallower water. Gives longer dive times than full lung, but takes a fair bit of practice to make it work and needs a carefull approach. There are a bunch of good threads on FRC and most any other subject you are interested in.

Good luck with it

Connor

 

[patbrassil]

Haha yea i geuss it depends on your views of depth, my average diving is 30-70ft and a day with 10ft of viz is considered a good day. Theres about a month left of diving left up here for those of us willing to brave the cold. Just had our first snow tonight so a thermos of warm water just added my dive gear haha. Thanks for the welcome and if anyone ever finds themselves in the Northeast feel free to look me up

 

[patbrassil]

Hey just wanted to say i've been playing around with my breath up and got my new pb static today of 4.15min. I took a lot of what you guys took into account and the routine (that seems to be working for me now) i've settled on is 4 full exchange breathes followed by a minute of slow steady breathing focusing on calming and relaxing myself. I think the biggest gain was from actually getting into a pool with a spotter today, it was a huge comfort and confidence gain. Thanks guys

 

[Poida]

I am not a free diver as such, but a casual snorkler.

But I am also a fitness trainer.

Breathing has come to the forefront of fitness training both in the physical and biological sense.

What Trux has said is in line with current feelings on breathing, ie your body or perhaps brain knows how to do it, and it is only when we take over the control of our own breathing we stuff it up.

The CO2 in your blood controls the PH balance of your blood and forcefull exhillation expells too much CO2 which increases the PH balance.

Why is this important?

That is how your blood drops Oxygen to where it is needed, the CO2 that is produced by your muscles drops the PH level of your blood making it release Oxygen.

If you expell too much CO2 your blood PH level is too high and the Oxygen will not release, and fatigues the muscles.

Sports people are encouraged to nose breathe to limit the amount they breathe, but with a snorkle in your mouth that control needs to be maintained.

Poida