Eric,
I am so glad you brought this up. Where could I read Peter Lindholm analysis? I have read some of his work, but I could not find the one where he says hyperventilation raises “venous blood 02”. I assume venous blood is roughly 50% of total blood, so a 20% point increase in O2 there could be large.
The problem I have with this is its contradictory to my own experience and what Kirk and Martin taught me. With my own O2 tests I found that the more hyperventilation I did the more comfortable I was (less contractions), but the quicker my O2 dropped. This was accomplished with doing hyperventilation followed by slow breaths to regain composure, with 3 to 4 purges (more hyperventilation) right before mild packing. I did this for several weeks, before I finally determined I would never reach the same O2 as I was achieving earlier. The idea was to lower the pain from CO2, which was accomplished, but at the sacrifice of shorter times. All my best O2% at 4:00 minutes have been with little hyperventilation and a high amount of pain. It seems the more pain at the 4:00 mark, the better the O2.
I decided to go the other direction and reduce hyperventilation to none. One dry static I even eliminated the whole breathup and the warm-up holds. Just took one large breath, packed 5 times, and went. The pain was outrageous, but some interesting things happened. At 1:00 minute my heart rate was 51 bpm, at 2:00 minutes it reached an all-time low of 38 bpm, and at 3:00 it was 39 bpm. I have been down to 39 bpm about 6 times, but that was always around 4:00 and it slowly rises after that. The 2 and 3-minute marks were about 30 beats below average and 19 and 14 beats below the lowest I have ever recorded for those times. After that it rose to the lower 40’s.
My O2 was consistently the 2nd highest for the whole time of the hold that lasted until 4:30, which was the point I just couldn’t take the pain anymore. I have tried the no breathup technique since then. My results have been I can only get the super low hr and high O2 on the very first hold, but being able to handle the pain on most days, is currently not within my ability. I was a little crazy that day. After the first hold, my hr shoots up and my O2 drops.
The Performance Freediving Student Manual says, “Hyperventilation …. This does not store extra oxygen. On the contrary, if practiced too vigorously, it will actually rob the body of oxygen”. Martin told me that in preparing for his static world record, he cut the number of purges he did down and got better results. I think he only did 2 or 3, but I could be wrong. I have even been entertaining the thought that hypercapnia (CO2 increase) might actually cause some O2 conserving changes.
What are your experiences with your fire-breathing actually increasing your O2 levels at different intervals in your statics? Although I think its wonderful for someone to break their personal bp, I can’t help wondering if any new method that included more hyperventilation, caused them to hold their breath longer by lowering the pain from CO2 and not increasing their O2. Unless the person used an oximeter or held their breath to black out with both techniques, I don’t think we can draw any conclusion about their O2 levels being more or less.
My experiences with lots of hyperventilation go hand in hand with Pezman’s statement of “hitting the wall” and with Bill’s last post of feeling good, but then having an unexpected Samba. Not the hypocapnia concern at the beginning, but plain old low O2 at the end. But maybe this is from doing the hyperventilation wrong.
Look forward to your insights,
don