Greetings, everyone
This is my first post. I've had a question rolling around in my head for a while and thought that, perhaps, the right place to go would be where people live and breathe (pun intended) CO2 tolerance training. I've asked this question to swimmers and they mainly end up with no ideas or much thought. I've been a competitive swimmer for a good portion of my life, then triathlete, then cyclist, then swimmer once again. I'm currently training to attempt the national record in the 200 FR in my age group. That's my quick background.
CO2 tolerance seems to be one fundamental metric of fitness. The higher one's tolerance, the more depressed the breathing response for any given level of CO2. As a swimmer that's a good thing. The swimming world still calls restricted breathing sets 'hypoxic sets'. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong), that's a misnomer since it was shown that there's little oxygen stress restricting breathing to every 3rd or 4th stroke; it's mostly a CO2 stress.
Right now, from the moment I get in the water to the moment I get out, I breathe every 3rd stroke during freestyle training. It took me about 5 weeks to acclimate to restricting my respirations to every 3rd from every 2nd. (Key point: When it's race time, I switch to breathing every 2nd to take advantage of the higher CO2 tolerance).
I'm wondering how far I could take training my restricted breathing and have it be beneficial. Would there be an advantage to acclimating to breathing every 4th by default? Or 5th? How far out could the body acclimate? Would there be a point of not fully acclimating and a de-training effect take place? How far to push this and have it be advantageous? There seems to have been a large benefit to acclimating to breathing every 3rd from every 2nd.
Any thoughts you free-divers have would be awesome. Thanks for your time.
This is my first post. I've had a question rolling around in my head for a while and thought that, perhaps, the right place to go would be where people live and breathe (pun intended) CO2 tolerance training. I've asked this question to swimmers and they mainly end up with no ideas or much thought. I've been a competitive swimmer for a good portion of my life, then triathlete, then cyclist, then swimmer once again. I'm currently training to attempt the national record in the 200 FR in my age group. That's my quick background.
CO2 tolerance seems to be one fundamental metric of fitness. The higher one's tolerance, the more depressed the breathing response for any given level of CO2. As a swimmer that's a good thing. The swimming world still calls restricted breathing sets 'hypoxic sets'. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong), that's a misnomer since it was shown that there's little oxygen stress restricting breathing to every 3rd or 4th stroke; it's mostly a CO2 stress.
Right now, from the moment I get in the water to the moment I get out, I breathe every 3rd stroke during freestyle training. It took me about 5 weeks to acclimate to restricting my respirations to every 3rd from every 2nd. (Key point: When it's race time, I switch to breathing every 2nd to take advantage of the higher CO2 tolerance).
I'm wondering how far I could take training my restricted breathing and have it be beneficial. Would there be an advantage to acclimating to breathing every 4th by default? Or 5th? How far out could the body acclimate? Would there be a point of not fully acclimating and a de-training effect take place? How far to push this and have it be advantageous? There seems to have been a large benefit to acclimating to breathing every 3rd from every 2nd.
Any thoughts you free-divers have would be awesome. Thanks for your time.