Commentary Complete Guide to Understanding FRC in Freediving: Part 1

[DeeperBlue.com]

How much do you know about FRC and what it means to freediving? Check out the first section in our 3-part guide!

Read the original post on DeeperBlue.com...

 

[cdavis]

Thank you, Kristina, good article. This article seems accurate, but not nearly comprehensive. FRC, as described, is a training method for depth. All well and good, but there is another use of FRC diving, as a normal everyday way to do most of your diving. It takes some practice and is most effective in certain conditions, moderate depth primarily. When done right, it capitalizes on both the physics and the physiology of the dive. The result is longer, more comfortable, probably safer dives. Interesting side effect is an increase in equalization failure depth after several days of serial diving in substantially less than failure depth.

 

[hansa123]

I was a bit confused about by post, it should be made clear that cdavis refers to this blogpost: https://www.deeperblue.com/complete-guide-to-understanding-frc-in-freediving-part-1/

Very interesting indeed. Just to add to that: I like to do my static training on FRC because I think static is rather boring and takes a long time. Any comments or experience with this? Are FRC statics just as useful as regular statics?

 

[cdavis]

I was a bit confused about by post, it should be made clear that cdavis refers to this blogpost: https://www.deeperblue.com/complete-guide-to-understanding-frc-in-freediving-part-1/

Very interesting indeed. Just to add to that: I like to do my static training on FRC because I think static is rather boring and takes a long time. Any comments or experience with this? Are FRC statics just as useful as regular statics?

You are right hansa123, the post is in the wrong place. I could not figure out how to comment on the article, not realizing that the original thread was available.

To your question, FRC doesn't work well for static. Static training is a different animal and I've never seen any comments on that subject. I use full exhale (short) statics for diaphragm stretches, chest flexibility and training serial blood shift. I don't think FRC would work as well, but could be wrong.

 

[kzvaritch]

Thank you, Kristina, good article. This article seems accurate, but not nearly comprehensive. FRC, as described, is a training method for depth. All well and good, but there is another use of FRC diving, as a normal everyday way to do most of your diving. It takes some practice and is most effective in certain conditions, moderate depth primarily. When done right, it capitalizes on both the physics and the physiology of the dive. The result is longer, more comfortable, probably safer dives. Interesting side effect is an increase in equalization failure depth after several days of serial diving in substantially less than failure depth.

Hi cdavis! I find FRC so comprehensive that that is why there will be a part 2 and 3! I'm interested to know though - when you say a normal everyday way to do most of your diving, do you mean on the line or for fun diving too?

 

[Stephan Whelan]

I've merged the comments being made on the article into the commentary thread. This should make it easier for people to understand and navigate.

 

[cdavis]

Thanks Stephan, fixed my screw up. much nicer!

Kristina, I use half lung diving (actually about 60%) for all my diving. I do minimal line diving, mostly for training, and most of my diving is 30-90 ft reef diving, cover a lot of ground, much more like a spearo than a line diver. I've been diving almost exclusively half lung for about 10 years. For what I do, its a fabulously effective technique.

If you want to do a little research on other uses of FRC, there is quite a bit of info in the forums posted by EricF, Laminar and me.

I suspect its not a great technique for line diving, since it limits depth range and probably the sink phase of line diving. EricF tried to do a world record with it but was limited to (I think) 87 meters.

Looking forward to parts 2 and 3.