Constant With No Warm Up

[samdive]

I've always been a stickler for at least a couple of warm up dives - reasons being 1) gives the body a chance to get used to being in the water and for reflexes to kick in 2) gives me a chance to calm down and get head in right place and 3) working down gradually should help prevent lung squeeze.... at least that's what I've always worked on..

then... diving in mid winter in the UK, I see my SaltFree colleagues get away with warming up totally dry and then making one dive to some pretty significant depth with no apparent consequences... I'm fairly sure that if I did that my lungs would be bleeding all over the place - if I made it...

anyone got a view on this?

S

 

[BennyB]

Interesting, for me the warm up dives are more of a confidence and self check thing, ie. make sure the ears are equalising, nothing's wrong with equipment, that the head is in the right place and to get comfortable in the water (inducing the DR). I wouldn't feel confident enough to just jump in and go for a max, even if I had done some dry warm ups.

I know and understand that the no warm up approach does invoke more of a survival response which is probably stronger than a dive response but I am diving within my limits and doing this I can still subscribe to the relaxation school of thought.

Cheers,
Ben

 

[sebastien murat]

The important factor is to ensure that your limbs (not necessarily your core) are cold, and that you haven't drunk excessively before diving. In other words, the centralization of blood must occur quickly or be prep-up before diving.

Seb

 

[OceanMan]

I've always been a stickler for at least a couple of warm up dives - reasons being 1) gives the body a chance to get used to being in the water and for reflexes to kick in 2) gives me a chance to calm down and get head in right place and 3) working down gradually should help prevent lung squeeze.... at least that's what I've always worked on..

Hi Sam,
1) Talking about the DR, a few dry empty lung statics would do the same job or even better.
2) Again, dry statics calm you down, get head in right place ... and keep you warm.
3) All my dives in SaltFree were no warm-up dives (at least no warm up in water, only a few dry statics) and as you know I had lung squeeze once. Now, did it increased the probability of getting squeezed? I don't know. I think that the fact of diving only once in a month is more of a problem when it comes to lung sueeze.

Seb, when air temperature is 7-9°C and water temperature is 7°C (surface), I can tell you that I don't want my limbs to be cold. In Saltfree, it was a constant fight to stay warm until your dive. At the beginning I was always shivering before my dive, resulting in bad dives. After some time, I started to brought (very) hot water in a thermos flask. After a few dry statics with my 5mm wetsuit on, I usually started to get cold. Then, I would put some hot water directly into my wetsuit through the hood. This way, when breathing up for my dive I could be completely relaxed. Almost immediately after the dive I would start shivering again. Thanks to this routine (invented by Rémi ), I improved my dives greatly during the cold season.

Hope my experience helps,
M

 

[sebastien murat]

I often see divers using one or two recipes for their perparation. It's not that easy or simple. If you don't have a 'deeper' physiological undertstanding of thermoregulation one is condemned to making the same mistakes over and over again.
There should be no such thing as cold, from a diver's point of view! Diving in the low teens is not 'normal' for humans. Consequently, if you do, you have to find fixes to your problems. I'll dive in surface temp of 18-19, for example, with just board-shorts. Depending on my prep. this will feel either cold or comfortable. One must seperate between periphery and core, and there are ways of doing that quite effectively. Certainly, swimming during the descent and an insufficient Mb store will result in a greater post-diving shivering. A longer term-adaptation should not be discounted.

What I'm getting at is that the recipe isn't fixed and that one should strive to broaden one's repetoire of available preparation strategies, not simply to one or twne has to have an intimate understanding of the restrictions imposed by one's environment, what strategies may be used to benefit or combat these. In short, too many divers view water as a static medium...I see it more as a fluxing entity that sets shifting boundaries. The trick is knowing where the boundary is. To know where the boundary is one has to learn to read water and constantly adapt to its qualities...if that makes any sense without sounding to metaphysically full of crap! The good divers are not, contrary to popular opinion, those who seem systematic and consistent in their warm-ups (up to a point that's ok), rather its the ones who keep assessing the conditions, swaping and change at a moments notice. And, that's was is required for diving anywhere, anytime, and a moments notice.


My humble opinion (sometimes too opinionated..granted)

Seb

 

[samdive]

Thanks guys - all useful.

Mattias - 7C is balmy hot, it is more like 3-4 at the moment!

Seb - I totally agree on the flexibility issue - in judging myself and in judging others - I have totally come to think that the good freedivers are the ones who can dive even when their warm up doesn't work out, they are not wearing their lucky shorts, they don't get to do exactly the right amount of ins and out breaths etc.... I know when I started everything always had to be perfect, a few years later and I'm a lot more flexible at dealing what comes along once in the water (and before)

I still can't just get straight in and hit 40m though!

S

 

[Skindiver]

Probably Sam because you have not tried it when you really needed to dive that deep. And when trying it when you dont need to go deep inevitably leads to a kind of 'chickening out'.
Instead you probably went for the tried and trusted progressive depth technique. Remember how bad the waves were during Cyprus 1 ?
I did not warm up in the water. I warmed up on the barge because i remembered how i got smashed around into others and the barge in the days before.
I got in and did a first 45m dive because i had to in the time i had left to 'top' and second dive to 57m on 'top'. I was suprised how easy it was. Now that i know i can do it, its my preferred warm up method and i apply it to spearfishing comps where often the first diver down deep on the first dive of the morning will get the best fish. I have found that this works particularly well in cold water.

regards

Skin.

 

[TRITON]

More and more top freedivers(Dave M.,Will T.) employ no warming up to maximise the DR...
I have tried it in DNF and it resulted in a new PB.

 

[efattah]

At Vertical Blue, Mullins was doing 1 to 2 FRC dives for warm up, and Will Trubridge was getting frustrated with equalizing and tried doing a negative as a warm up.

 

[TRITON]

Eric do you do warm up dives for CW?

 

[turtle]

Hi Sam,

When i was diving a lot, i found that if i had a bit of a head cold resulting in sticky sinuses, quite often i would only get away with one or two dives before i couldn't equalise the sinus anymore - so i switched over to not warming up. Generally, i also found it less stressful (paradoxically) as i wouldn't have a long period of self-assessing myself during a warm-up.

f

ps. this was for full lung, no packing dives around the 50 metre mark so not massively deep

 

[efattah]

When diving with no suit, I do one FRC hang at 7-11m for about 2 minutes. Then I rest for about 6 minutes and then go for max.

With a wetsuit I need a bit more of a warm up though.

 

[TRITON]

thanks....