Exhale Diving for the "average" diver

Tommy_R said:

thank you for your answers so far...

ok i get the point with the mouthfill ... 100m is far beyond my limits

but i couldn't find anything about laminars " submaximal breathing" for the breathup.

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Basically, it is breathing as naturally as possible so as not to alter blood pH. I don't purge, I don't have a set breathing pattern, I hold my breath often during the "breathe up" to guard against unconscious hyperventilation. Essentially, I don't waste effort with big inhalations and exhalations. Sometimes, if I'm weighted a little heavier and not floating very high in the water, I'll inhale slightly more than usual to offset the ambient pressure of the water around my ribcage.

The main purpose of the "breathe up" in my view (the term is misleading and should be changed) is to rest. That's it. If you breathe naturally, you'll have plenty of 02 and get rid of waste products from muscle work. You just need to allow for enough time. Most people ]move around or have tension when they are busy "breathing up."

Also, thinking about "breathing up" correctly can cause enough anxiety to make it detrimental.

I wasn't talking about packing for dives but using them as a dry exercise to increase flexibility.I don't know what you did in the past connor but i think eric and laminar did a lot of packing so they already had enough flexibility when they stopped packing.
So my question was more refering to dry reverse pack statics and packstretching than pack/reversepack diving.
You also recommend not to do this ?

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My lungs were not flexible at all from packing in a functional way. Sure I could get 9L of air out of my lungs with a forceful exhale after packing, but that didn't help me dive deeper or avoid lung squeeze.

After most dive sessions in the old days, my lungs/chest wall would feel stretched, sore and I would often feel like I couldn't get a breath without effort. I was doing something unnatural to my breathing apparatus!

After only a few weeks of FRC diving with no other preparation, I quickly surpassed best depths on full exhale (during packing era) with surprising ease. Packing does not equal chest flexibility in a useful way.

Now, on to reverse packing, dry and wet. I still think that whether dry or wet, the chance for injury is too great. I've seen and heard of other people get squeezed from dry reverse packing! Stupid! Because the change in pressure is always too fast.

Even uddhiyana bandha done incorrectly can hurt you. Reverse packing is beyond that.

That said, many do this type of exercise and swear by it. I just think there's an easier way, less stressful that accomplishes the same thing:

Focus on stimulus that your body will actually encounter during a dive:
1. Slow long term change in lung volume
2. Dive response activation
3. Lungs and rest of body under same changing ambient pressure

The problem I see with dry or wet negatives with or without reverse packing is that both create an unusual pressure on the lungs that is not shared by the rest of the body. At the bottom of the pool on full exhale, your lungs may be at 200m ( :duh ) but the rest of you is still only at 3-4m. Not at all like a real dive.

No surprise to me that some people do negatives a lot and:
-can't equalize very deeply at all
-get squeezed
-get pressure contractions and turn around
-descend and ascend too fast because they are anxious
-end up rushing depth progression so that they don't actually learn much about the changes their body goes through and the wonderful and unpleasant sensations they may encounter.

The beauty of FRC and submax breathe up /resting phase is that from the moment you are in the water, your body knows what will be happening:

Your body is under pressure greater than 1 ATM.

That is consistent for your whole time in the water unless:
-you pack
-you breach out of the water 10 feet into the air rofl
-you are on Titan 3

This consistency allows your body (IMHAEO) to find a point of equilibrium. Why is FRC so effective in most cases and when done right in helping develop amazing ability to equalize deeply or adapt to pressure? Because while the change in pressure is something that we focus on, the constant state is being at a pressure greater than 1 ATM, even if it is only slightly greater than 1 ATM at the surface.

How else do you explain a limit of 8-9m full exhale negative pressure dive (and I do mean full exhale) after three years of variations on packing and inhale diving vs. an increase to 17-18m in two and a half weeks after gentle FRC dives to 15-25m? That's 8-9 dives per session, a session every three days, 5 sessions total.

I think the lungs prefer to function within regular parameters as much as possible. There are definitely people who can pack until the cows come home and dive deep. That's not what I'm talking about though. What's the easiest way to dive with the least amount of discomfort and chance for injury?

Luckily, FRC will take care of all your need for depth and/or distance.... for most of us, anyway.

Pete

Thanks a lot,

for i don't have to break any records i think i'm just taking it easy and try to do a slow and safe improvement without the reverse packs.

Tommy

@connor

i did a master course over 3 months.
That means i've been in the water about 3-4 hours a day ( every day for that 3 months) and i did safety for 50% of all the students in the beginner and advanced courses.So there where a real lot of students and perhaps i just got the ones that had too much party the night before.
In the advanced course they do a few frc/exhale dives just to show the students the feeling of getting compressed.
And that exercise was the only one any of them got problems.
That showed me how hard it is to estimate your reserves o2 during frc dives.
None of them was in a mental training state to really push him self to that limit.
They just didn't realize they're out of o2 ( one smiled in my face gave me an ok sighn on his way up and boed 2 seconds after that ). None of them fully exhaled and none went down more than 10m but they stayed to long feeling comfortable the whole time.
I really like frc diving but i was very careful from that point on


Tommy

Perhaps they were diving with an "inhale style" - moving around a lot, tense, wasting energy, etc...

Diving FRC is something to approach carefully and over a long period of time. It requires a whole new mentality. Perhaps it is not a good thing to add on at the end of a course with inhale dives (and packing?).

Speaking of air. I've been doing a lot of shallow dives lately - as is normal around here - particularly in summer - because the deep water is out there with the boats. Anyway - these have been around a breakwall (the one with the suckers, Cdavis) - which is just busting out with life right now. Because the dives are mostly <8 meters I've been adjusting ballast with breath - diving quite a bit on half a lungful or less. I'm beginning to understand the comfort factor with this type of diving - I think it is in some measure due to the overall neurological configuration affected by exhalation. I can see a natural evolution toward more of this type of diving but, for my part, I think I'll approach it in a spirit of quantum insurgency.

Hmm
they where just hanging on the rope and not moving around.
I didn't want to scare you connor i just wanted to explain why i am a lot more careful with that kind of technique.
To be honest i can't remember all their performances but they all where in good shape ( one of them did a 6min static after 4 day course .... grrr ... i still can't do that )
I didn't check their breathup but they did about the same as for inhale dives, and for all of them where very very ambitious they tended to over-( hyper) ventilate.
So i just think that ( slight hyperventilation) combined with exitement and compression which triggered enough dive response, got them over their limits.
As mentioned they really didn't move at all exept the hangling down and up the rope .... but they stayed really long ( and i think most of them where closer to empty lung than frc .... ambitious:blackeye.. )
i still think it's not too scary ... they exaggerated a bit and learned their lesson ( and so did I, by doing the safety )
For me that just points out what laminar said in all the other posts: You have to improve slow and try not to push yourself to fast.
They just didn't know how their body reacts on a empty lung dive .... give yourself enough time to learn that and there shouldn't be a problem at all.


Tommy

@ laminar : there was no packing , and it was no real " frc" divestyle lesson they just should feel the compression once.
usually they did 2 exahle dives in a course ... as a warmup for their final " deep " dive ( most of the time 20-28m).

cdavis said:

Tommy, thanks very much for the detailed report. I'd been wanting to get some info on exhale dive B0s.

Sounds like lowering your ventilation level is more important than I realized. I tried a lower level of ventilation in the pool today, did not cut my dive times to any significant degree. Feels kind of strange (and uncomfortable at first), going down with a higher level of co2 than normal, but I guess the body just adapts.

Connor

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This style of diving is so much counter to where freediving has gone before this. Simple and effective. No "breathing up" and no effort to get down. And both are absolutely critical.

Since my heart problems and no breathholding or diving at the docs orders for the last three years. But now with my heart fixed and medicals signed, I feel like a beginner freediver. Everything feels strange, just like it did at the start. My static is now only 3 minutes (but I know it will return with training). My limiting factor apart from low statics (PB 4:20), was always equalising, I always had to turn through failing an equalise, never because of running out of O2. In order to equalise I would pack, I needed the air to equalise to -57m. Without packing I would fail much sooner and now this thread says dont pack and even dont take a lungful with you. I find it hard to believe.

Despite that, my theory is that with my current low static, I probably wont have sufficient underwater time (for a season) to get deep enough for equalising to become the limiting factor. One day I will get deep again, so I might as well try to learn FRC as this should provide more equalisation training as I spend time above 30m getting used to being under water again.

However, the problem I see, is lack of bouyancy. It was always a comfort to me on the ascent, that I could pass through 30m and then relax, ultimately reaching the surface. Now I will have to expend much more effort swimming all the way to the surface, just at the time when O2 is dropping off rapidly through the lower intake of O2 at the start and greater effort at the end. I am not convinced and still in the old mindsight of three years ago.

I do like the idea of gliding right from the start though, and therefore having nothing else to do, but learn to equalise on less air volume. Hopefully , once trained again, I will have the equalising technique sorted and with a mended heart that beats properly now, I might even be in better condition than before.

at what depths do you start encountering narcosis

The shallowest I've been narked is at just over 60m, but that was a recent VW spearfishing dive and I only noticed it after 20-30 seconds on the bottom. On normal CW dives narcosis is noticeable past about 80m for me, then gets really strong on the way up (producing CO2). I expect you'd get less narked on FRC dives because you don't produce as much CO2.

I guess Eric is the only diver who's been deep enough on FRC to experience narcosis. Well, him and Seb. Murat.

Why would having less nitrogen in your lungs reduce the amount present in your blood? I mean, the amount dissolved is presumably not limited by the amount available in your lungs otherwise you'd lose most of your lung volume over the course of a dive.

Mutants.

Now I feel all pathetic. I got nobody to spot me so I've just been doing limp little 50 meter monofin sprints 3 or 4 times a week - plus a couple 2-3 hour dives on the weekends.. I can't even find water thats 90 feet deep.

cdavis said:

Update.

Today I did a 2:55 that included a 2 minute static and a 50 yard swim. It wasn't all that hard and on an day I was a little off.

Connor

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Connor, let me get this straight: you swim 50M DYN (in a pool I guess) with a monofin(?), and hang about 2 mins thereafter in static? Again, this is with about 50% full inhale, and the "submaximal breathing"? At what point are contractions starting?

Would you describe yourself as a "do good in pools" person in general or "better deep"?

Looks like something quite cool is happening to you..