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From 5'40'' to 6'00'' HELP!

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
It can take a long time to get an up-to-date response or contact with relevant users.

Alejandro Mirab

New Member
Dec 22, 2008
10
2
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Hi all. I am trying to get in the 6', I can do 5' any day, even 5'30'' or 5'40'' but it's a bit dificult to go over theese numbers.
Today i will try to do 6' so i spended the day before and the morning eating only alkaline stuff. And since that i am going to keep my stomach empty and drink 3L of water. What do you recomend me?
How do you guys do before a static? oh.. and do you warm up before with small breath holds?...

Thanks :hungover
 
Hi Alejandro, Why alkaline? I usually go much more acidic with my diet before a big hold. Doing this along with lots of FRV holds (empty lung) as warm up's got me from 5.30 to 6.08. Not sure if it was just that but it did work for me.

I also improved my cardio fitness which i also belived helped me.

I also used to stop eating 8-9hrs before but found this too much and ended up having bad headaches etc, now i just stop eating about 3-4hrs before and big hold and only 2hrs before training (i like food too much)

I think that the negative holds (FRV) stretch your diapham in the opposite way during contractions which along with normal inhale holds give your diapham and good stretch both ways which make contractions feel lighter.

I usually do 3x FRV holds all around the minute mark. Then a couple of full inhale hold (no packing) for around 2.40 then another full inhale with packing but only taking 10 very slow contractions (about 3.40ish) then another full inhale with packing for 20 slow contractions (4.20ish) then a final full inhale and pack for 60 contractions which takes me up to 6mins or so.

I've only hit the 6min mark twice before as i stopped training for a few weeks (christmas and stuff) but bac to training myself now so it shouldn't be long.

Not saying that i know everything as i'm fairly newish myself just telling you what worked for me.

Have a look through my blogspot on my signature below (2008 posts) i'm sure we are around the same in terms of progress.

Let us know how you get on?
 
Hi,

It's difficult to give any form of advice right now. You should first tell a little bit about the holds you are doing know. For instance, are you happy you made it this far and confident you can do more? Or perhaps you are frustrated that you keep stopping at the 5'30'' mark? After you finished you're previous holds did you recover within a few seconds or did it take quite a bit longer? How relaxed were you during those holds? If you can answer these kind of questions you probably also get a feeling for what you should be training next.

cheers, Eric
 
Hi Chris, I'm also quite newbee in this, the reason i'm doing the alkaline diet (lemon,banana,honey,dark veggies,etc) its because of what i understood it gives you a plus time with smaller contractions and the oxigen trade it's bigger. But well, that's not everything i know. Yesterday i tryed holding my breath and i did 5min50 easy(10sec more than my two years old personal best) only stoping because of my friend telling me that i was to purple. But i did my surface protocol very well and not even a sign of lack of motor control.
Also my trainner didn't let me do as i wanted. I wanted, my idea was warming up a bit doing only 3min with small resting in between. But he made me do a hipoxic trainning before :S so i was doing 3min with only 25sec of resting for almost an hour. Not really what i wanted to do before a big hold. And after all this breath holding i only did 1min of breathing before the big hold.
It didn't went to bad.
Doing 5min50 that ''easy'' builded up my confidence a lot. So tomorrow im going for the 6min tomething for sure.
But i wont be 12hours without eating, it's to much for me :D i will do as you do 5h or 4h only.
Thanks a lot for the answers. I will check your blog now.
 
Hi Eric, well i'm not a very negative person so yes i'm happy doing 5'40'' but that was two years ago and i started building a mental wall around this time. After a hold i dont do much, i warm up holding my breath 2 or 3 times till i get some contractions but not pushing it far. So in my first hold i can have 1 contraction at two something, in the second hold i can have a contraction at 3, in the third i feel mentaly ''sleepy'' and relaxed so i have my first contraction almost at 4min. I normaly look at my watch after the first soft contractions if i see that they started after the 3min i go for the big hold. My contractions are never to strong and i am learning now to relax between them. Now i feel more confident to go for the 6 or more. What do you think?
Thanks for the time.
Alex
 
3min and 25" rest for an hour? UH!! that REALLY gets you bored
i try not to go over 40-45 mins, otherwise i would sleep soon before the hour

when going for the big hold, i make 3-4 holds, usually something like 2', 2'40", 3'30", 4'30", then the attempt

what are you doing while "suffering" near your exit? someone walks around the pool, or hold something tight, even swim!! if you are one of those, try relaxing again, instead, it's absolutely hard, but the energy saving make some difference
at least, this seems to work for me (i play with my fingers)
 
Hi,

Congratulations on crossing your mental barrier! I'm sure the 6 minutes will come soon enough. It's just 6:10 minus some seconds or 5:50 plus some, whichever way you want to look at it.

Your last two posts contain the word contraction more than a few times. You also write that you are learning now to relax in between. The exercise you were doing for 60 minutes (3:00 hold, 0:25 rest) I find a bit strange I must say. It certainly is not an hypoxic (low O2) table and as a CO2 table the rest period usually decreases at the end (or in the middle in case it's an pyramidical table). Maybe this is the reason why it is taking so long. Personally I try to keep these kind of exercises to a max of 30 minutes, which is the longest I can or want to be able to keep focus when the table in intense.

IMHO you mostly need CO2 tables at this this stage. I only use one-breath per hold tables these days because they make sure I don't cheat or blow of too much CO2. To make the table (mostly mentally) easier it's a pyramidical table (the holds are longest halfway). (note: the table gets easier once you have done it a couple of times so I took a p.b. of 5:30 for this one)

3x1:22 , 4x1:30 , 4x1:39, 4x1:30, 3x1:22 (26:48 in total)
You might want to write down the starttime of all 18 holds so you can keep the stopwatch running.

So after the first 1:22 you exhale completely, inhale completely and wait for another 1:22 to repeat the process. If it's really getting too hard you insert an extra exhale, inhale somewhere in the middle of a hold. Try not to allow yourself to take two breaths! And in case you are still wondering: yes! it's fracking hard. :martial But remember the change of blackout here is very very small, but you want a buddy nonetheless.

cheers, Eric
----------------------
Eric van Riet Paap - Just an intermediate step
 
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hi Gabriele
Well, i normally use the same warm up than you. It's the only thing till now that fitsme the most.
About the suffering part, i don't move at all, only about a one minute before surfacig to grab the pool side. (I blow air from my lungs into my mouth and then swallow it again)
 
Hi Eric, good advice. I see your blog (you are one of my followers) well i should be saying i'm following you really! I left you a comment and must start to have a good read through.

I'm off to the pool myself in 3hrs...
 
hi Gabriele
About the suffering part, i don't move at all, only about a one minute before surfacig to grab the pool side. (I blow air from my lungs into my mouth and then swallow it again)

IMHO: your is one minute spent with some rigidity in upper articulations... you don't actually (let's say: phisically) need to grab the pool side, it's right right there and your buddy would keep your head a few cm from it

maybe it makes you feel safer, but you can work on it making shorter statics and getting used to exit in some smooth, relaxed way

another tip (always IMHO): blowing air in your mouth means reducing O2 pressure in your lungs
ok, i know it's just a second, maybe two or maybe less, but if you're near to BO (and you can't even say that), it might make the difference from a clean exit to samba or BO and we won't oficialize your 6:00 :t
 
I don't find that statics are ever that consistent. Maybe you're over-thinking the whole thing and should work on mind control and general relaxation. On a good day my dives can be a good minute longer solely due to relaxation and/or determination. 10-20s is nothing in the world of statics. Just keep trying.
 
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