General training question/survey

[Triton1715]

I know the question of "how to train" has been hashed and rehashed ad nauseum in the threads over the years, but I'm curious to get a different take on it from anyone willing to chime in.

There are many various types and routines of training for freediving ranging from tables, pool routines, statics, general weight training, hypoxic weight training, apnea walking/running, and on and on. Unfortunately, for many, we simply don't have enough time to explore all the various options and obviously each style of training typically helps a specific style of diving (i.e. training for spearfishing will most likely be different than training for statics, etc).

So what I'm curious about is: If you only had 3 sets of one hour a week to train, what would your routine be and what style of diving would it be for? Ideally, body type would also be a good thing to put in since it obviously helps play a role in what form of exercise you do. If you're lean and pretty active in the day, there's probably not much need to add cardio to your routine.

I'm curious about this for a host of reasons, but namely I'm stuck with that amount of time for the next month and a half and can't get to a pool perhaps more than once a week. For a dive trip in late June, I can't decide whether I should spend my small amounts of dry time working on weight training, working cardio-based stuff, or just working tables. Were it not for freediving, I'd be working kata and weights quite a bit as I'm a karate instructor and enjoy that workout routine. However, I'm concerned that an hour or so of hard cardio-style exercise will hurt my apnea more than anything else. . .diminishing or negative returns and all even though I'd love to drop some weight and tone up a bit.

For what it's worth, in my ideal world to get in shape for general freediving, I would've had the time 2 months ago to start an aggressive cardio routine and weight training (being 5'10" and about 190lb with between 20-25% body fat). I would've then dropped the cardio for the last month or so and focused more on weights and apnea. In the past, that seems to have yielded decent results for me, but I haven't experimented with much various training to know if there was a more efficient way. With only a month and a half to go, I'm thinking about following the last half of my game plan, but really want the cardio portion to trim down and get better endurance. I'm just not sure at this point if doing that much cardio will kill-off my dive times completely and I'd have been better off doing nothing. ;-)

Any thoughts out there?

 

[Lehmann108]

Why do you thank cardio would "kill-off" your dive times? It can only improve your dive times by improving the efficiency of your heart and circulatory system.

 

[Triton1715]

There is much about the topic of cardio and freediving in the forum threads and I should've been more specific, but the general consensus and my own experience is that beyond a certain point of general "physical fitness cardio", excessive amounts negatively impact freediving. When I'm at or near my peak training for martial arts, my heart rate will often be in 220ish range for 20+minutes and in the 170-200 range for 40 minutes which is great for fighting, but obviously bad for freediving. I don't think that the average person doing cardio is doing it at that intensity and has that high of a rate. I should've delineated that difference better since technically even going for a slow jog or brisk walk would be considered cardio. Nonetheless, Kars wrote about it best and in the most concise manner, so I've copied and pasted it below:



"
Medium aerobic abilities are needed, outstanding aerobic abilities may prevent people getting past the 'easy' to learn first 5 minutes men, 4 for women.

Bad conditioning
The trouble with high level aerobic training is that one teaches the body to have the wrong reaction to low O2.
Under stress and high O2 needs, the body learns to increase the Heart Rate. Freedivers want it to stay down.

Some modest aerobic training in combination with a healthy diet can help to loose weight, clean up the body, cardio vascular system, and mind. However to prevent it from interfering with my freediving, I would not push the envelope, and slow down when I feel I'm getting out of breath. That means jogging instead of running. Or in water, just a modest pace you could keep up 'forever'.

Easy phase, struggle phase
In Freediving we have several phase's we go through. I just mention the two most important ones: Easy phase, struggle phase.
The easy phase is where your body has plenty of O2 and works aerobically.
The struggle phase starts when tension and or contractions set in, from then on there is a scarcity of O2 and abundance of CO2. The muscles will get less O2, and will change over to work anaerobically. This slows down the overall metabolism(O2 burning), and allows relaxed freedivers to swim so far beyond the easy phase. Usually the first 50-75m are the easy phase, after that it's the anaerobic phase, which is tough but can be learned to be tolerated and even enjoyed.

What will happen if you have a high Aerobic ability?
Well your heart is conditioned to speeding up and pumping more volume to accommodate the muscles, who are also better supplied by more and bigger veins, and can better absorb the O2 out of the bloodstream. The result is that instead of slowing down the circulation, and transferring to anaerobic muscle work, the body stays longer in aerobic, consuming much more O2 and leaving much less for the brain and heart to use. The final result is that these divers have to give up because they do not have enough O2 for their brain. They have very little or no 'leg burn' - acid build up, and recover quickly from their dives. Freedivers who have their body switch faster to 'freediving mode' will have their legs and other muscles feel like very heavy, even impossible to use, however they have still enough O2 in their bloodstream to sustain their heart and brain. Because their muscles are full of acid they can not do a similar dive without hours of recovery.

Due to the long and fast cycling to my job, I'm having a high aerobic ability, and therefore my dives have to end because of lack of O2 in circulation, whilst my muscles feel hardly no lactic acid at all."

 

[Lehmann108]

Interesting reading, but how much of this is derived from physiological research ?

 

[Triton1715]

Interesting reading, but how much of this is derived from physiological research ?

Always a good question. Having read all of the forum threads about 3 times over the years and followed up on most of Murat's or Trux's posts and links to any available research, I'd say that pretty much all of freedive physiology is derived from general physiological research and cumulative experimentation. The problem is that there is very little academic research that specifically addresses freediving. Consequently, most has to be extrapolated from experience and other research (like hypoxic conditions and responses in high altitude pilots from Navy and Air Force studies). Hence these forums. If there was lots of academic research an established evidence and such the threads wouldn't be filled with people shooting in the dark.

So, short answer: pretty much about the same amount as the rest of freediving knowledge.

My personal experience confirms the above information, but I've read about others that are exactly the opposite. I think there's probably a lot of variables that range from body type (muscular vs lean) to level of cardio to style of cardio (going for a lite jog vs aggressively working katas and fighting technics will yield different results), general level of metabolism, as well as style of diving and activity in other sports. Hence my initial question for everyone.

 

[Joao Pedro]

I'm a total beginner and I'm having trouble to find a routine, I'm making no progress which is kind of sad to me. But I wonder, can you really overtrain tables? Even 1 per day doesn't seems to be so much to the point of making you think of overtraining...

You are totally right about academic research on the subject. It's really rare to find anything related to freediving. If you search scientific papers with the word 'apnea' you will get results about 'sleeping apnea' haha. Guess this is one of the activities where normal people develop and later the science comes to back it up and/or explain.

Since it is up to us to push the limits and learn, I'm available for testing and providing feedback of the results. Have a great week!

 

[Mullins]

Why do you thank cardio would "kill-off" your dive times? It can only improve your dive times by improving the efficiency of your heart and circulatory system.

Got links to any studies showing improved respiratory efficiency with training? By efficiency I mean muscular output per unit of O2.

 

[cdavis]

Triton,

Hard question and very person specific. Here's my take.

For a week in Cayman, diving every day, a lot of the day, it seems like 2 things will be most important to you, 1, being in good enough cardio shape to not burn out, i.e. having sufficient stamina and 2, maximizing DR. The cardio I'll leave to you. With 3 sessions a week of a hour each, I'd spend a quarter hour each session on fast laps with fins to strengthen the legs and the rest on DR. Half lung is a good way to practice. Relax, take a half breath, hold still to first contraction, then swim slowly underwater til it feels like you should come up. No need to push things. Do it over and over, with a good recovery period. Again, no need to push things. The initial static gets your DR started and a slow, very relaxed swim thereafter allows it to deepen. Slow is important. As your DR improves, you will find it possible to go farther and farther with little discomfort and, if you like, speed up a bit near the end of the swim.

You mentioned getting much longer dives later in a trip. Thats not unusual. I think its a combination of better relaxation and better trained DR. This training regime sets you up to see that improvement earlier in your trip.

 

[Triton1715]

Triton,

Hard question and very person specific. Here's my take.

For a week in Cayman, diving every day, a lot of the day, it seems like 2 things will be most important to you, 1, being in good enough cardio shape to not burn out, i.e. having sufficient stamina and 2, maximizing DR. The cardio I'll leave to you. With 3 sessions a week of a hour each, I'd spend a quarter hour each session on fast laps with fins to strengthen the legs and the rest on DR. Half lung is a good way to practice. Relax, take a half breath, hold still to first contraction, then swim slowly underwater til it feels like you should come up. No need to push things. Do it over and over, with a good recovery period. Again, no need to push things. The initial static gets your DR started and a slow, very relaxed swim thereafter allows it to deepen. Slow is important. As your DR improves, you will find it possible to go farther and farther with little discomfort and, if you like, speed up a bit near the end of the swim.

You mentioned getting much longer dives later in a trip. Thats not unusual. I think its a combination of better relaxation and better trained DR. This training regime sets you up to see that improvement earlier in your trip.

Thanks Cdavis! As always, I very much appreciate your input. I was leaning towards something along the lines that you suggested, so I'm going to basically take away that I am on the right track to optimizing the little training I get to have. I'm planning on trying out a new pool today so, fingers-crossed they let me play and that I can make any headway with it ;-)

Many thanks again!

 

[cdavis]

The static/dynamic exercise can result in some very long dives, the kind that upset lifeguards. Just a suggestion, have your head above water during the static.

 

[John B Griffith Jr]

Got links to any studies showing improved respiratory efficiency with training? By efficiency I mean muscular output per unit of O2.

"Physical exercise leads to an increase in the arteriovenous oxygen difference in all individuals. As exercise intensities increase, the muscles increase the amount of oxygen they extract from the blood and this therefore results in further increases in a-vO2 diff.[5]

The maximum a-vO2 diff is also usually greater in trained athletes than in untrained individuals.[1] This is a result of aerobic exercise leading to hypertrophy of the slow twitch muscle fibres mainly due to increased capillarisation. The increase in capillary beds in the muscle means that blood supply to that muscle can be greater and diffusion of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and other metabolites increases.[6] With training the muscles also improve in their ability to extract oxygen from the blood and process the oxygen,[6] possibly due to adaptations of the mitochondria and an increase in the muscle's myoglobin content.[1]" Arteriovenous oxygen difference. (2015, March 3). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:15, April 28, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arteriovenous_oxygen_difference&oldid=649700312

So, tends to support the assumption that harder aerobic training actually increased O2 recruitment, which would be contra-indicated in depth and distance applications.