Hands-free equalisation without mask/noiseclip

[Simos]

So today I found myself in the sea again after a looooooong time - felt amazing just being in the water again

I'd only been for a quick dip so I didn't take any equipment - I went for a short swim with a couple of friends and passed a spot where there was a bit of depth (couldn't have been more than 6-7m) so I decided to do a duck dive to the bottom. The others offered me their goggles but I decided not to use them as it was a bit borderline for goggle range.

I always equalise hands-free and since valsava doesn't even work for me, I had no option but to stick to hands-free. Surprisingly it did work just fine eventhough I had no noseclip or mask on but I did lose some air every time I equalised.

1. Is it possible to actually equalise hands-free without a mask/noseclip and not lose air? I am sure that if I practiced I could minimise the amount of air lost but I think I would always lose some with the way I equalise.

2. Is it possible to descend vertically down (without mask/noseclip or pinching nose) with the head at the neutral position, equalise and not have the sinuses flood with water? I don't think I could do it, when I dove I instictively looked 'down' throughout the dive but then it occurred to me that perhaps there was no reason to do so.

 

[growingupninja]

You can definitely eq hands free and not lose air. I have always eq'd hands free, obviously with a mask when spearing and in the ocean but in goggles my whole life in swimming pools and in the ocean or lakes when just duck diving from surface swims. If you are opening your etubes how are you losing air?

As far as vertical descent without flooding sinuses I can do vertical but not upside down/looking up. I will test to see if I am in true freediving neutral or am looking down. I have never worn a noseclip but there is an angle at which water enters the sinuses unless I exhale through the nose; in competition nobody wore noseclips and you just blew some air out your nose on the flipturn, also on the underwater kick portion of a backstroke length. I think I knew a couple guys who wore noseclips for backstroke but in general we had plenty of air to get through the max allowed underwater distance.

You could practice doing summersaults in a pool to learn where your 'leak' point is, or work on flipturns if they aren't something you ever learned; a competive swimmer would be able to teach you or you could probably youtube it.

 

[Simos]

You can definitely eq hands free and not lose air. I have always eq'd hands free, obviously with a mask when spearing and in the ocean but in goggles my whole life in swimming pools and in the ocean or lakes when just duck diving from surface swims. If you are opening your etubes how are you losing air?

As far as vertical descent without flooding sinuses I can do vertical but not upside down/looking up. I will test to see if I am in true freediving neutral or am looking down. I have never worn a noseclip but there is an angle at which water enters the sinuses unless I exhale through the nose; in competition nobody wore noseclips and you just blew some air out your nose on the flipturn, also on the underwater kick portion of a backstroke length. I think I knew a couple guys who wore noseclips for backstroke but in general we had plenty of air to get through the max allowed underwater distance.

You could practice doing summersaults in a pool to learn where your 'leak' point is, or work on flipturns if they aren't something you ever learned; a competive swimmer would be able to teach you or you could probably youtube it.

What you are saying makes sense - actually when I equalise in the pool using goggles only I don't lose any air (or very little) too but somehow when I dove down I was exhaling some air through my nose every time I equalised.

I think it may have been because I was a bit unsure on whether BTV would work well without the mask and whether my sinuses would flood without a mask/noseclip, so unconsciously I was exhaling too much air through the nose just to make sure.

Your suggestion for pool training sounds good - I haven't got a competitive swimming background (in fact I have no swimming background, I've done a few swimming lessons as a kid but I learned to swim when I took up freediving although I could 'float' before).

What do you mean exactly by 'leak point' by the way?

 

[growingupninja]

By leak point I meant the angle where your sinuses start to flood unless you exhale out your nose. Most serious competive swimmers are logging 15+ miles a week from a young age so that is hundreds if not thousands of flipturns per week to figure out water in your nose without paying specific attention to it. I would guess it depends on comfort and anatomy; I have never flooded my sinuses although I don't mind some water up my nose.

Re background: I only started to learn 'proper freediving' about 16 months ago although I was doing it naturally and relatively deep since I was a child, just speedo and mask when on vacation in warm water. I swam competively from the time I was 6 until into college at which point I totally burned out on it and realized that I didn't care about racing anymore but really loved the ocean. I am always intrigued and inspired by what people who got into freediving without being 'swimmers' bring to it. There is girl I train with sometimes who has beautiful monofin technique and I just always assumed she had been a butterflyer in her youth, but she told me she just learned it from training a few days a week in a pool with a freediving group in her home country...

 

[Simos]

By leak point I meant the angle where your sinuses start to flood unless you exhale out your nose. Most serious competive swimmers are logging 15+ miles a week from a young age so that is hundreds if not thousands of flipturns per week to figure out water in your nose without paying specific attention to it. I would guess it depends on comfort and anatomy; I have never flooded my sinuses although I don't mind some water up my nose.

Re background: I only started to learn 'proper freediving' about 16 months ago although I was doing it naturally and relatively deep since I was a child, just speedo and mask when on vacation in warm water. I swam competively from the time I was 6 until into college at which point I totally burned out on it and realized that I didn't care about racing anymore but really loved the ocean. I am always intrigued and inspired by what people who got into freediving without being 'swimmers' bring to it. There is girl I train with sometimes who has beautiful monofin technique and I just always assumed she had been a butterflyer in her youth, but she told me she just learned it from training a few days a week in a pool with a freediving group in her home country...

My technique is absolutely terrible so I bring nothing to it lol I started improving a bit when I was training more but I don't think I would get a decent technique unless I spent a few years on flexibility. 20 years ago things would have been easier lol

Having said this I've seen plenty of people in our club without swimming backgrounds build a decent monofin technique, especially women!

Don't be fooled by the 'few times a week with a local freediving club' - sessions can be pretty decent eg we have different sessions focusing on different aspects of freediving and the one focusing on monofin technique is quite hardcore (maybe not like competitive swimming training but still quite challenging, it resembles more the fin swimming sessions)

 

[growingupninja]

Having said this I've seen plenty of people in our club without swimming backgrounds build a decent monofin technique, especially women!

Don't be fooled by the 'few times a week with a local freediving club' - sessions can be pretty decent eg we have different sessions focusing on different aspects of freediving and the one focusing on monofin technique is quite hardcore (maybe not like competitive swimming training but still quite challenging, it resembles more the fin swimming sessions)

Yes, women seem to adapt naturally to dolphin kick. I was a butterflyer after puberty; most male swimmers rely on upper body strength to swim butterfly while many female swimmers generate most of their power from the kick portion. A few of the best female butterflyers I knew would take more than two kicks per arm stroke but no male butterflyers ever did this. And some female butterflyers were just freakishly strong all around; I remember training at a swim camp with members of the US Olympic team and one of the female olympic butterflyers routinely embarrassed all the men on the team with a medicine ball drill where we stood on the deck and shoved the balls up towards the ceiling of the pool. She could smack the ceiling everytime. For that drill most of the men (I am talking about some of olympic team members) could only just touch the roof. This is when I began to realize that at top levels of a sport, genetics start to be a limiting factor.

As far as learning dolphin kick as an adult, I taught some adult lessons back in the day and a lot of children's lessons... I am sure it is easier to learn as a child but even as a child it takes a long time; very, very few kids can do it right out of the box (I remember only one, a 7 year old girl), and most male swimmers lack the upper body strength to do the full butterfly arms and legs well until puberty. No adult I ever taught could pick it up in a week of lessons, although they could learn a decent crawl stroke in that time.

And yeah I think she said a few times a week... For 5 years but still impressive. When I usd to swim competively (nearly 20 years ago!) I don't think fin swimming as a sport existed, and I had never imagined a freediving club.

 

[Simos]

Yes, women seem to adapt naturally to dolphin kick. I was a butterflyer after puberty; most male swimmers rely on upper body strength to swim butterfly while many female swimmers generate most of their power from the kick portion. A few of the best female butterflyers I knew would take more than two kicks per arm stroke but no male butterflyers ever did this. And some female butterflyers were just freakishly strong all around; I remember training at a swim camp with members of the US Olympic team and one of the female olympic butterflyers routinely embarrassed all the men on the team with a medicine ball drill where we stood on the deck and shoved the balls up towards the ceiling of the pool. She could smack the ceiling everytime. For that drill most of the men (I am talking about some of olympic team members) could only just touch the roof. This is when I began to realize that at top levels of a sport, genetics start to be a limiting factor.

As far as learning dolphin kick as an adult, I taught some adult lessons back in the day and a lot of children's lessons... I am sure it is easier to learn as a child but even as a child it takes a long time; very, very few kids can do it right out of the box (I remember only one, a 7 year old girl), and most male swimmers lack the upper body strength to do the full butterfly arms and legs well until puberty. No adult I ever taught could pick it up in a week of lessons, although they could learn a decent crawl stroke in that time.

And yeah I think she said a few times a week... For 5 years but still impressive. When I usd to swim competively (nearly 20 years ago!) I don't think fin swimming as a sport existed, and I had never imagined a freediving club.

Well the first few times I tried the dolphin kick I went... backwards! That's how natural I was! Lol

Having a swimming background obviously really helps especially for beginners/intermediate but I think after a few years of decent freediving training the initial advantage is not as important anymore and the field becomes more level

 

[growingupninja]

Well the first few times I tried the dolphin kick I went... backwards! That's how natural I was! Lol

Having a swimming background obviously really helps especially for beginners/intermediate but I think after a few years of decent freediving training the initial advantage is not as important anymore and the field becomes more level

Yes, competive swimming in a freediving context develops aquatic body control and awareness, streamline, comfort in the water which at beginning and intermediate levels may limit performance. It doesn't however develop dive response and at higher levels of freediving that starts to matter. In a way, a lot of competive swimming works counter to dive response--bigger, stronger lungs and heart mean you don't need a dive response since you are starting with so much gas in the tank and can so quickly vent CO2. Before I started understanding dive response, I know that my deepest recreational dives were just dynamic vertical swims by someone with good lungs and a high level of comfort in the water. I think that is why at those early stages a lot of swimmers outperform freedivers in dynamic events but not static events.

 

[growingupninja]

Simos, in the pool today I tried to see if I could be fully vertical, head in proper neutral, without a noseclip... Nope; had to exhale a few degrees from vertical and beyond. I could make a vertical descent but would need to look down a little bit.

 

[Simos]

Simos, in the pool today I tried to see if I could be fully vertical, head in proper neutral, without a noseclip... Nope; had to exhale a few degrees from vertical and beyond. I could make a vertical descent but would need to look down a little bit.

Thanks I guess it makes sense - the other thing I noticed by the way was that when I got to the bottom, even while sitting on the bottom (ie head the right way up) and looking around, it was challenging to keep water out of my nose and sinuses.

Do you think the added pressure makes it significantly more difficult as you go deeper?

(obviously it was easy to just exhale a little and keep water out but I was a bit surprised it was harder to just block water out without exhaling - I hardly ever do dives with no mask/noseclip so maybe it just takes a bit of practice)

 

[growingupninja]

Thanks I guess it makes sense - the other thing I noticed by the way was that when I got to the bottom, even while sitting on the bottom (ie head the right way up) and looking around, it was challenging to keep water out of my nose and sinuses.

Do you think the added pressure makes it significantly more difficult as you go deeper?

(obviously it was easy to just exhale a little and keep water out but I was a bit surprised it was harder to just block water out without exhaling - I hardly ever do dives with no mask/noseclip so maybe it just takes a bit of practice)

I don't know how much of a difference added pressure makes; I have never been deeper than probably about 20 feet no mask/goggles. I don't really line dive regularly but on a line I would go deeper. Sitting on the bottom I might lose a little air (just a few bubbles) since I keep water out of my nose by basically making a bubble in my nostrils. I have never thought about but I might have more water in my sinuses than I realize when I dive or swim. When I am spearing if I have a little water in my mask I frequently don't worry about it and after a while realize that it has been inhaled/leaked into my mouth.

When playing around with ice water facial immersion, I get an instant dip in heartrate if I let some water in my nose.

An interesting freedive game would be to see how many sommersaults people could do on one breath, without a noseclip.

One thing just occurred to me, if you always swim with a noseclip, what about your mouth? Do you let water in your mouth? I almost never swallow water but my mouth and lips are usually relaxed and I frequently have some water in the front of my mouth. The only time I consciously keep it closed is if I feel like the water I am swimming in is very dirty (ie spearing in some harbor locations).

 

[Simos]

I usually don't let water into my mouth but sometimes if I relax my lips much some water goes in, it's not really a bit deal as it's quite easy to spit it back out even underwater.

I'd be curious to try going deeper without a mask, goggles or noseclip. The main thing I do worry about is not being able to see very well in case something happens e.g. caught in a line etc

 

[growingupninja]

I usually don't let water into my mouth but sometimes if I relax my lips much some water goes in, it's not really a bit deal as it's quite easy to spit it back out even underwater.

I'd be curious to try going deeper without a mask, goggles or noseclip. The main thing I do worry about is not being able to see very well in case something happens e.g. caught in a line etc

Yes it is nice to see underwater... Either you could sort of tandem dive for safety, pull down a line, or explore your spot first with a mask. When I see video of deep variable weight dives those guys are sometimes sans mask but all they have to do is drop weight and swim up, and I assume they have some dedicated safety divers. Next time I line dive maybe I will try to go deep--you will definitely get stronger DR without a mask or goggles. Tests I did on myself I got roughly a 50% decrease in cold water brachycardia with a mask; low profile goggles were about a 10% decrease.

The sea gypsy children learned to see well under water so it is possible; probably have to practice and I doubt they are able to see things like mono line in dim conditions.

 

[Simos]

Even for line diving, there are plenty of examples that things went wrong and had the diver been able to see, it would have been easier to deal with a situation. Exploring first with a mask is a good idea...

Next time I get the chance I might try a few things without a mask/noseclip again..