This thread is inspired by the negatives and contractions thread: http://forums.deeperblue.net/freediving-training-techniques/74925-negatives-contractions.html. The main question is, I think, do you need to train in such a way that negative pressure dives and contractions are your constant companions?
If I had to summarize my training philosophy for both recreational and competitive freediving, it would be as follows:
-Dive as much as possible
-Spend lots of time in water (preferably open water)
-Do high intensity exercise at least 2 times a week
-Practice efficient technique in dedicated sessions
-Look for long term improvements and avoid the 2-3 week cramming sessions that are so common
-Protect your lungs
Recreational / Spearo
I define recreational freediving as making dives that don’t involve contractions 90% of the time. Now and then, say 10% of the time, things won’t go exactly to plan and I might experience a few, but there’s a huge margin of error that way. I dive FRC and so contractions are a sign that I’ve been sloppy. I’ve made very long dives without any contractions when I do it right. If you dive on an inhale or packing, you are more likely to experience contractions on the way up (NB: contractions are a highly individual thing). Ideally, though, you are limiting them to only a couple before you are at the surface. Otherwise, I would argue, your diving style is relatively inefficient. If you are consciously pushing your dives into contractions, you are probably looking to combine performance with your recreational dives. I know some people who do this and I do it on occasion. However, it requires many competitive strategies and good self-knowledge and I consider it advanced.
Since by my definition recreational dives are not stressful - ie. they don’t involve high CO2 or hypoxia or great muscular exertion – it’s hard to get significantly better at recreational diving without cross training, simply because the training stress isn’t there.
However, where recreational diving is essential is in teaching yourself to be efficient. Many competitive freedivers that I’ve met ignore this aspect of their sport and stick to the depth line as the only forum for improving. You can perfect several essential skills while diving for fun. The advantage you have is being able to make many more dives in a session, to shallower depths, thus allowing you to focus on one skill at a time for many more reps. Of course, that’s also possible on a line, but I rarely see that kind of training.
That’s why I think diving as much as possible is a priority because if you dive mindfully and often, you will improve in ways that no amount of cross-training can do for you.
But for many of us, the seasons, where we live, and work schedules conspire against us being in the water three days a week. So if you can only get in the water once a week, for example, it’s going to be nearly impossible to make big improvements in your diving, whether you are line diving or diving for fun.
So you need to do some sort of cross-training: ideally, cross-training that helps you acquire more stored energy in your muscles, buffer C02 better, operate more efficiently on a cellular level and most importantly, recover quickly and completely between serial dives.
To this end, you can benefit a great deal from wet or dry cross-training. Cardio is vital for a healthy chest/lungs/cardiovascular system. I like long duration cardio that doesn’t feel like a workout – long distance swimming, walking, hiking, that sort of thing. Then, and only when you have a healthy cardio base, you can add high intensity exercise at least twice a week. You want the kind of exercise that brings your heart rate up to 85% of max or higher for many intervals. Then you need a lot of rest between bouts of this exercise (2 days minimum). Ideally, the exercise should involve the muscles you use for diving, but not necessarily in the exact same movements. Running is a great example if your knees can handle it. Rowing. Skiing. Cross-country skiing. I don't recommend swimming for anaerobic exercise unless you are at a high level and can go hard without hurting your shoulders. (I am a swim coach and I think few fitness swimmers have the skill to swim that intensely).
We tend to think that CO2 contractions from a breath hold are somehow more valuable for training than the lung "burn" from intensive exercise. In the majority of cases, I think that's false. For improving diving, especially recreationally, the lung burn also results from the body trying to get rid of waste products from anaerobic muscle contractions. So you get more bang for your buck with the exercise induced breathing reflex. Especially, since freediving is a sport in which you move your legs and/or arms. And it is only in competitive freediving that you are expected to withstand contractions for minutes on end, just to be clear.
Dave Mullins is right. To get better you need to do something that stresses your body. Better to do something that produces lots of CO2 and lactate repeatedly (intervals) so your body improves its energy stores, blood buffers, and lactate clearing abilities. I think that this kind of exercise is probably the most useful to someone who wants to improve at recreational freediving and it doesn’t take that much time per week to see improvements over several months or a year.
The other way to measure improvement is depth. Going deeper is more complicated. I would argue that doing a 2'00" dive to 20m without contractions or a strong urge to breathe (no hyperventilating) is much more desirable than a 30m dive for 1'20". Time at depth is much more precious to me than depth alone.
That being said, going deep is fun, interesting and addictive. Training for it is much more complicated, though. The best way to improve is by diving a lot and making consistent dives to the same depths over and over again long enough for you to learn how to be efficient, skilled with equalizing and to fully relax.
Instead of negatives, I would suggest diving on FRC or a gentle inhale and honestly restrict your depth to reflect your level. Your “floor” should reflect the number of diving days you have per week and the opportunities for gradually increasing chest flexibility, equalizing skill, relaxation, and easy dives.
Yes, it's humbling. In 2004, I went from being a 60-65m competitive diver with a certainty of going deeper and a 35-40m recreational diver to diving to 10-15m on FRC for 4 months for 1'15" per dive.
At first, my lungs weren't comfortable going any deeper than 15m and I felt like I was running out of air after barely a minute. :duh I waited and patiently kept diving for weeks and months until I learned how to be efficient and found that my chest had adapted to the new diving conditions. I was tired of playing Russian Roulette on each dive with my lungs and was convinced that packing, inhaling and negatives were contributing to the problems I was having.
Now I can out dive myself on inhale dives and my lungs are very comfortable on deeper FRC dives (30m+). (recreational diving)
I used to do negatives all the time in the early days. My biggest gripe with negative pressures as an exercise to prepare you for depth is that they are not specific. I dive FRC all the time and my body has "learned' to make adjustments for that. However, when used with inhale diving, negatives are area shock to the system.
In my humble opinion, the best way to improve your lung flexibility and ability to equalize at depth needs to combine the following points:
-dive often at FRC or gentle inhale volume
-do lots of heavy breathing (cardio, high intensity exercise (see above) and/or yoga breathing and sex)
-do chest stretching only as a part of an exercise/yoga routine, not while "cold"
-avoid packing altogether
-extend your depth by a few metres only when your ability to equalize, mentally relax, stay down for a significant time, and repeat over and over again all catch up to you. That means you are ready to go deeper.
continued below...
If I had to summarize my training philosophy for both recreational and competitive freediving, it would be as follows:
-Dive as much as possible
-Spend lots of time in water (preferably open water)
-Do high intensity exercise at least 2 times a week
-Practice efficient technique in dedicated sessions
-Look for long term improvements and avoid the 2-3 week cramming sessions that are so common
-Protect your lungs
Recreational / Spearo
I define recreational freediving as making dives that don’t involve contractions 90% of the time. Now and then, say 10% of the time, things won’t go exactly to plan and I might experience a few, but there’s a huge margin of error that way. I dive FRC and so contractions are a sign that I’ve been sloppy. I’ve made very long dives without any contractions when I do it right. If you dive on an inhale or packing, you are more likely to experience contractions on the way up (NB: contractions are a highly individual thing). Ideally, though, you are limiting them to only a couple before you are at the surface. Otherwise, I would argue, your diving style is relatively inefficient. If you are consciously pushing your dives into contractions, you are probably looking to combine performance with your recreational dives. I know some people who do this and I do it on occasion. However, it requires many competitive strategies and good self-knowledge and I consider it advanced.
Since by my definition recreational dives are not stressful - ie. they don’t involve high CO2 or hypoxia or great muscular exertion – it’s hard to get significantly better at recreational diving without cross training, simply because the training stress isn’t there.
However, where recreational diving is essential is in teaching yourself to be efficient. Many competitive freedivers that I’ve met ignore this aspect of their sport and stick to the depth line as the only forum for improving. You can perfect several essential skills while diving for fun. The advantage you have is being able to make many more dives in a session, to shallower depths, thus allowing you to focus on one skill at a time for many more reps. Of course, that’s also possible on a line, but I rarely see that kind of training.
That’s why I think diving as much as possible is a priority because if you dive mindfully and often, you will improve in ways that no amount of cross-training can do for you.
But for many of us, the seasons, where we live, and work schedules conspire against us being in the water three days a week. So if you can only get in the water once a week, for example, it’s going to be nearly impossible to make big improvements in your diving, whether you are line diving or diving for fun.
So you need to do some sort of cross-training: ideally, cross-training that helps you acquire more stored energy in your muscles, buffer C02 better, operate more efficiently on a cellular level and most importantly, recover quickly and completely between serial dives.
To this end, you can benefit a great deal from wet or dry cross-training. Cardio is vital for a healthy chest/lungs/cardiovascular system. I like long duration cardio that doesn’t feel like a workout – long distance swimming, walking, hiking, that sort of thing. Then, and only when you have a healthy cardio base, you can add high intensity exercise at least twice a week. You want the kind of exercise that brings your heart rate up to 85% of max or higher for many intervals. Then you need a lot of rest between bouts of this exercise (2 days minimum). Ideally, the exercise should involve the muscles you use for diving, but not necessarily in the exact same movements. Running is a great example if your knees can handle it. Rowing. Skiing. Cross-country skiing. I don't recommend swimming for anaerobic exercise unless you are at a high level and can go hard without hurting your shoulders. (I am a swim coach and I think few fitness swimmers have the skill to swim that intensely).
We tend to think that CO2 contractions from a breath hold are somehow more valuable for training than the lung "burn" from intensive exercise. In the majority of cases, I think that's false. For improving diving, especially recreationally, the lung burn also results from the body trying to get rid of waste products from anaerobic muscle contractions. So you get more bang for your buck with the exercise induced breathing reflex. Especially, since freediving is a sport in which you move your legs and/or arms. And it is only in competitive freediving that you are expected to withstand contractions for minutes on end, just to be clear.
Dave Mullins is right. To get better you need to do something that stresses your body. Better to do something that produces lots of CO2 and lactate repeatedly (intervals) so your body improves its energy stores, blood buffers, and lactate clearing abilities. I think that this kind of exercise is probably the most useful to someone who wants to improve at recreational freediving and it doesn’t take that much time per week to see improvements over several months or a year.
The other way to measure improvement is depth. Going deeper is more complicated. I would argue that doing a 2'00" dive to 20m without contractions or a strong urge to breathe (no hyperventilating) is much more desirable than a 30m dive for 1'20". Time at depth is much more precious to me than depth alone.
That being said, going deep is fun, interesting and addictive. Training for it is much more complicated, though. The best way to improve is by diving a lot and making consistent dives to the same depths over and over again long enough for you to learn how to be efficient, skilled with equalizing and to fully relax.
Instead of negatives, I would suggest diving on FRC or a gentle inhale and honestly restrict your depth to reflect your level. Your “floor” should reflect the number of diving days you have per week and the opportunities for gradually increasing chest flexibility, equalizing skill, relaxation, and easy dives.
Yes, it's humbling. In 2004, I went from being a 60-65m competitive diver with a certainty of going deeper and a 35-40m recreational diver to diving to 10-15m on FRC for 4 months for 1'15" per dive.
At first, my lungs weren't comfortable going any deeper than 15m and I felt like I was running out of air after barely a minute. :duh I waited and patiently kept diving for weeks and months until I learned how to be efficient and found that my chest had adapted to the new diving conditions. I was tired of playing Russian Roulette on each dive with my lungs and was convinced that packing, inhaling and negatives were contributing to the problems I was having.
Now I can out dive myself on inhale dives and my lungs are very comfortable on deeper FRC dives (30m+). (recreational diving)
I used to do negatives all the time in the early days. My biggest gripe with negative pressures as an exercise to prepare you for depth is that they are not specific. I dive FRC all the time and my body has "learned' to make adjustments for that. However, when used with inhale diving, negatives are area shock to the system.
In my humble opinion, the best way to improve your lung flexibility and ability to equalize at depth needs to combine the following points:
-dive often at FRC or gentle inhale volume
-do lots of heavy breathing (cardio, high intensity exercise (see above) and/or yoga breathing and sex)
-do chest stretching only as a part of an exercise/yoga routine, not while "cold"
-avoid packing altogether
-extend your depth by a few metres only when your ability to equalize, mentally relax, stay down for a significant time, and repeat over and over again all catch up to you. That means you are ready to go deeper.
continued below...
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