Question about apnea walk frequency

[ironic lettuce]

Hi everyone

I have a quick question about apnea walks and I'd be very grateful if anyone could answer them. Basically, I'm a teacher, and often find myself walking around the school, so I'm going to start doing apnea walks everywhere I go on top of my practice pool sessions on Friday (with a buddy) to try and increase the amount of time I can stay underwater. I was just wondering - how often can I safely do apnea walks? I suppose a better question would be, how long should I wait between apnea walks to prevent myself passing out!! Also, will doing apnea walks in a random fashion (i.e. whenever I walk somewhere, not to a strict training regime) actually help with my times underwater? Or am I just wasting my time by doing the walks far apart?

Any answers welcome

Thanks in advance!

 

[trux]

I was just wondering - how often can I safely do apnea walks? I suppose a better question would be, how long should I wait between apnea walks to prevent myself passing out!!

Actually shorter recovery times are safer, since you then train in hypercapnic mode. That means not only you likely won't reach as deep hypoxia as with normal recovery, it also prevents lowering the CO2 level too much with hyperventilation, which then indeed may lead to an unexpected blackout. High CO2 level also prevents blackout and increases the tolerance against hypoxemia, so hypercapnic training is definitely advisable and preferable over hypoxic training when not exercising in perfectly secured conditions.

 

[ironic lettuce]

Actually shorter recovery times are safer, since you then train in hypercapnic mode. That means not only you likely won't reach as deep hypoxia as with normal recovery, it also prevents lowering the CO2 level too much with hyperventilation, which then indeed may lead to an unexpected blackout. High CO2 level also prevents blackout and increases the tolerance against hypoxemia, so hypercapnic training is definitely advisable and preferable over hypoxic training when not exercising in perfectly secured conditions.

Thanks Trux! To be honest, a lot of that went over my head a bit because some of those terms I've never heard of! But I've done an internet search on them now so I know what they are now! So are you basically saying I shouldn't leave too long a recovery period between apnea walks, so that I increase my tolerance to CO2 levels?

 

[trux]

The CO2 tolerance is more a psychological matter. According to some experiments, it looks like there is little or no physiological change or adaptation as for CO2 tolerance goes. So suffering through the hypercapnia will prepare you more psychologically than physiologically to the high CO2 levels during a breath-hold. However, hypercapnia is important for the training, because it allows you making breath-holds safer - first by immediately increasing the critical hypoxemic threshold, and second by making it harder to reach really deep hypoxemia. The exact opposite would be if you hyperventilated (which is likely if you get long recoveries and "breathe up") - it would lower the critical hypoxemic level, and allow you to push to the critical limit without noticing it. Hence, for training alone, or in unsafe conditions where a blackout likely means an injury, hypercapnic training is definitely the way to go.

 

[blueface]

The CO2 tolerance is more a psychological matter. According to some experiments, it looks like there is little or no physiological change or adaptation as for CO2 tolerance goes. So suffering through the hypercapnia will prepare you more psychologically than physiologically to the high CO2 levels during a breath-hold. However, hypercapnia is important for the training, because it allows you making breath-holds safer - first by immediately increasing the critical hypoxemic threshold, and second by making it harder to reach really deep hypoxemia. The exact opposite would be if you hyperventilated (which is likely if you get long recoveries and "breathe up") - it would lower the critical hypoxemic level, and allow you to push to the critical limit without noticing it. Hence, for training alone, or in unsafe conditions where a blackout likely means an injury, hypercapnic training is definitely the way to go.

Trux, in laymans terms do you mean to train in a state of high CO2? For example on a cross trainer or treadmill I would hold my breath for (x) amount of steps and recover for about half the number of steps ( I've been doing this and I can feel lots of discomfort from the CO2.) Would this fall under "hypercapnic training?"

Would you get similar benefits doing the apnea walk as you would doing dynamics? (Besides perfecting swimming technique, finning, etc.)

Thanks Trux!

 

[trux]

Yes, hypercapnia is higher than normal level of CO2. As for the benefits - there is a recent thread created by Eric Fattah addressing exactly that (besides many older ones), so you may want to have a look at it.

 

[Arjen]

I've been doing dynamic apnea walks now for a couple of weeks. When I have a buddy, we do longer walks to simulate long distance dynamic swims. In such a case we do a 1 minute breath-up, followed by a 30 second hold and than we start walking for as long as possible. But you can't do this when you're allone
So when I train by myself I have a different setup that I do on a treadmil. I set the treadmill at a fixed speed. I use 4km an hour, but that is personal. Than I do a 45 second walk, followed bij a 15 sec recovery (4 breaths). I will reapeat this 6 times. After 6 times I will still hold for 45 sec, but I will reduce the recovery to 10 sec (3 breaths), again 6 reps. Followed by 12 reps with a 5 sec recovery (2 breaths). After that I will do the 6x 45:10 and the 6x 45:15 again to complete the pyramid. If this is to easy, put an extra 5 seconds on the breath hold time or decraese it when this is to hard. You can als ad or substract reps to get a better looking table time wise. the entire table takes about 30 minutes.
It is quite a good hypercapnic table that I enjoy in a kind af painfull, masochistic but pleasing way. (Yes I know this sounds strange, but you should see the look on the faces of friends an family when you say that you just enjoy holding your breath for 5 minutes. But on the other hand, most of you do.)
When you end this table it is good to continue walking for an extra 10 to 20 minutes, because you get very heavy legs. Just walk that out a bit when you finish.

 

[blueface]

Thanks to both of you for responding. I don't have access to a pool so the apnea walk will be a good substitute.

 

[Jonta]

Just one warning! When doing apnea walks always take youre last breath standing never laying on the ground. Atleast its like that for me i once took my last breath laying on a coch and i bo after mabye 15 sek. I walked about 7m then i felt dizzy and suddenly was on the floor shaking.

Hope you can understand my bad enlish

 

[blueface]

Point taken!

 

[waxlips]

last night i had to use the bathroom while my apnea mask was on i had to go so i just left it on and apnea ran to the bathroom and felt good the whole time(it was down a hall from the computer room).