Relaxation vs. Pre-dive stress for max performances

[Kars]

What do you people think of the idea that starting out with lot's of stress is just an effective way to overcome the expectations, hopes, fear of failure?

I did all my pb's when all my expectations and fears dropped, usually helped by a lot of pre dive stress and being convinced it is not possible, but I just went anyway because of being in the procedure.
The start of such dives always was a moment of loosing that surface stress passively, swimming on instinct and routine, not thinking. In the best dives this mode of being continues to about 2/3 of the dive, when it suddenly dawns on me how easy it goes and incredibly how much reserve I appear to have. This is when a smile appears and I joyfully maintain a good technique and enjoy the sensations to the surface.

Do you people think the benefit of pre dive stress is in the physical and or in the mental?


Great topic,

Love, Courage and Water,

Kars

 

[efattah]

The start of such dives always was a moment of loosing that surface stress passively, swimming on instinct and routine, not thinking. In the best dives this mode of being continues to about 2/3 of the dive, when it suddenly dawns on me how easy it goes and incredibly how much reserve I appear to have. This is when a smile appears and I joyfully maintain a good technique and enjoy the sensations to the surface.

This is EXACTLY what I have experienced on all my biggest depth PB's.

 

[tcrusson]

What do you people think of the idea that starting out with lot's of stress is just an effective way to overcome the expectations, hopes, fear of failure?

Interesting theory Kars, I actually did one PB like that, but it was quite marginal (6m improvement in DYN). I found that committing to the distance, with high expectations and as a result strong fear, produced better results. It's hard to know for sure, but I think if you back yourself against a wall and commit to the distance, this triggers the mental and physical changes that enable you to actually perform it.

I get lucky with depth, I don't think much until reaching the bottom, and that's when I freak out when realising where I am - by that time the only way is up!

 

[chrismar]

As with most things in the sport, I don't think that one approach works for everyone. My low expectation swims have been much more successful, while my dives where I have predetermined a distance that I intend to make have generally ended in blackout prior to that distance, despite it being something I've achieved before.

For example, at the last indoor world championships, I had predetermined that I wanted to push for the A-final in DNF. That meant 150+, which I had done before. I nominated high, spent most of the day in an elevated stress condition and ended the swim with a surface blackout around 140m. This weekend, I was involved in the Wellington Winter Champs as one of the organisers. Though much of the stress was unrelated to the dive, my performances were sub-par.

Dealing with pre-dive stress is something I work on because I know that in my case it negatively affects my performances. I'm sure not everyone has this problem, but at least some of us do. Consider yourself lucky if stress improves your performances!

 

[mattbigblue]

I will add my 2 cents as well.

I'm still beginner in sport (only 2 years), however I found stress destroying my performance. To be honest, during training when I have low heart-rate, breathing, CO2 levels,everything is under control, I do no warmup, I'm not able to get to samba/blackout zone, no matter how much I push!!! and this are big noumbers sometimes. It's same for pool/depth. However, I had many competitions when I simply BO or had samba in surface protocol, much before my training PB (10-20%). It's now getting better over the time cause I've kind of learned to deal with stress, but I don't find it usefull at all!!:head really, not at all!
Apart from that, all competitions dives felt much less comfortable than my training dives. Contractions are somehow different, stronger.

 

[tcrusson]

Hi Matt/Chris, thanks for this feedback, that's really interesting, it's the exact opposite! Do you have a different preparation and breathing routine in comps vs. training? In a competition with a dive ending in LMC/BO for a distance you already covered before, did you do other swims or a big static on the same day or previous day?

 

[Kars]

Interesting theory Kars, I actually did one PB like that, but it was quite marginal (6m improvement in DYN). I found that committing to the distance, with high expectations and as a result strong fear, produced better results. It's hard to know for sure, but I think if you back yourself against a wall and commit to the distance, this triggers the mental and physical changes that enable you to actually perform it.

I get lucky with depth, I don't think much until reaching the bottom, and that's when I freak out when realising where I am - by that time the only way is up!

Did you have the strong fear feeling throughout the dive?

In the past I used to dive like that, resulting in many BO's. Effectively I had programmed myself to do some number, and had so much focus and commitment I would not notice the signs to come up. Also during the swim I was tense and constantly judging my current state against the distance to go. You see how just these two factors assured a higher O2 consumption and less efficiency.

Also hyperventilation actually hampers the O2 takeup / storage while we prepare.

Has anyone an idea how to test the theory I posted that pre dive stress may be just an effective way to reduce, limit, solve the expectations, and fears of failure?

 

[tcrusson]

Did you have the strong fear feeling throughout the dive?

Not in the pool, I experience stress reversal instead, as described in the article linked in the first post in this thread. Also, hypoxia comes later when the swim is preceded with high stress.

I think the previous posts show there are some very strong differences in how various divers react to stress, for some it's positive (e.g. watts, myself), for others it's counterproductive (e.g. matt, chris). However we would need to isolate stress as a single factor, when in fact there are a lot more factors involved.

 

[Mullins]

Also hyperventilation actually hampers the O2 takeup / storage while we prepare.

Please explain

 

[efattah]

Please explain

Contrary to popular belief, you actually store way more oxygen in your body when you are laced with CO2. I call it the hypercapnic breathe-up method and it is a main part of my recent experiments.

If you hyperventilate, the bohr effect is such that the blood in your extremities will not release O2, creating hypoxia in your arms and legs (and eventually in your spleen and other organs), before you even start the apnea. Having a 98% hemoglobin saturation in your blood is useless if the O2 is stuck like glue. You are better off with 92%, with oxygen that floats like cotton.

In a state of high CO2 combined with normal O2, the bohr effect is reversed, and you hyper-oxygenate peripheral tissues.

As such, I believe the ideal prep is to be laced with CO2 for as long as possible, and any period of CO2 elimination much be shortened in duration as much as possible, or in some cases eliminated, if the CO2 tolerance is high enough.

 

[watts]

I think stress is not the right word for some. To me i like to think of it like excitment or intense focus.
Although the feeling predive and sometimes during is not that nice i find that the outcome is a clearer head to be able to judge sensations and signals.
The commitment to the dive is key i think not the distance as such but the effort. If anything totaly let go of the outcome and JUST DIVE. By doing this i sometimes reach a state of 3rd person were im looking at myself going through the dive feeling and observing. FLOW.Which is my ultimate goal. I dont think this approach suits training that uses regular interval training and not very many maxs its important i think to do the hard swim, find the edge and realy feel the signals when its time to come up and progressivly and very regularly improve. Followed by a break or just fun stuff.

Should doing the longest,deepest or furthest dive feel nice or easy always.

It would be interesting to do some tests with dynamics. Dive 1. In a pool doing a largish dive for them knowing they can come up at any time. And Dive 2. Actally diving in a tunnel or something that limits coming up (total commitment).
With the same distance with different people on different days see what happens to predive HR , dive hr, take o2 samples of expelled air at end aswell as feelings, fear and apprehension for successive dives.

 

[Kars]

Thanks Eric, great post, couldn't do it any better!

Nice idea Watts, I'll give it a try, though I don't have a O2 analyser.
BTW it reminds me of the story that dolphins at ease can stay down for 15+ minutes, but under stress only manage around 25 seconds. But I guess the level of stress is a factor too. So we'll need to factor that in too. Another thing is day to day form, it varies. Due to my training my first dive is the best, so I have to take that into account too. I think I'll first design a static stress test, see how that goes.

Cool, inspirational and educational subject people, thanks!

Love, Courage and Water,

Kars

 

[picasso]

Mostly I do my PB in simillar situations as Kars, Matt and Chris described. No expectation. Some times I felt in bad condition and didn't want to go for max. No thoughts, just relaxation and joy of underwatter movement.

Same like Chris, when I set my goal to reach some distance I either reach it close to BO or have to finish earlier and close to BO, too :t.

 

[watts]

Is your goal not too great then?

 

[Mullins]

Kars, why do you reckon hyperventilation reduces O2 stores? I know Eric has speculated on it, but that's rather different from saying it definitely does. And presumably you didn't say it for same reason he did??

 

[Mullins]

Bit more on the topic - I don't find that different stress levels make much difference to my depths/distances. Dives certainly feel harder when the pressure is on and contractions come earlier, but I can still push pretty hard without blacking out. It's hard to say definitively though, because I seldom train in optimal conditions. It's always late evening after a day at work, so it might not be a fair comparison.

 

[tcrusson]

Ok, so it looks like divers yield very different results from stress, which goes along the lines of what I've seen with training buddies as well.

Watts, I think we're talking about the exact same thing, although with a different terminology (not surprising as terms like "stress" or "anxiety" are pretty hard to corner). For example I can definitely relate to the expression you used: "looking at myself going through the dive", and letting go of the outcome during the dive.

Where I see differences is on how to induce that state: For me it is guaranteed to happen following a debilitating state of anxiety preceding the dive. But Once the dive starts I don't need to visualise this "imaginary tunnel", the dive sort of just happens and I come up when hypoxia settles in.

Weird stuff.

Also, I agree with the fact that you can't use that too often as it leads to massive demotivation, hence why i only rarely go for PBs, usually with big increments (which also helps maximising stress), and use interval training/sprints/exhales the rest of the time.

 

[Kars]

Hi Mullins,

I'm not a doctor, so forgive me for not being able to give you the exact physiological reasons. Here's an quote from the Wiki-page relating to the Buteyko Method, learning to breath less in order to have better oxygenation of the body. [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buteyko_method"]Buteyko method - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

The Buteyko method is based on the concept that "hidden" or undiagnosed hyperventilation as the underlying cause or exacerbating factor in numerous medical conditions, including asthma. Hyperventilation can lead to low carbon dioxide levels in the blood (or hypocapnea), which can subsequently lead to lower bicarbonate levels in the body, acid-base disturbances in the blood and lower tissue oxygenation. Buteyko and subsequent advocates of his method would later add on to this foundation of mainstream understanding of hyperventilation and hypocapnea by postulating that the effects of chronic hyperventilation would have even wider effects than is commonly accepted.[3] These effects include widespread bronchospasm caused by hypocapnea as the cause of asthma,[4], disturbance of cell energy production via the Krebs cycle, as well as disturbance of numerous vital homeostatic chemical reactions. The Buteyko method is a purported method of "retraining" the body's breathing pattern to correct for the presumed hyperventilation and hypocapnea, which would cure the body of the medical problems the presumed hyperventilation and subsequent hypocapnea caused.[3]

According to the Wiki article the effectiveness of the Buteyko method is proven nor dis-proven by the medical community.

So maybe our freediving scientist can take up that gauntlet?

From my own personal experience I say under ventilating works. Going into the logical fallacy of "number of believers = big = hypothesis is correct", more and more divers are using under ventilation as preparation for a big dive.

 

[mattbigblue]

Hi Matt/Chris, thanks for this feedback, that's really interesting, it's the exact opposite! Do you have a different preparation and breathing routine in comps vs. training? In a competition with a dive ending in LMC/BO for a distance you already covered before, did you do other swims or a big static on the same day or previous day?

I do everything excatly the same. I'm talking only about performances that were in very similar conditions, without static or any kind of effort before.

let's compare
2 years ago in January, I've started freediving and after few sessions I managed to do 150m DNF with few packs.
2 weeks later I had my first ever competition and underwater BO at 146m. I just stopped swimming in half stroke which means even if I would come 5m earlier, I would probably BO. Maybe around 130 I would had a samba but manage to do protocol right. This was my 1st competiton and HUGE stress/heart rate prior the dive.

Year later during training, I did 212m DYN on 25m pool quite easy,with feeling that there is more in tank. I came up because I was scared of the distance (passed my PB by 12m).
2 weeks later on competition I did 204m on 50m pool with white card but I got LMC during protocol. I managed to do everything right but 2-3m and I would have a BO. I assume that all turns on 212m on 25m pool would result at 225 on 50m ?

Last November,
I did 178m DNF feeling strong again and I came up because I've passed my PB by 16m. Week later I did again 175m, feeling strong. Week later I had a competiton and have a look on protocol:

and You can't say that there is only 13m difference, because I don't know how much I would have to extend 178m distance to get same hypoxic state.

I keep my diary and I write down everything. I see some patterns and after many competitions I've attend, the less exceptetions I have (less stress), the better results I got.

At the end, I must say that I do a lot of 80-90% swims. Every training I start with big dive, and then I do normal training, like 16x50, sprints, intervals, whatever. I really like big swims on training with no stress, and luckily I don't loose motivation, it's opposite I feel really good after hard session. I swap disciplines a lot, I think it's a key to keep motivation. Like now, pool season is finished for me and I'm focusing more on deep diving.

As for pre-dive preparation. I do no warmup, breathing just tidal, like watching tv or sleeping, I don't do any other breathing, even before start I carefully exhale just a little bit more than tidal, than take full breath in, pack pack go....
With this kind of preparation I have never managed to get to LMC/BO zone when there is no stress, I think that DR is so strong that it's almost impossible, at least for me. I just think it's very safe way of diving too.
Problems comes when there is competiton and stress kicks in. Then You hyperventilate even without Your knowledge. You change small ammount of Your normal CO2 storage and everything it's fuc*** up
I really feel it now when I feel less stressed during competitions, and I start coming up from my dynamics clear as well. However static is different, but here I hyperventilate really a lot!!:blackeye

Matt

 

[Kars]

Nice post Matt.

What are your perceived stress levels before and during performance? What are your thoughts doing before and during?

Wonderful smile of relief

Thanks!

Kars