Reputable Freediving course taught me overbreathing?

[Tim B.]

Hello fellow non-drowning people!

I am pretty new to institutionalized Freediving. A few weeks ago I took a beginners course from a reputable Freediving school.
Everything I learned there seemed super solid, in theory and practice.
20 m were no problem at all and I was looking forward to do the next course there as well.
We did a lot of "conscious" breathing for relaxation purposes, later streamlined into breath up cycles for the dives. The first day we would do three cycles before a dive, averaging at about 2 minutes.
Goes like this:
Forming an o with your lips for the inhales, creating pressure
Short hold
"Cap off" hiss (short exhale) to release pressure
Long slow exhale while hissing
Little flush breath (tidal volume breath as I now know)
Rinse, repeat 3 times then two flushes and then the final breath.

The second day had some more phases added to one cycle and doing 6 before taking the final breath. I never felt like hyperventilating and had the usual urge to breath on the ascents in addition to some light heavy legs feelings.
The breathing indeed did relax me, never felt so calm for a long time without being dizzy or so.

Now after reading some threads here, some beginner guides and some material from AIDA and SSI I am confused.
There is a lot of talk of overbreathing and that you should just let your body do the breathing, take one big one and go.

That's not what I was taught in that course. We were even warned and educated about hyperventilating and that some people just call it other names like purging or clear breaths or whatever. So I felt like we were doing the right thing.

The next course the breath ups would get even more sophisticated and taking 5 plus minutes. I mean the competition divers do long breathups (at least I read that in a book about nick mevoli) lasting several minutes.

I hope for some clearing words here.
Have I learned something stupid or am I just over analyzing?

 

[SpearNsurfMex]

*Bump* Id like to hear some answers pertaining to your question as well. I too use a similar breath up process taught by a great freediving school and on depth I was having this heavy leg feeling and urge to breath upon ascents. I feel like I was personally over thinking it and possibly putting pressure on myself to reach a new depth rather than making a depth "home" and not trying to push further. Id say practice on your own and see what makes you feel comfortable without risking hyperventilation. I speared for years using improper technique, now that I have adapted to proper breath-ups and recovery breathing alongside surface intervals my comfort under has improved immensely.

 

[manalive!]

There are many different breath up styles, many of them are advanced and should only be used when your body (and mind) are developed for them. The normal beginner breath up will likely be a minute or two performing normal, but slow relaxing breathing pattern, then a minute of a 5 second inhale followed by a 10 second exhale. This prevents the off load of too much carbon dioxide, which can be dangerous.
The urge to breath on your ascent is quite normal, try to relax during this phase and it should be easier. The heavy legs are due to lactic acid build up caused by using your legs under anaerobic conditions (without air i.e. not breathing) and again is quite normal. These affects can be reduced and your tolerance increased with regular training. Please do avoid hyperventilating as this can be extremely dangerous, and of course never dive alone.


Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

 

[cdavis]

" am I just over analyzing?". . . . . .requires context.

As you have found out, there is a whole lot of confusing stuff on the web about hyperventilation, understanding requires context.

Hyperventilation is any level of breathing more than automatic. Easy to get a general idea of what that is. While at rest, get an idea of how full your inhalation is and how many breaths a minute. Thats the automatic level of breathing. now do the same for your breathup routine. Is it more volume in the same time? If so, its hyperventilating, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Most divers, especially new divers, will end up with very short uncomfortable dives if they don't hyperventilate a little. A little bit helps a lot for dive time and is reasonably safe. The trick is " a little" when too much can get you killed.

Most breathups result in some level of hyperventilation and most, like the one you quoted, strive for relaxation, which also helps a lot for long comfortable dives. I played with yours and it depends on how its done. In the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, presumably your instuctors, it should be fine, relaxing and minimal hyperventilation. Up the pace a little, breath deeper, and/or do it for longer and what looks like the same breathup can become substantial and dangerous hyperventilation. . . . Context.

If you are going to use the breathup your instructors taught, be very conscious of not doing it in a way that increases ventilation beyond what the instructors taught.

Have fun and stay wet.

 

[Tim B.]

" am I just over analyzing?". . . . . .requires context.

As you have found out, there is a whole lot of confusing stuff on the web about hyperventilation, understanding requires context.

Hyperventilation is any level of breathing more than automatic. Easy to get a general idea of what that is. While at rest, get an idea of how full your inhalation is and how many breaths a minute. Thats the automatic level of breathing. now do the same for your breathup routine. Is it more volume in the same time? If so, its hyperventilating, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Most divers, especially new divers, will end up with very short uncomfortable dives if they don't hyperventilate a little. A little bit helps a lot for dive time and is reasonably safe. The trick is " a little" when too much can get you killed.

Most breathups result in some level of hyperventilation and most, like the one you quoted, strive for relaxation, which also helps a lot for long comfortable dives. I played with yours and it depends on how its done. In the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, presumably your instuctors, it should be fine, relaxing and minimal hyperventilation. Up the pace a little, breath deeper, and/or do it for longer and what looks like the same breathup can become substantial and dangerous hyperventilation. . . . Context.

If you are going to use the breathup your instructors taught, be very conscious of not doing it in a way that increases ventilation beyond what the instructors taught.

Have fun and stay wet.

Dammit, Davis! Stop telling me about that grey area and context stuff, that destroys my nice and easy black and white view! ;-) /irony

Thank you very much for your insightful reply. I really appreciate the level of thought that seemingly went into it.
It is how I feared: there never is that one simple, right solution.

I never thought about the dangers of free diving before taking a class but now that I did and read (a lot) stuff it kind of feels like everybody is saying SWB WILL kill you. (Slight exaggeration...)

Usually I am pretty good at listening to my body to determine my temporal limits, it's just that I am equally good at pushing them as well. In other sports and activities I do this mostly doesn't mean dying though if I fail ;-)

Still, I think it is exactly as you said: proper training and getting to know your limits is key, just like with everything else. Then you can start pushing.

I start doing CO2 tables now to better learn the responses of my body to this specific set of tasks and just try in general to get more diving specific training in.

I am just too impatient and usually a really quick learner. It's hard to accept that the bodily changes necessary take longer than knowing the theory.
Engraving muscle memory to work under duress and being consciously "in the moment" all the time while diving just add to the challenge.

Again: thanks for your relativization, much appreciated!
It is a long journey and I am just taking the first steps.

All the best
Tim

 

[cdavis]

Yep, it is a long (and fun) journey as well as more than a little confusing.

Be careful with the idea of "getting to know your limits" I've witnessed and/or played rescue diver to 3 open water, spearfishing style, reef diving blackouts and one near blackout. In two of those 4, the diver was well outside of his "limits", but the other two were not, not hard dives at all, no warning, nothing out of the ordinary, scary as hell.

Dive with a buddy.

On another subject, where are you diving?

Connor

 

[Tim B.]

That is exactly what I mean.
No sign at all. Sorry to say, but that is a clear flaw in design.
What is the whole MDR good for if I can't sense the "red zone"? Annoys me. Even more that there seems to be no feasible technical solution to accurately and comfortably monitor O2 while diving. Maybe the potential customer base is just to small to justify proper research.

I've seen some footage now of blackouts with buddies and luckily most of the time 'tap talk breathe' seems to work. People come back to life. But as always, the statistics are skewed and biased. I hope your encounters went just as lenient?

I am a climber. Going to the limit means falling at some point. But you learn from that. A lot.
My problem is exactly that: freediving is not the slightest like that. I know that consciously and will do everything to avoid "falling". Hence my thorough approach to the whole going longer deeper affair.
First time that I take all the go slow and watch yourself advice seriously. ;-)

I have been successful in coercing my girlfriend into taking a freediving course in the future. Until then I'll be just snorkeling with the occasional shallow dives. Keeping it safe and stuff.

At the moment (and foreseeable future) we are traveling SE Asia (right now Cambodia) and will be going to New Zealand in July. From what I understand spearfishing and freediving seem to be pretty big there and maybe hopefully I'll find a suitable group or buddy there when staying longer in one place.
Finding people on the go is kind of hard and annoying to be honest. So I train on land and look forward to my next course.

Right now looking for a oximeter to get into apnea walks.
And I really really want a dive computer.
But we are diverging.

I do what you did and toy around with the breath up cycles to arrive at something fitting my needs (and level probably).
Thanks for alleviating some of that confusion.

Tim

 

[cdavis]

There is a very interesting article about apnea walking as training on www.freedivewire.com

All of mine came around just fine. Gets your attention though.

Strong reccommendation on a dive computer. Keeping up with surface interval and making it long enough is the most important thing you can do to avoid BO. All the other stuff, depth, time, recording dives, depth alarms, etc, is real nice but surface interval is the most important.

An alternative/addition to buddy diving is Terry Maas's FRV. I love mine for diving in
crummy vis or with untrained buddies.

 

[Tim B.]

Interesting piece of equipment, though out of my range for now. Horrible Web page. Would be really interested what cloud be done to his sales with a decent page and some basic optimisation work.
Have the article already open in another tab and wait for less rain. Again and again I am amazed by the quality and quantity of freely available content.

I am trying out "normal" breathing as breath up right now. Creeping towards the casual three minute static mark here...
Will be trying that for the next few days.

I am really looking forward to getting back to a place with a decent FD school!
Thank you so much for this somewhat private lesson and encouragement.