Slow purging

[Blue Straggler]

Is ALL purging a kind of hyperventilating and therefore a no-no?

I found that a good breathe-up for me is to take smaller and smaller breaths and longer exhalations - when I say smaller, I mean pursed lips and a gentle inhale for half a second, followed by (say) a 4 second exhale, repeat with longer exhalations. Effectively of course this is forced exhalation/purging so I ask again is this the same as hyperventilation and should I not do it? It used to work very well for me on DNF (before I even called it freediving!), and I reintroduced it last night during static training and it worked brilliantly, new PB with plenty to spare too.

Personally I feel this is NOT hyperventilating because it is slow and controlled and relaxed (as opposed to Ed Harris before his "free-swim" to the moon pool in The Abyss!), but let's see who and how many of you advise me against it, and why.

 

[TRITON]

I think it can lead to hypervetilation.Before, my breath-up consisted of slow relaxed breathing and 3-4 purges just before the dive.Later I discovered that those purges don't really contribute to my diving besides raising my pulse and bringing down my CO2 levels even more.
Now I just breath really slow(4-6 breaths per min) and do one big inhale and exhale before my final inspiration(slowly).You can find some info about that in Will Trubridge's posts.Starting your dive with normal CO2 levels assures that the diving reflex will be triggered ASAP.This is not the case when you hyperventilate ...as you probably already know.