Static limitations Blackout V. Contractions

[nickridiculous]

Hi there,

I'm training my statics at the moment for an upcoming competition. My current PB is a fairly modest 4:20. I was happy with that at the time and I haven't hit it since so I guess it's not too bad. It's better than when I started at any rate.

When I did that static and others that I have done around 4:00 I did some fairly aggressive hyperventilation. I'm a PFI diver though so I called it "purging" . Each time I've done a static that's close to 95% of my PB I've come up completely "Clean". No samba/loss of motor control/LMC, no tunnel vision, loss of colour vision etc. I pretty much just stopped because I had had enough. The first time I did 4:00 actually I was starting to leak air, the contractions were so bad, so my safety brought me up. I was just taking a beating though, not blacking out and losing control.

Recently I've done some research and I'm starting to realize that there seem to be two reasons that people end a static attempt. The first is exceeding your tolerance to rising CO2 (hypercapnia). The high level of CO2 makes you stop a static because you've been having diaphragmatic contractions for a period of time and you can no longer take any more. The second would be lack of 02 (hypoxia). You get some signs of impeding blackout so decide to end the static.

I feel I'm limited by the first one at the moment. On some of my recent max attempts I have endured 1:35 of contractions and that is quite enough. I am able to do longer statics only by hyperventilating more intensely and hoping to delay contractions as long as possible.

Now, however, I'm starting to find things written on the forum by very experienced apneist who are hypothesizing that higher levels of CO2 are beneficial in enhancing O2 uptake by the blood and actually help forestall blackout. To that end I've tried to eliminate hyperventilation from my training, but I'll probably fall back on it in the competition if I haven't had more success without it by then.

What I'm asking is: are your statics limited by the number or intensity of your contractions or are you limited by blacking out? If the later was there a time that you were limited by contractions? Please elaborate in a comment below.

Thanks guys and happy training!

 

[tim_a]

Hyperventilation and freediving are two words that shouldn't be in one sentence! I am a beginner to so I can't give you really profesional information but I learnt already a few things. Hyperventilation is really dangerous when you freedive because it increases the chance that you have a samba or blackout. Hyperventilation is increasing O2 and decreasing CO2 in your body. Because your body isn't used to that high concentrations of O2 it can be dangerous. Also hyperventilation increases your hart rate so you use more oxygen. The key to consume oxygen is by relaxation. When you do hyperventilation your diving reflex will also appear later. When you are considering to enter a comp I would stop hyperventilation and train on relaxation...


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[trux]

Now, however, I'm starting to find things written on the forum by very experienced apneist who are hypothesizing that higher levels of CO2 are beneficial in enhancing O2 uptake by the blood and actually help forestall blackout.

It is actually exactly the opposite way: high CO2 reduces the uptake of O2 by the blood in lungs. What it does is increasing the discharging of the remaining blood O2 into the tissue, and that's what increases the hypoxic tolerance. And unlike what you tell, it is no hypothesis, it is a well established fact. What may be more speculative is the combined effect of different levels of hyperventilation, and its impact on the maximal performance.

What I'm asking is: are your statics limited by the number or intensity of your contractions or are you limited by blacking out? If the later was there a time that you were limited by contractions?

I'd tell that after some training most people are limited by hypoxia (LMC, BO), but at many hypercapnia contributes to their signaling to certain extent too. This is also reason people can blackout easier at a competition. The stress at the competition automatically increases their ventilation prior the dive, which changes the CO2 level, delays the curve of intensity of urge to breath, and reduces the hypoxic tolerance, hence their learned signals come at different point and they blackout easier.

Hyperventilation is increasing O2 and decreasing CO2 in your body. Because your body isn't used to that high concentrations of O2 it can be dangerous.

The increase of O2 due to hyperventilation is rather limited. Replacing CO2 by O2 is very limited due to already pretty low content of CO2 in lungs. Arterial blood is almost absolutely saturated in rest, so there is practically no more room to add some by hyperventilation. So it stays only the venous blood that can be saturated a bit more than is normal in rest. Definitely the level of O2 is nowhere where it would be dangerous. The risks are associated with the hyperventilation induced hypocapnia (low CO2) not with high O2.

There is a rather extensive thread about hyperventilation for example here:
http://forums.deeperblue.com/freediving-science/77624-hyperventilation.html

 

[azapa]

Nick, in a nutshell:
- the more you "purge" the later your contractions will come
- the later they come the harder they will come
- they come so hard you really will have a hard time judging when to bail on the hold


Try to find a breath up, that for example, gives you the first contractions half way through your hold, and see how many you can endure. It will feel like crap, but the hold will probably be longer and you have a better chance of coming up clear headed. Basically, don't purge at all.

 

[nickridiculous]

Nick, in a nutshell:
- the more you "purge" the later your contractions will come
- the later they come the harder they will come
- they come so hard you really will have a hard time judging when to bail on the hold


Try to find a breath up, that for example, gives you the first contractions half way through your hold, and see how many you can endure. It will feel like crap, but the hold will probably be longer and you have a better chance of coming up clear headed. Basically, don't purge at all.

Well so far it has been my experience that I've been able to deal with 1:35 of contractions. If I've hyperventilated the contractions come later and the static is longer. I suppose it's possible they are less intense when I haven't hyperventilated, but not by much! At the moment in my training I'm working on being very mindful of my contractions, when they come, how they feel, if they can be delayed, that sort of thing. I'm hyperventilating much less than I have been, but I have to say that while I trust that this is the way forward I haven't seen much improvement yet. I wouldn't say that I have a hard time judging when to end the hold, as my holds end when I can't take it anymore. Conveniently enough, this is before I black out.

 

[nickridiculous]

It is actually exactly the opposite way: high CO2 reduces the uptake of O2 by the blood in lungs. What it does is increasing the discharging of the remaining blood O2 into the tissue, and that's what increases the hypoxic tolerance. And unlike what you tell, it is no hypothesis, it is a well established fact. What may be more speculative is the combined effect of different levels of hyperventilation, and its impact on the maximal performance.

That's what I meant but I managed to write the opposite. Thanks Trux.

 

[azapa]

Well so far it has been my experience that I've been able to deal with 1:35 of contractions. If I've hyperventilated the contractions come later and the static is longer......
.

If you hyperventilate the contractions DO come later but the overall static will not be longer, just more comfortable as a whole.

If your statics are longer now, with hyperventilation, its probably because you are scared of contractions and don't allow them to help you.

Make a deal with yourself and try 3 or 4 static sessions without hyperventilation, a good safety, and you will exceed your present times.

 

[Mullins]

You can give hyperventilation a go (everybody does it to some extent, so it's hardly taboo); the only problem is that you'll run into hypoxic problems earlier than if you'd just stuck to a small breathup and endured the contractions. I hyperventilate bigtime if I ever need to do a static (like in a team comp) just to get me through to a decent time, but I'm aware that doing this will reduce my potential. If I ever wanted to do a true max, I'd need to cut out the overbreathing.

It's just a comfort vs performance tradeoff and it's up to you how much of each you want to sacrifice for the other.

 

[Tommy_R]

Isn't there a rate or strength of contractions where the contractions are actually not helping you ?
Contractions are not the same for everyone and my contractions for example are pretty hard and fast regardless of wether i am delaying them to almost 4 min by a strong breath-up or i get them at 1'20 without ....
Are you sure this 2'40 min of already strong and fast contractions save more o2 than they use? Even when i would be able to totaly relax into the contractions the diaphragm has some work to do and will use o2.
When i read about some of you having the first contractions at a rate of 5 per minute it might help .. i am almost starting at 12 per minute and after 1 min contractions i am at least at 20/min.


Tommy

 

[efattah]

Whether you are limited by CO2 (contractions) or O2 (blackout) depends a lot on the particular day. For me, if I am out of shape in terms of apnea, there is virtually no way I can do a packing static to BO. The CO2 will make me come up long before. But after many days of successive training, I can handle more CO2, and then the blackout starts to become the limit. However, even if the blackout is the limit, you can breathe less before you start, which will ultimately lengthen the breath-hold, although CO2 will become the limit again.

Also, diet affects how much CO2 you can tolerate. Carb loading followed by a clean diet of just fruit for half a day seems to produce the best results for me.

Lung volume has a major effect. Doing an FRC static I can reach BO on any day in any conditions. Same for exhale static. Inhale static is harder to reach BO as CO2 is worse. Packing produces the worst CO2 and is hardest to reach the BO.

 

[nickridiculous]

This seems like some good info guys, thanks.

Going forward with my training I'm really going to work on getting to know my contractions better without the aid of hyperventilating. At the moment I don't know what sort of frequency they are and I can't say whether an intensive breath-up makes them that much more manageable. They seem pretty consistent. I hesitate to call them something negative like "horrible" because they seem to be a permanent feature of statics so I want to foster a positive relationship with them.

At the end of the day, with the experience I've had so far. I may have to fall back on a big breath-up if I feel that will give me the best performance in competition. I hope to get to a stage in my training where I am limited by hypoxia. Now when I end a static,even if it's a PB, there is a little feeling in the back of my mind that I have quit early.

 

[haughki]

I notice a huge difference between doing breath holds wet vrs dry. I'm sure some of this is just psychological: my dry breath hold work is always "just training." Anyhow, it seems really hard for me to hold to BO dry.

When I'm in the water, it's fairly "easy" for me to hold until blackout.

Of course, there's a very subjective, psychological aspect of this. In some way, all of this depends on whether or not I'm trying for a max breath hold/pb. If I am, in trying for that goal, I don't come up until I think I'm about to black out. To a certain extent, statics are really "just" (I think this is interesting and complex) about toughing it out. Maybe my CO2 levels somehow don't get as high as other people's, or my contractions aren't as strong for some reason. But, so far, my experience is: if I'm committed to holding to my limit, I won't come up until I think I'm about to black out, no matter how terrible I feel. This is very subjective, but I can certainly say that, towards the end, it always feels very terrible. Anyhow, all of this seems to me to be much more about psychology (which is very non-trivial) than anything else.

The question of how _long_ I can hold my breath has to do with many, many other things, but as to when or why I stop the breath hold, it seems to be more about goals, will, desire, etc.

Hawkeye Parker
San Francisco, CA