Static PB's

I'll second that I thought this was a freediving forum not church...

How about a little respect for the people on these forums who do not share your particular brand of faith?

I agree. This is not a religious forum.
Jim

Although I do agree that this isn't a religious forum and that it's not a place to push your beliefs on peole, come on guys. Daniel wrote this 2wks ago and now you're just responding, and literally w/in 90mins three people respond negatively. I mean you all had a chance to respond when he wrote it, why not send a PM or is it time to jump on the band wagon.
Jay

Stoked!

I'm stoked, my PB went from 5:05 to 5:15 yesterday.
My wife said I was greyish blue and started crying, so I don't
let her watch anymore. I figure I need at least 6:15 to compete,
if my other areas are also strong.

Hehe

There goes freediving for a famliy sport
Maybe that's the reason why we all dress up in those nice rubber suits and wear masks, so our famliy / friends / buddy's won't see us turn from normal to grey to blue to purple .....

hi

Ramstam congrats on the pb your lucky, im frustratingly stuck at 6:30 dry and belive me when I say dont take pb's for granted like I did cos now I am getting angry that I rarely get them anymore

cheers

Ivan- 6:30 dry,what about face in water? How's your dynamic and CW?
Do you compete?
I always look at the last comps, add up my points and then see where I would fall in the overall rankings.
Yesterday I got stung by a herd a jellyfish just as I surfaced
from a dive.

My wife said I was greyish blue and started crying, so I don't

I know your pain Ramstam.:waterwork

Last week I made the mistake of doing some pack-stretching while standing in the kitchen. I woke up sitting on the floor.:duh

I didn't hurt myself as I just slid down the side of the cabinet, but my wife was totally freaked out. SHe came runningincrying and wnated to know what I just did.

She already starts to jab me in the gut when she sees me practicing statics. "Breath, Jon, Breath!" she says.

Now I do my pack-strectching while laying down on the bed and practice statics when she's out of the house.

BTW: great job on the new PB. I am still stuck at 4:51, but am hoping to break 5:00 yet this year. Just got to find the time to pracitice when I can do it with no interuptions.

To anyone, try this and see if it makes a difference.
When doing statics dry, put your feet up. Like on your
coffee table about waist high. I'm not sure if this had
anything to do with it, but the first time I tried it I went
from the min 3's to about 4:30. I have since improved,
but this was my biggest jump. Work for anyone?

I always have my feets as high as possible during breathup/relaxing, I lay them on the poolside. I get good feelings from this and I think it makes some difference.

I think there can be an explanation to it. When you are doing this the blood may concentrate more around thorax which increase oxygen loading.

This is just a theory though.

Static Methods

Just some quick points to consider... (mainly in response to many of the takes on static techniques previously in this thread)

[HYPERVENTILATION]

The idea that, hyperventilating to achieve contractions as late as possible will achieve the best results at the end of the day, is not a sound conclusion. It appears that many forget or are not experienced enough to understand that generally hyperventillation causes contractions later but at a much increased intensity. There are explanations for this which I will not get into here.

But try this; take one person who can do a 7 minute breathold and get them to hyperventilate for a minute at the end of their normal breath-up routine. Sit back and watch the results. The average experience, is one of later contractions but the person can not deal with these contractions for long. Have we considered that contractions late or early still may get you to the same end? As in you can only do a 7 minute at that time no matter which way you try it. This has been experienced by numerous people. There are explanations for this as well.


[THE BODY]

The body is still amazingly far from being scientifically understood. Meanwhile here we are talking all confidently about breath-holds with only a slight understanding of the actual resolution the body takes towards such conditions; Assumptions are being made that an increase in efficiency towards ONE factor will increase the efficiency of the OVERALL operation during a breath-hold. Maybe as well there is the assumption that there are only a couple factors involved with a breath-hold. There are numerous factors at play, subtly affecting the overall breath-hold and attempting to settle on a delicate balance. However, these are invisible to our eyes and understandings. But guaranteed they (ex. blood acidity) exist, are important factors, and most importantly they all interact and affect each another.


[THE EXAMPLE]

Ever drive a car? Leave the car in idle and see how efficient it is to drive around variable terrain. Hmm not very efficient. Ok, step on the gas when need be. Wow, way more efficient. Well the heck that must mean it is most efficient to step on the gas as much as possible! Ummmmm now we see a sudden drop in efficiency (if you don't understand why, look into it).


[OTHERS' CONCLUSIONS]

Therefore, lacking to add into the equation the host of unknowns and dependencies operating during a breath-hold, many of the previously mentioned simplified conclusions are fundamentally flawed, namely the following were noticed:

- contractions use muscles; muscles use oxygen; therefore the best potential breath-holds will occur with less contractions. - (Eric Fattah already addresses this)

- contractions can come later; therefore resist them with your mind. - (Contractions are most likely the bodies way of maintain a tollerable balance within the body to be able deal with the circumstances; does not have anything to do with making it easier for you to tollerate the circumstances or feel comfortable. Actually the opposite is most likely true. Your body wants you to stop. But if you don't listen it is still going to adapt to the situation as best it can. Hyperventilating is defeating this and therefore giving the body less chance to defend itself when it needs to.)

- contractions are uncomfortable. Therefore, contractions should be avoided. - (Using this philosophy: Don't hold your breath; it is more comfortable.)


[EXPERIENCE]

Experience in the arena of breath-holding for the freediving community is still quite new and in-experienced. It will continue to see new outlooks. Factors previously unused will become common place.

An expression of this potential and variance can be seen when you look at the breath-up techniques employed to achieve strong breath-holds:

- many (technique mainly due to promotion as opposed to long-term exhaustive research) use a sequence of breath-holds as warm-up/preparation of the body and mind before a target breath-hold. This can regularly be a 20-30 minute preparation period to achieve a 7-8min breath-hold.

- others do no warm-up breath-holds and 40 secs of breath-up to achieve a 7-8min breath-hold.


[CONCLUSION]

This is to give beginner's and the considerate-advanced something to use to further explore the possibilities. As opposed to being confined to the fast inexperienced solutions such as "it is all in the mind", "the best breath-hold will be acheived through contractions later", "8+ minute breath-holders are born with the ability".
We know so little about the overall workings and complexities of the body and over-simplified conclusions are not going to help anybody explore their potentials and the potential of the general body. Maybe this will give a small unconfined influence to somebody as they extend into answers of their own.

hi

Nice post Tyler, I still think hyperventilating has more advantages, for me having contractions at all ruins my concentration, so the longer I can stay still the better it will be and I can only stay still for long with hyperventilation

cheers

Comfort is in the mind.

Andrew,

That may be the case but you can draw a similarity between that and the person who attempts to hold their breath for 2 minutes the first time and confidently exclaims that they can not hold their breath this long. This usually followed by the usual statements saying that you (the person that can hold their breath for longer) have an ability they don't.

The similarity is in the sense that they believe they can not, so they give up and put up a wall to themself from succeeding easily. It may be that at this time your concentration is distracted by contractions, however that is most likely due to a presumption that contractions are bad, made early in your attempts at breath-holding. Contractions in general can be relaxed into and provide a rhythm of focus while doing a static. After all there are many other potential distractions while doing statics. So in its distraction it can be a savior if worked with the right way. Basically my opinion is they do not need to distract you if you focused on learning to become comfortable with them

As an example... I do standing meditations regularly. For the first while that I began doing them, I would get to a point where my legs and arms would begin trembling and shaking intensly. I would persist in putting up with it and would almost drop when I was done. I later read about the idea that there were unused muscle fibers that were supposed to be tapped if you stopped fighting the trembling of your exhausted muscles. It did not clearly explain how you would do this so I just tried things. The first time I just imagined the exhausted fibers letting go and the untapped fibers waking up. I then ran these thoughts through my body concentrating on becoming still and quiet throughout. I kept telling myself and the muscle fibers to wake up. Sure enough after one minute they began subsiding. After three minutes I was almost completely still again and felt like I could go on forever.

That said if the other technique works for you, then maybe there is no reason to work on your mind and try to relax with the contractions. I am just giving these responses as a general expansion of thought.

As I expressed before it may be, that the effects of dealing with contractions, or not, both get you to the same end time if you can do it both ways. At least that seems to be what I have experienced so far.

Unfortunately lately my exploration of statics has disappeared as I am in Northern Cyprus where the heat is too much for me to attempt dry statics with much success. I over-heat quite easily and am claustrophobic to the effect.

Cheers,

Tyler Zetterstrom

unassisted

Hi .does anybody here practice unassisted?--is very funny with only a good swiming technique- you will be just with a few strokes at the other side fo the pool.......all you need is your disposition...and it will help you when doing dinamic with fins.

"Religion are man's search for God:the Gospel's is God's search for man. There are many religions.but one Gospel."

hi

Thank you again Tyler, BTW did you get my pm from ages ago

I think what you are saying is very true about contractions and Im sure that if I tried long enough it would come around. But I dont think I will break 7mins anytime soon without the use of hyperventilation, for me I need to delay the contractions till 5mins if I even have a chance at 7mins. The best length I have held them for is 2mins, so If I can delay them till 5min and hold my pb of 2mins of contractions I will get 7mins :hmm

Im not very fit so when the contractions come I can feel my heart working harder using more Oxygen

cheers

hi

Tyler I just checked my pm, got your message will be waiting

Ramstam sorry I missed a few of your Q's back there a few posts but I will answer.

My best static in water is only 5:25, yep I HATE wet static
I have never done a proper dynamic in a pool
And I dont FREEDIVE up and down a rope as in CW, but I do spearfish only to max 25m
And no I dont compete, I live in an area way to remote for anyone to even know what freediving is, so no comps here.

cheers

Hello!

I really like your posts Tyler!

I also think like you that the human body is a complex "machine" and you can't optimize it only by adjusting one single parameter. Trial and error with different combination of techniques is the only way to explore the bodys potential. I have done this for years and I still think (and hope) that I can learn and find out how to get even more out of it...

BUT; I belive (without over-simplifying in my opinion) that the ability to make extreme performances are gifted to a few. Look at any sport; one can't be a top level athlete without being gifted no matter how hard one trains or how good the technique are.

I hope I am wrong though!

Great stuff Tyler.
I had a mental block of four minutes, for 25 years. The thing that intrigues me now, is the consistant results. I can prepare shot or long, hard or easy, wet or dry and the time will be within a few percent of 'my number'. That doesn't seem right. Some times I struggle with contractions for over four minutes and other times they are mild until the last minute. The result is the same. Over a year ago, I posted some fantastic numbers on the bed but, now I think I was passing out for a minute, reviving and then stopping the clock. It would be great to have all the seven minute men tell how they got there.
Thanks for sharing.
Bill

Good call Bill,
If anyone has a Static over 6:30.
What keys do you think got you past the sticking points?

hi

4mins for 25 years, geez Bill you sure show's that you never gave up. Man if I was stuck at 4min for 4months I would get sick of statics, good to see you didnt give up.

cheers