Static times : comfortable vs max

[Siku]

I'm interested in how those of you with good static times perform on off days - I mean are those impressive PB's way out there unusual or can you do 80% of pb even on an offf day.

And perhaps more interestingly, how long is your confortable hold vs PB?

I've just started and my best is around about 4 minutes. Doing dry holds I find the first minute no problem now, and I can always get to 2. Plenty of days I struggle to get past 2:30 and Anything over 3 is good, for me.

In the water I can hold for a minute and then dive for a minute or so without discomfort.

So I guess I'd say my comfort hold is 50% of PB. How do others compare?

While I'd like to extend my PB from say, 4 to 6 minutes, I think I'd rather extend my comfortable hold from 2 to 3.

 

[azapa]

hmm, trickey questions. How do you define "comfortable hold"?

The more you train the definition of "comfortable" shifts: a. because you are physically more resistant (you will get contractions and other hypoxia signs later) and b. because your are mentally more resistant (you will not care about contractions and other hypoxia signs as before). Take the example of the beginner in a first static session: he will abort on the first contraction because it feels bad. That same guy in a weeks (or a few sessions) will be having 20 before aborting.

But in general. I can probably do 80% of my PB "on the spot" without much prep. (through mental control, not physical adaptation assuming I have not been training). But there again my PB is not huge (5:47).

 

[sgnips]

My PB is 6'11
I can always make more than 4', while getting past 5'30 requires some bigger struggle
Anyway my "comfort zone" ends around 3'30 after the first contractions which come right before 3'
All of this warming up a bit, not "one shot"

 

[buddha]

My PB is 5:36 with contractions begin at 1:36 so I'm relatively comfortable pushing my mind through the struggle phase. What's comfortable? Good question...

 

[Simos]

So looks like 75-80% on an off day for most?
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[Siku]

Thanks for the responses guys, that's intersting.

80% sounds very good to me. I do 80% when I do an O2 table and it's possible on the last hold but no way on the first!

It's encouraging that, broadly speaking, your subjectively 'comfortable' hold time does go up in line with (or better than) you PBs.

Azapa: I don't know if I can define 'comfortable' as it's obviously subjective. I have certainly found that a bit of training has helped me mentally and physically extend the comfort zone as well as the PBs.

My PB was a one off. I've never got near it again and it was easy at the time! Could have gone on but I wanted to set a PB I could improve on.

I need to have a more consistent performance.

 

[KatFish]

It's pretty hard to achieve your best on a day to day basis. There are other factors at play such as work, fatigue, etc. I aim around 80-85%. I also have a minimum around 70% - I wouldn't allow myself to finish a session without achieving this as I should be able to do that even on a really bad day!

 

[rddk]

MY pb is 6 minutes and my confort zone end near 4'20'' after that i need to start concentrate but i can easily reach 5 minutes each time, passing 5'30'' require good concentration and accept to suffer for some time.
First contraction start near 3'40' but it's welcome and i do not suffer them.

 

[buddha]

Probably it´s worth mentioning what kind of method we use. "No-warmup" is what I´m doing now... so contractions happened earlier and the struggle phase is longer but probably easier.

 

[Siku]

Thanks again everyone. Interesting that some of you can be very specific about times, I find that the subjective experience of 2' in is similar to 2'30" the next day. Perhaps as I progress I'll find more consistency. At the moment my contractions vary too - from a soft, rapid pulsing to intermittent forceful constrictions.

Gutted that I can only guarentee 50% of PB :-(

 

[ImmersionFD]

My PB is 6:01, and I get my first contraction at around 3 minutes, if I've been training. If i'm out of training mode I can get them as early as 2 minutes, that's never a good thing mentally for me.

For me the hard part is between 4 and 5 minutes.That's when I start judging how difficult the static is becoming. If in my mind I think it too hard, I start thinking its only going to get worse just come up. If I'm shooting for 5:30 and I'm thinking that way at the 4 minute mark, its not a good sign. Once I get close to my target my mind changes and just starts saying oh only 2 or 3 more signals you got this, and then I'm good. Then its only the physical discomfort I have to deal with, not the evil monkeys.

But to answer original questions my max is 6:01 but I good for 5:30 any time I stick my face in the water(with a warm up). There is a video on my site of the last minute of my 6:01 hold in the Deja Blue competition, its second one from the bottom. Media | Immersion Freediving | Immersion Freediving

I'll give one piece of advice regarding training, that I learned the hard way. Along time ago I went through the phase that many freedivers go threw, I'm just going to do tons of tables and I'll get better. I was doing tables every day, but I was doing them poorly. When the contractions would come, I would let them come, and I would have very strong whole body contractions. The closer I got to the end of the hold the more I let my whole body get involved in the contractions, because hey I'm almost done. Letting my body train that way is bad idea because guess what my body wanted to do when I did a static in the pool? My contractions used to have diaphragm shoulders neck everything moving.

When I do tables now, I concentrate very hard on the sensations coming from the diaphragm, and I'm able to stop/delay a number of contractions. When they do come I don't give in to them, I'm able to lessen the intensity of the contraction by quite a bit now. I also try as hard as I can to get them to stay in the diaphragm, and do not let my shoulders start getting involved. i just always tell my self the more your moving the more 02 your using so STOP IT.

If you watch the video of the last minute of my static, you will not see lotst of shoulder movement in my contractions. If you had ever seen me do static before the difference would be night and day. Erin Magee another one of the PFI intermediate instructors, added alot of time to her static by doing the same thing. She was bad about letting her shoulders move all over the place during the end of her statics and she would often have LMC's at the end. When she stopped this she had great and rapid improvements.

So like everyone says relax!

 

[laminar]

I think a more telling test is to see what you can do after a long lay off from static training or even freediving altogether.

I remember back in 2001 after Worlds, I stopping freediving specific training for about 5 months. I tried a static one day for fun (dry) and I was within 20 seconds of my pb at the time of 6 minutes, no warm up. I couldn't believe it at the time as it flew in the face of the long warm ups and training effect ideas that were gospel at the time.

I believe that breath holding is mostly mental up to a certain threshold, let's call it level 1, whatever your body's general default fitness and mental strength/awareness allows.

Then there's the next level which comes from actual training effects over 3-12 months, static apnea skill development, and increased mental strength and understanding of your own body.

Then there's the next level, perhaps the ultimate level, where after years and years of freediving/static training (or the equivalent), you actually begin to learn how to perform statics more and more efficiently, like an art form. I'd say that few of us have the patience to get to this level. I certainly never did! :duh

So, I wouldn't be disheartened by some arbitrary ratio of comfortable vs max in static apnea. Does it really help to be able to rely on a minimum breath hold? Is it safe to do so? I can remember many, many times when my expected breath hold for the day was just not there, for the many factors that Kat talks about.

If you add the stress of an expectation of what you should be able to do for any given static, that in turn can actually lower your result (or improve it, depending on how you respond to stress).

As an anecdote only, my best results seem to come for pool disciplines when I have trained in a way that keep me far away and unaware of how close I am in actual performance.

For example, for my dyn pb, I swam FRC sprint repeats of 50-100m for about two months, and did some power training in the gym. In competition exceeded my previous pb by over 40m with tons of air to spare after a layoff of 5 years from competitive freediving. The distance was a surprise, but I was very confident because I had put the work into other areas that I new would help. I knew for me the expectation of a result rarely works in my favour (except once....).

For static, I worked hard in the gym for about 3 months and then found suddenly I could blow by my pb on my first breath hold of the day (that's when I switched to no warm-ups).

For me at least, having a low or unknown expectation of a specific performance before a competition has helped me enormously in the pool. However, for depth, it is completely the opposite, for other reasons.

 

[Narsil]

My comfort period in a static vs my max is around 30%.

Comfort is relative of course. For people that pack heavily, they will be dealing with the pressure of holding the volume with an epiglottis or lip block for the initial period, even though the discomfort of dealing with high CO2 & contractions won't have kicked in.

After a number of months off, I can do around 0.8% of my PB if I force myself.

While I don't think you need to practice statics frequently once you get to a certain level (and doing them constantly might lead to you giving up freediving!) my personal experience is that you do lose some max capacity (time to blackout) after a long hiatus.

Guy

 

[Mullins]

After a number of months off, I can do around 0.8% of my PB if I force myself.

That's a pretty big drop Guy....

 

[trux]

Guy, can 5 seconds still be really considered a breath-hold?

 

[UffeDex]

My PB is 9:11, and I get my first contraction at around 2-3 minutes,
For me the hard part is between 4 and 6:30, a bad day I quit here.
A normal day I do 7-8, a good day I easily pass 8:30.

I would say that I, when motivated, easily pass 7:30 without having trained for some time, benefiting from a strong dive response. I try not to hold up longer than a month (I don't want to loose my long term developed static dive response).

I have the same observation as Guy, if you train regurlarly too long, as I did 2-4 years ago, 1-2 times a week, always max attempts (I always did 8+), then something bad happens:

My subconscious started to "upload" itself with that negative feeling from increased blood pressure and high CO2 levels. Every time was a hell time. Over time it created such a strong negative mental "pattern" that after WC 2009 I had major problems to do better than 6+. My subconscious just faught against me. I hated it. It's a hard mental situation if you drop down from a much higher level (you know you can but you just can't do it).

I have seen this "evolution" in other freedivers, after some 3-5 years they drop off, can't do this anymore. One diver got severe angst just by getting close to the swim stadion (!).

I "fixed" myself by breaking training patterns: dropped down from 22 to 5 packs, pack and no packing, frc, reverted back to warm-ups, etc. I started quit while it still felt good to load myself with a positive feeling instead. Now I'm back, more relaxed, getting more comfortable contractions, feeling just fine when I quit. Did an easy 8:40 some three weeks ago with at least 15-30 sec more to go and jumped (!) up from the pool just 1 minute after. But 2 days ago, I quit at 6:45.

So my new "problem" is instead pure motivation! I just don't have it anymore. At 6-8 min I quit 4 times of 5 though I have much more to go. And even the 5th time I quit far too early. So today I really don't where my limit is (2 years ago I knew).

See ya in Lignano!

 

[potapnik]

My PB is 7:13 wet, little more dry, contractions start at around 2 minutes
Iam doing no warm up static and I can reach anytime 6:20+ even couple of times in one session. In the past I tryed to train 1max hold every day and Iam not sure it was a good training. after couple of month I built mental block in my head and I quit every attempt at about 3min. I think its a sign of some overtraining. I stopped for 2month doing static exercises at all and then start again with max holds. progress was pretty slow. So I start to train just one time per week, it was enough to keep me on the same level.
Since that I realize one thing, my static are easyer and longer after a week or two of deep diving training ...compere to dynamic, which are incredibelly more difficult.

 

[picasso]

It is too much to do max STA attempt everery day and it tires everyone after some time. Tom Sietas did it everyday and was overtrained after some weeks. It is good to have some 3-5 days rest after a cycle of about 4 hard weeks. I thing it is reasonable to start training easily for one week and progresivly load training and after 4-5 weeks some 3-5 days rest for regeneration.

My wet STA is 6:50 and I do 6:30+ only ocasionaly but STA is not my cup of tea .

 

[chrismar]

Guy, can 5 seconds still be really considered a breath-hold?

Guy begrudgingly admitted he can in fact to 80% of his max. He still prefers doing 0.8% though.