sub neutral breathing?!?!?

[ktreloar]

Hey crew,

Just got a couple of questions regarding subneutral breathing, i had search on the topic and couldnt find a clear answer as to what sub neutral breathing is and how to know your doing it correctly.. Currently before i do frc dives i just do normal breathing then a full inhale and exhale to frc and go...

cheers

Ktreloar

 

[cdavis]

Subneutral breathing is Laminar's description of what he does. Best you get the details from him, but basically its a very low breathing rate with occasional short static holds. Quite a number of freedivers are adopting something similar, the minimal breathup idea. It works very well for frc. The concept is to replenish your 02 supplies and drop your heart rate but avoid blowing off too much co2 so your DR kicks in early. Getting it to work right seems to require being very still on the surface. My version is a couple of minutes(or slightly more) of very small breaths, less than a liter, with 2-3 second holds at high and low. I follow that with some minimal purging to blow off a little c02 and go. I had to tweak the formula for a year of so before I found the right pattern for me, but it had a huge impact on dive time.

Just a suggestion, but try reversing your pattern, do a full forced exhale, then inhale to frc and go. It takes a little practice to get the right amount of inhale, but seems to work better. I've seen some numbers that suggest that the full exhale substantially increased the 02 % in the lungs, gotta be good for safe time down. Some divers do a full inhale, then full exhale, then inhale to frc and go. Whatever works best for you.

Connor

 

[Mullins]

I've been using it for inhale dives too, works well. Should be 'subtidal', perhaps?

 

[Goran Colak]

Dave, do you take that small (1l) breaths to, or just normal and slow breathing? I've bean experimenting with breath-up before the dive, so I usaly breathe for 3-4 minutes normal and slow (but with full capacity) and then 2-3 purging and deep breaths before full inhale and packing... Any purging breaths before your dive?

 

[Mullins]

I've been playing around a bit - yes, often just the small breaths with no purges.

 

[efattah]

Laminar and I developed the word 'sub-neutral breathing' a few years ago. The method is simple:
- All breathing occurs at FRC or below
- Relax to FRC
- Exhale slightly
- Relax to FRC
- Exhale slightly

By doing this, minimal muscles are used while breathing. Heart rate does not increase like it does with full inhale style breathing.

 

[Goran Colak]

Tnx guys, I'll try to play around with that a bit...

 

[black1]

Eric

Could you please elaborate on this for me some more, when you say "relax to FRC" then "exhale slightly" I am not sure exactly what you mean.

I believe, but, could be wrong that Laminar said something about small holding breath occasionaly during his breath up so as not to have any passive hyperventilation what so ever, is this what you do as well? if you could expalin a little more this breathing it would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[appyguy]

if you want to get a good description of how to do this technique look at the bytchkeo breathing technique it describes this perfectly and is entirely relevant to free diving