Ultimate breath up video guide!

[Freediver Youbuur]

Hey boys and girls, ladies and gents! My latest addition to my "How to hold your breath longer video series". This is PART 2, enjoy and I hope it gets u on the right path.



Best regards Freediver Youbuur

 

[aharon solomons]

nice

 

[reedwind86]

Nice video, I was actually watching your last video about breath holding to learn how to hold breath in the water, it doubled my time, (I am very new in this sport). but it has been long since last time you posted your freediving video, When will your new freediving video come our?

 

[adrian.]

Nice video, many interesting and useful information, but I have some doubts.

I agree with you about relaxation before swim, this is the most important element of preparation. But I don’t agree that every breathing technique is hyperventilation and causes delayed diving reflex. Properly made breathing technique can help to achieve deeper relaxation state and also slow down your heart rate. There is a simple dependency, let’s say that you regularly breath 16 times per minute and you take 6l of air. During your preparation you can change your breathing like that: 4sec inhale 4sec exhale, and of course you have to take twice as big amount of air as normally. Finally you don’t intrude amount of air in your lungs per minute. This technique of course needs practicing to master it but I think it is worth it.

It is important at the beginning not to try this technique with large periods of time, let’s say 6 sec inhale 6 sec break and 12 sec exhale, this certainly disturbs your mind and leads to hyperventilation. For example my breathing technique is 4 sec inhale 2 sec pause and 6-8 sec exhale. I don’t count time, I just try breathing and relaxing, for me it works.

 

[Freediver Youbuur]

Part 4. Belly breathing

 

[whaleshark]

Hi Youbuur, do u hv a video of what hyperventilation is look like? Some people said purge , breathup, and even 3sec inhale 6sec exhale can also cause hyperventilation easily. Im very confusing now, so anything other than normal breathing can cause hyperventilation easily? What does hyperventilating look like?

 

[Mullins]

Essentially any 'breathe up' in which you're consciously controlling your breathing is hyperventilation whaleshark. The total volume of air going through your lungs will be higher than tidal breathing - if it isn't, then you may as well have stuck to tidal breathing and not done a breathe up at all. Very slight hyperventilation is ok for most people, moderate to heavy hyperventilation is bad. If I'm doing a max dive, I stick pretty close to tidal but slightly above.

I tend to disagree with the whole belly breathing thing, never made any sense to me. I get the same volume regardless of which part of my chest I emphasise (not that anybody can actually inhale without using their diaphragm). I think pretty much all the breathing techniques that get taught to students play on the fact they involve pursing their lips, which makes the inhale 1. louder and 2. take longer, so it seems like more air is going in.

 

[Triton1715]

Essentially any 'breathe up' in which you're consciously controlling your breathing is hyperventilation whaleshark. The total volume of air going through your lungs will be higher than tidal breathing - if it isn't, then you may as well have stuck to tidal breathing and not done a breathe up at all. Very slight hyperventilation is ok for most people, moderate to heavy hyperventilation is bad. If I'm doing a max dive, I stick pretty close to tidal but slightly above.

I tend to disagree with the whole belly breathing thing, never made any sense to me. I get the same volume regardless of which part of my chest I emphasise (not that anybody can actually inhale without using their diaphragm). I think pretty much all the breathing techniques that get taught to students play on the fact they involve pursing their lips, which makes the inhale 1. louder and 2. take longer, so it seems like more air is going in.

Finally something I can lend some experience on.

I was a classically trained singer and spent a number of years pursuing vocal performance as a career (opera and all that). After spending lots and lots of time in classes, I was eventually asked to start teaching and taking on students of my own. Though I declined, I helped with a lot of them and the number 1 thing needed to teach nearly every student was, "how to breathe". This is essentially "belly breathing". Learning to control the diaphragm and take a full breath doesn't seem to come naturally to many people. They breathe with their shoulders and chest and never take a full, supported breath and in doing so also create a lot of tension in those areas trying to get a "full breath". . .they essentially fight their diaphragm to some extent. I think the primary culprit is that many people subconsciously tense their abs just enough to prevent a full breath. "Belly breathing" is how that problem is overcome.

Though it's just anecdotal, I'd say that at least 50% of the students had to be taught how to take a full breath.

 

[Kars]

Hi Youbuur, do u hv a video of what hyperventilation is look like? Some people said purge , breathup, and even 3sec inhale 6sec exhale can also cause hyperventilation easily. Im very confusing now, so anything other than normal breathing can cause hyperventilation easily? What does hyperventilating look like?

What does hyperventilation look like?
- it can range from the ' The Big Blue' japaneese diver doing many deep breaths, and blacking out before the dive starts, to people appearing to do normal breathing.

How does hyperventilation feel?
- a light headedness
- a tingeling in the fingers, toes, extremitees
- and - off cause - a lowered or eliminated urge to breath.

I Think these two videos are excelent because they explain the core principles.
what i can add to them is that byconsciously directing you breathing you can center your thoughta and slow down your -nervous- breathing. Slowing down breathing helps to slow down the heartrate, mind and metabolism. Just like when you lay down to sleep.
For me there is good value in leaning how to breath efficiently and have your body adopt this as the normal default breathing. Many people have subconsiously adopted a bad breathing technique (chest only) due to stress and bad examples around them. You'll spot them easily traveling in a bus, train or plane.
Using only, or mostly your diaphram uses less energy to move the same volume of air. Belly breathing is also mentally associated with rest. Once you've relearned it, and it has become your normal breathing you can give it lower priority in your preparation, only reverting to it when you feel your breathing or mind is stressed. Something that may happen when you're nervous before a dive.

Hi Dave, it cool seeing you around here again! What's up down under?

 

[whaleshark]

However, i was taught in the aida course that we never do hyperventilation before dive, but we can do breath up (double the exhale time after inhale). So that means breath up is not hyperventilation. Hyperventilation is only referred to short and fast breath in & out, is that correct?

 

[Triton1715]

However, i was taught in the aida course that we never do hyperventilation before dive, but we can do breath up (double the exhale time after inhale). So that means breath up is not hyperventilation. Hyperventilation is only referred to short and fast breath in & out, is that correct?

There are two definitions at play here. One that is technically correct and one that has been traditionally used. This is something that I have noticed has caused a lot of confusion over the years.

On a purely technical level, hyperventilation is any breathing greater than is needed for metabolism. So basically any sort of "controlled" breathing that would lower your natural CO2 levels would technically be considered "hyperventilation" (anyone feel free to correct me on all this).

However, people think of hyperventilation as the rapid breathing you usually see in movies. That's where the confusion comes in. This later version is extremely dangerous and should be avoided at all cost. The former however, while still considered "hyperventilation", is not anywhere near as dangerous, but still more dangerous than tidal breathing.

I think there can be a case made for many of us beginner/moderate freedivers that the breathing patterns and classical "breath ups" taught by various organizations are a good compromise and stepping-stone to learning better techniques. While they are, technically speaking, hyperventilation, I don't believe they are so highly disruptive to CO2 balance that they should be treated in the same category as the rapid breathing of classical HV. Whatever amount of CO2 they disrupt I think is offset by the ability to help beginners relax, focus on slowing heart-rate, etc.

For what it's worth, I often use something like a 4 count breath-in, 8 count exhale, but I also include a 4 count hold between inhale and exhale. So, breathe in for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 8. When I been diving for several days, my breathing will revert to tidal-style, but it takes a few days for my body to relax back into all that and the "breathup" style helps me get in the right state of mind.

 

[Kars]

However, i was taught in the aida course that we never do hyperventilation before dive, but we can do breath up (double the exhale time after inhale). So that means breath up is not hyperventilation. Hyperventilation is only referred to short and fast breath in & out, is that correct?

Ok, I'm starting to believe that the course givers and or Aida should spend abit more time explaining the term hyperventilation.
Let me give it a try through this very limited form of communication, by posing you a few questions:
1 what happens to their body when a person hyperventilates?
2 how does a body react to hyperventilation?
3 what triggers your normal breathing?
4 how can a diver ventilate more air while doing the same number of breaths a minute?

____

Personally i hate the term 'breath up' because it implies a sort of acumilation of breaths to get ready for a dive.
I believe it encourages hyperventilation.
I prefer to say relaxation or lowering metabolism, because thats what we do to do a long dive.

Hyperventilation is luckily not a super critical thing for beginners. It is not aproblem to do a few deeper breaths aand do a dive under observation of a buddy. But it is an important mechanism when your dives are getting longr and more close to your real personal limits. Instructors warn against it because the use of hyperventilation messes up your CO2 warning feelings and increased O2 consumption making judging when to come up difficult to impossible. Hyperventilation is easy and falls in line basic thought of: more=better. people in panic do this too, doing the same (unefficient) basic movement fasten and faster. So the simple logic of breathing more=more air= longer dive is false. This intuative feeling but very flawed logic cost many lives. This is why instructors emphasise this warning not to hyperventilate, or overventilate, or over breath.
I whish they had student try hyperventilation so that they learn how it feels and what it does and also learn to decern what is mild and excessive ventilation. The difficulty here is that with mild hyperventilation the feelings are very suble. Only with practice people can learn to feel those subtle sensations of mild hyperventilation. so for beginners i think it's vital that they understand that more breathing means much more risk for a black out and reduced performance. For simplicity sake i think Youbuurs recommendation is excellent: just do normal breathing (relax), then 3 big breaths a start your dive.
If you have a big vital capacity then you'll find tha 3 big breaths will give you feelings of hyperventilation. To remedy this you can do them either: slower,or shallower, or do a lesser number-like 2 or 1.
The remedy is to move less air in and out of your lungs.

I did not think I could write such a long piece on hv

I hope it has been helpful to you and others.

 

[Mullins]

The way I generally sum it up if teaching people is: the more you hyperventilate, the more you trade safety for comfort. No hyperventilation and you'll feel awful but stay conscious. Heavy hyperventilation and you'll feel great but black out early. In between is in between. Somewhere on that continuum is a reasonable tradeoff for each person and each occasion.

Hey Kars!

 

[Kars]

I like your comfort versus safety schale Dave. I think it helps to see things less binary.

Dave what are you up to these days? Have got any specific cool plans you're exploring?

 

[Mullins]

Nothing too exciting Kars, I'm doing Australian Nationals in August though. They've got plenty of depth in Bali.

 

[Kars]

Nothing too exciting Kars, I'm doing Australian Nationals in August though. They've got plenty of depth in Bali.

I'm still rooting for ya. love to see you succeding at depth too!

 

[Jo_duiker]

About the hyperventilation, Kars explained it wonderfully.
In the light of what he wrote, I like to compare hyperventilation with messing with the fuel gauge of your car to make it go slower than it really should. The thing is: your fuel will still "burn up" as quick as it always did/does, so it might go into the "almost empty zone" without you noticing it, as your fuel gauge will not yet show it being almost gone! And so, with your fuel gauge not showing your tank is empty, your car can shut down without any warning.
It's the same with hyperventilation: the urge to breathe (contractions, etc.) is like the fuel gauge of your car coming into the "red zone". If you postpone that urge, while your oxygen is still being used as quickly as always, you might lose consciousness without any warning at all.

I agree with the 1, 2, or max. 3 "big breaths" before the dive. And so does this lady:


(Sorry Youbuur, I don't mean for the lady in the video to take over your thread with links to your excellent videos!)

 

[Kars]

Hi jo_duiker.
thank you for your complements.
I'm sorry but i think your fuelgauge model is flawed, because if the fuel is O2, the what is the CO2?
Anothe important point is that hyperventilation INCREASES O2 consumption, draining the O2 tank faster then normal.
The urge to breath is only based on the CO2 amount in your blood. That amound gets quickly lowered by over breathing/hyperventilation. The result is that even though the body is burning more O2 to rebalance the abnormally low CO2 level, the O2 will run out before the CO2 level reaches the treshhold levels to alarm the diver to get fresh air.
The body does NOT alarm you for low O2!
One could drain an recompressiontank of O2 and peopl would only feel tired and yawn before passing out.

I hope this posted helped to clear up the last confusion of the fuel anology which i think is a confusing oversimplification. I'm sorry but I had to correct this.

 

[cdavis]

Gads, disagree with Kars? Well, maybe a little bit. Based on a good bit of testimony from divers who really push the edge (Eric Fattah for example) anoxia does produce an urge to breath that is separate from the c02 response. Apparently, its subtle and much less strong than the co2 response, but it's there. The vast majority of divers, me too, never spend enough time in hypoxic conditions to figure out what it feels like.

 

[Kars]

Gads, disagree with Kars? Well, maybe a little bit. Based on a good bit of testimony from divers who really push the edge (Eric Fattah for example) anoxia does produce an urge to breath that is separate from the c02 response. Apparently, its subtle and much less strong than the co2 response, but it's there. The vast majority of divers, me too, never spend enough time in hypoxic conditions to figure out what it feels like.

I agree and know, as you say it is very subtle, and a very late warning, like 10 seconds. before bo, that is unlikely to be noticed by beginners. Tunnelvision, gray vision, hearing, a feeling that its getting much easier, lack of speed (because the coordination is getting very sloppy), feeling you're in a dream, a fogging mind and off cause the shaking bodyparts aka Samba. In my. experience the brain stops recording memory in the last 10 seconds before bo.
So if you come up, do your hookbreath recovery, just managing to stay lucid it is likely that you fkrgot those last surfacing moments. Many people may feel like they can recall, but it's often just their brain that adds that missing piece to fill the memorygap. People doing cwt and doing a bo on the surface and come around in the arms of a safety often do a surface protocol and wait.. then realise they are supported and then sometimes get angry because the did not remember that they bo'ed. It can be a funny sight to the experienced

Yes Connor is a 100% right.
But the signals are subtle and come VERY late, too late for anything othe then static in my opinion.

Thank you Connor for the correction.