very deep dives without mouthfil?

[pthread]

Pthread, I do not know Marcus personally, but have communicated with him by email earlier, and trust that he can prove his words about the new method. However, I understand the feelings of Eric, and I do not think he deserves the disrespect you and Marcus show for him.

trux, I meant exactly not to show any disrespect, I just repeated what I was told and I actually said so. Forgive me if that wasn't clear enough, but I said I did not mean to get into an argument.

It is undeniable Eric published his equalizing manual before 2002 (you can find references to it here on DB, and on the web).

Nobody denies that (that was said also).

So, pthread, please try keeping this discussion civil, without personal attacks, and try showing a bit more respect for one of the greatest freedivers the community ever had.

Trux, if somebody wants respect they should perhaps respond to issues in a way that warrants it. Pulling out meaningless numbers out of a database in an attempt to ridicule others is not something that does. It would have been more than enough for Eric to state his side of things, without the personal attacks you are talking about to me now.

I do agree however that we should get back to the facts.

 

[dannybuoy]

Ah, good that you bring up facts, pthread,

Fact is we don't know what this technique is. Fact is also that Marcus brings it up in the very same paragraph in which he claims to have developed the mouthfill. Fact is, Marcus ostensibly has not developed the mouthfill. Stating that he did does not bode well for the factual nature of his new technique.

Fact is also that any new technique, no matter how brilliantly conceived in theory it is, has to be put to the test -after all, we don't just dive in our minds, water and other practical matters come into the play as well. Eric pointed out that his technique was tried and tested and yielded 2 world records (one of which his own), a year before Marcus claims to have developed the technique. Eric also pointed out that Marcus himself has no track record of being anywhere near a depth that would require a mouthfill or any specialized technique.

Maybe the numbers and the years don't suit you, but there is very little childlike or random about these facts. They are certainly not meaningless. You might want to check your facts before you call Eric a liar again. He isn't the one making false claims here.

 

[aharon solomons]

First a few facts
Ivo you are correct about Martin he uses BTV to 122 , but with a cheek fill at 55 mts and air scavenging thereafter .
Adel was correct on the origional thread Arab divers descending with the saumon ,knees first did cheek fill .
Georgios "Haggi " Statti was Flooding in 1905.
Bob Croft invented air packing when he was a kid and used it later for his records...I have recorded conversations with Bob explaining it to me in 1995.

Eric unquestionably was the modern inovator and teacher of mouthfill.
Marcus was my student first in Paxos ,Greece in 2000 ,and later in London ,he was at this stage a total begginer . I sent him to Tomsk to learn the monofin , I am a little surprised to hear that he was Loic's coach such a short time later without personal experience at depth (57 or 60mts ??) , the opinion of Claude and Guillaume might throw some light on this ,of course all things are possible .
In equalising ,like sex , there are only so many permutations and combinations possible , from my research very little is really new at best a question of emphasis or slight modifications . Mouthfill ,air scavenging ,BTV all have infinate individual variations. It would be a braver man than I to claim to have "invented " a technique . Teaching it is another story ,it must be individualised
Marcus's moto NO TANKS came from a Picasso sticker on our boat in Paxos that said" Thanks but No Tanks "
Marcus is very good at marketing and I believe has quite a following of unquestioning students so beware Eric did you make that cup of coffee yourself ?

 

[francisco]

: )

Loic did not use the mouthfill everyone is using nowdays. He never did actually.

Instead of stocking a huge amount of air in his mouth after a critical depth, he would just do series of small reverse packs, all the way down to the bottom. Here in France, we call it "la carpe inverse".

Loic spent a major part of his training stretching his body. He was veeeery flexible. Each session would last 1 to 2 hours.

In one side his ribcage was amazingly elastic and undoubtfully relaxed during his dives .... in the other, with the experince he had, he could always create a depression in his mouth bigger than the one in his lungs. Respecting this ratio he could without proper "mouthfill" dive below - 165 m, head down.

[ame=http://youtu.be/Vs5sZx5bMpw]YouTube - D DAYinternet[/ame]

I will just add that people have been "freediving" for decades, centuries ... I don't believe we can seriously pretend that Eric or Marcus have invented whatsoever about equalisation. They have just described in an intelligent way something that others have been doing by instinct for ages.

Still, their work is valuable ... I use it ... I teach it.


Happy easter to all freediver friends


F

 

[aharon solomons]

I agree with Francisco both have something of value to contribute >I didnot intend to infer otherwise . All the best to all
AHARON

 

[efattah]

I don't believe we can seriously pretend that Eric or Marcus have invented whatsoever about equalisation. They have just described in an intelligent way something that others have been doing by instinct for ages.

When Brett LeMaster set a world record of 81m in 1999, this record lasted for 2 years (almost unheard of in constant weight), because nobody could equalize any deeper. There were numerous failed attempts at breaking it, including Mike Rapu, and Herbert Nitsch who failed with a 72m dive, stuck with equalization, despite using reverse packing.

So, I don't think it is correct to say that all of these people were already doing the mouthfill technique 'for ages', and simply not knowing how to describe them. If so, then people would have had no problem breaking LeMaster's record.

I always give credit where credit is due. In 1998, I had the idea for fluid goggles. On Mark Barville's 'freedivelist' e-mail list, everyone told me (including Rudi Castineyra) that fluid goggles could never work, and that no one would ever be able to see clearly underwater with them. They did work. But, I found out later that Roland Specker had come up with the idea in 1988, although his goggles were crude, and he never sold or marketed them. But he was first, even though I had no knowledge of him at the time.

Prior to 1999, as I described somewhere else in this forum, divers were doing what I call 'repeated mouthfills', i.e. filling the mouth, then equalizing, over and over, all the way down. This is different from the 'single-mouthfill' technique. One diver who was doing the 'repeated mouthfill' was Tony Heugh of Australia who competed at 1998 Worlds in Sardinia. I was talking to him over e-mail in early 1999, and he was describing the repeated mouthfill technique. It was shortly after that, that it occurred to me that a single giant mouthfill very shallow might get you even deeper. And it did. But I still credit Tony Heugh for giving me the food for thought that even allowed the conceptualization of the single mouthfill technique.

Regardless, I always give credit where credit is due.

There are in fact quite a number of other equalization techniques that bear no similarity to any published techniques. However, I am reluctant to publish them freely because they involve a certain amount of danger, and incorrectly practicing them could result in drowning.

 

[cigarlung]

I just want say thanks Eric started lurching on Deeper Blue 2004 and am greatful for all that you have shared over the years. All the best to you

 

[buddha]

I hope I've spend 6€ in a "new" technique, otherwise I've better donate Eric for his tremendous contributions all over the years.
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[francisco]

When Brett LeMaster set a world record of 81m in 1999, this record lasted for 2 years (almost unheard of in constant weight), because nobody could equalize any deeper. There were numerous failed attempts at breaking it, including Mike Rapu, and Herbert Nitsch who failed with a 72m dive, stuck with equalization, despite using reverse packing.
.

Little precision ... Guillaume set two world records in constant weight ( 87 m in 2002 - Nice and 96 m in 2004 - La Reunion ) without any kind of mouthfill...just by reverse packing regularly.

Loic went head down to -170 with that same technique.

In my opinion, bringing"up" the air with small reverse packs could be tactically more interesting. The smaller they are the deeper you still can make them as the power it takes to create them is less important than a full mouthfill.

Take a compressor. The tremendous pressure that the engine is capable to create is due to a serie of little pistons put together and stroking very fast.
Imagine now this same engine with a huge monocylinder. The power needed to compress the air would be much more important.

Now if we invert the system and use that same engine to create a depression ( the kind o depression we freedivers need to pull the air out of the lungs ), the logic would stay the same. A serie of little pistons would still be less demanding in terms of power.

I would assimilate the later with "repetitive reverse packs".

Remember ... why can't we at a certain point pull some more air out of the lungs ? Just because the depression in the lungs is bigger than the one we can create with the "mouth". The air stays where the biggest depression is...right ? Well, let's take less air at a time and focus on getting the same amount little by little but with far more power ( series os small reverse packs / small pistons stroking )


Just my guess : )



F

 

[Will]

Small reverse packs as you need them was the system that I have always used up until early this year, and it worked perfectly: I didn't need to waste energy locking a full mouthful of air into my cheeks, or worry about doing it at the right depth or powerfully enough. I would still advocate this system to most freedivers, however I ran into a point at around 115-120m where I couldn't equalise deeper with this system. ppCO2 comes into play somehow, so if I had a free ride down (VWT/NLT) I could probably equalise deeper, but that was my limit for CWT.
I do about 40 minutes of lung stretches and thoracic flexibility exercises twice a day, and this has enabled me to empty my lungs to less than ½RV (as evidenced by reverse packing at 10m and not being able to exhale any more air upon returning to the surface). However I reach ½RV at around 110m, so there is no chance of even a microbubble of air being pulled up after that point.
My lungs can accommodate a much greater negative pressure than ½RV, as I can reverse pack to this volume at the surface, take a bite of air, and descend to at least 13m, where their volume would be almost ¹/₅ RV, simulating 250m.
However after years of stretching the diaphragm, ribs and rigid airways, there is no way I can remove significant air from the lungs once I start to approach ½RV. It seems the negative pressure locks the glottis or trachea from the inside, and even if I exert full power with a reverse pack I only extract saliva from my throat.
Another limiting factor is that I seem to have ear drums that are a lot less flexible than normal, meaning I can't 'ride' my ears for 10-20m as some others can past 100m. Even at that depth I'm still equalising every couple of meters.

These are all the reasons why I switched over to Eric's method of a full mouthfill at a shallower depth in order to get past 120m head-down in CWT/FIM.

 

[dannybuoy]

Could really work, i've heard a few freedivers describing that technique, but i tend to squeeze if i reverse pack below 50 -maybe i'm using too much force? And it is quite exceptional that people can still reverse pack at 100.

 

[efattah]

Reverse packing, in my opinion, has too many limitations to be useful. First of all, it requires action all the way down, and concentration, even in the deep phase. Plus, to reverse pack when deep, you must really crunch your abs to push any volume towards your throat, which is energy intensive. Plus, the depth limit of reverse packing is quite shallow, as Will discovered.

The single-mouthfill can get you to 150m+ head down (or maybe even more), or way over 200m if feet down. If you consider that the single mouthfill allowed me to equalize to 100m on an FRC dive with just a 4.5L starting lung volume, the potential is clear.

The mouthfill maneuver itself (done at 15m-35m) is extremely energy intensive. The athlete comes to an almost complete stop as the streamline is broken and huge amounts of muscular effort are used to bring up the remaining air and get it into the mouth. After that major effort, an expert diver uses no more energy at all during the descent.

Therefore, I would say the big drawback with the single mouthfill is the huge energy wasted during the mouthfill itself. I still think this is way less energy than is used by doing abdominal frenzel or abdominal reverse packing the whole way down, but it could still be improved upon.

Therefore what I have been working on lately is a technique which doesn't require any energy at any time during the entire dive. If successful it would save a bit of energy on the descent.

There are people who have dove deep without advanced techniques. Carlos Coste trained flexibility and ultimately dove 105m with straight frenzel/BTV. However he could not get deeper. Once he started the single mouthfill he increased his PB to 115m.

Thus, if the single mouthfill had never caught on, Guillaume would have eventually still dove 87-96m, and then this would have been eventually beaten by Carlos to 105m. But fewer people would have been diving very deep, since the incredible flexibility needed to frenzel to 100m+ takes more diving than the average diver has access to.

 

[francisco]

Reverse packing, in my opinion, has too many limitations to be useful. First of all, it requires action all the way down, and concentration, even in the deep phase. Plus, to reverse pack when deep, you must really crunch your abs to push any volume towards your throat, which is energy intensive. Plus, the depth limit of reverse packing is quite shallow, as Will discovered.

( ... )

The mouthfill maneuver itself (done at 15m-35m) is extremely energy intensive. The athlete comes to an almost complete stop as the streamline is broken and huge amounts of muscular effort are used to bring up the remaining air and get it into the mouth. After that major effort, an expert diver uses no more energy at all during the descent.

T

I have red with great attention Will's post. Very accurate and really interesting.

Now, I am really surprised to read Eric that you crunch your abbs to push the air up to the airways !!!? That sounds like Vasalva to me?!? I have to admit that I have never red your description of the mouthfill, but physiologically talking it doesn t make much sense to create such a tension around the ribcage. Crunching the abbs will just add rigidity to the ribcage as it has an incidence on the diaphragma balistic.

I might have missed something from your explanations ( excuse my English ) but I have always hardly defended the fact that the ribcage should remain as passive as possible ( "forget your abbs / diaphragma" ) in order to get the best possible flexibility. By doing that I then just have to create with my mouth a reverse pack that will create a depression superior to the one on my ribcage. As far as this ratio is respected the air is pulled up using exclusively the anterior muscles from the neck and the the ones from the jaw. Zero contraction from the rest of the body. I just focus on the quality and power of the depression I can create with my mouth. All smooth.

Did I miss anything ? : )))

 

[Will]

Like Francisco, I wouldn't normally engage the abdominals in order to reverse pack - the more relaxed the whole thorax is then the more compliant it will be to the negative pressure exerted on it by creating a vacuum in the mouth when you lower the jaw.

However, there is one abdominal maneuver that can sometimes assist a reverse pack: by contracting the central abdominal muscles (similar to the yogic exercise of nauli) you can increase negative intrapulmonary pressure, which collapses the ribcage more but simultaneously takes some tension off the diaphragm. This allows you to reverse pack again, synchronising the reverse pack with relaxation of the abdominals, so that the ribcage maintains its compression while you return to the same amount of diaphragmatic introflexion as before.
I don't know if this is what Eric is referring to though, as at depth the benefit of this maneuver is reduced.

 

[Mullins]

You have to do a forceful exhale to get decent mouthfill volume because you're inflating your mouth/cheeks as far as you can - reverse packing will never give you a full mouthfill, by definition. Of course it makes the ribcage more 'rigid' when you do it, but I don't see that as a problem, because you just relax the chest/diaphragm from that point onwards.

 

[tcrusson]

Based on my experience, I don't tend to question the efficiency of the mouthfill. When I started diving a couple of years back, I went quickly to about 45m and then ran completely flat, with great difficulty reverse packing (not so flexible to start with).
Someone taught me the mouthfill at this stage and, in a trip to Dahab, my dives took me to 71m in 2 weeks. Basically adding 3m at a time, not because of a lack of EQ, but for a fear of getting squeezed. At this stage, equalisation was still easy at the bottom. A year later, and no exposure to depth in the meantime, I went back for 3 weeks and went from 71m to 91m. This time the limit was narcosis, not equalisation as there was still a fair amount of air left to equalise.
So in 5 weeks of diving, Eric's technique took me from 45 to 91m, with more air left to EQ... Oh, and I'm not packing either...

Cheers (and thanks Eric ),
Tanguy
Blog: Splash

 

[Will]

You have to do a forceful exhale to get decent mouthfill volume because you're inflating your mouth/cheeks as far as you can - reverse packing will never give you a full mouthfill, by definition. Of course it makes the ribcage more 'rigid' when you do it, but I don't see that as a problem, because you just relax the chest/diaphragm from that point onwards.

What about if you tilt your head back as you drop your jaw and fill your throat? Then when you bring your head back down it should puff out your cheeks such that you can't exhale any more air into them without spilling.
I'm kind of new to the 'one-off mouthfill' game, so I might be missing an important detail.

 

[Mullins]

I don't find that there is enough difference in volume between those two postures. If I reverse packed with my head back, I would still be well short of full mouthfill volume when I put my head back down again. There is a bigger difference between the volume I can actively suck into my mouth and the volume it will accept as a passive vessel (for me at least).

 

[tcrusson]

What about if you tilt your head back as you drop your jaw and fill your throat? Then when you bring your head back down it should puff out your cheeks such that you can't exhale any more air into them without spilling.

Have you managed to do this on land? I just tried (head way back, jaw dropped, then lock the epiglotis and bring the head down): the cheeks puff out, but I can bring a lot more air in with a whooping sound - probably double the volume.

 

[Will]

Have you managed to do this on land? I just tried (head way back, jaw dropped, then lock the epiglotis and bring the head down): the cheeks puff out, but I can bring a lot more air in with a whooping sound - probably double the volume.

I can do it on dry land, and after the maneuver there's no way I can exhale any more air in (it just starts spilling out the mouth).
Then again, I've only been doing big mouthfills for about a month, so I'm just a beginner, and I wouldn't be surprised if my mouthfill volume is below par (measured with water it's 130mL).