Naturally a breath up is what happens just before you do a breath hold, and thats where my focus has been since my first session and static apnea pool sessions. It must be remembered that static apnea in the pool is considerably easier than static apnea being practiced outside of the pool. The reason for this is that the body has a function known as "The mammalian diving reflex". this reflex is activated when the head is submerged under water and the effect is a reduction of up to 50% in the heart rate. This is a natural reaction and all humans posses this.
So because the heart rate is slower when submerged the logical place to practice breath holds would be in the pool. However black-outs occur when pushing the boundaries, and this is best described as when the body "resets" itself and forces you to breath. If you blackout on dry land you will automatically collapse, reset and start breathing. The human body is quite amazing though, if you blackout in water, the body has another reflex that in a way over-rides the blackout. This reflex is called laryngospasm, and basically this means your larynx closes up to stop water from entering your lungs. As a result, the golden rule of free diving is never dive alone. If you were to blackout under water, your buddy just brings you up and your body does the rest. You will start breathing shortly thereafter and your oxygen saturation should be back to normal within a minute.
Right, so that leaves me doing breath ups and breath holds on dry land. Yes, more difficult but safer and better prep for the pool sessions. I am currently doing 5 min breath ups, followed by breath hold which I repeat 5 times. Here is my last session and you can see the gradual breath hold improvements. (1) 02:27.4 (2) 02:38.9 (3) 02:33.4 (4) 02:51.4 (5) 02:55.1.
Thursday is the next session in advanced breath holding and I look forward to comfortably get beyond the 3 minute mark soon. Hopefully the ocean plays along and I can start looking at the 10m dive mark.
For now my personal bests are 6m depth and 3min 10 sec breath hold.
Well Done.
ReplyDeleteBut please explain exactly the procedure for breath up's and breath holds. How do you do it?
Hi HJK.
ReplyDeleteThe breath up consists of a 3-4 minute session of deep breathing and relaxation. By deep breathing I mean inhaling from your stomach then into your rib cage area and then what feels like right to under your shoulders. This is then followed by a slow controlled exhale which follows the same time frame of about 9 seconds or so. So in slowly for 9 seconds or counts and out for about 9-10 seconds or counts. During this breathing session relax all muscles and focus on very shallow thoughts. By doing this you reduce your heart rate which in turn reduces the consumption of oxygen. Key aspect of apnea!
After about 4-5 minutes and when you feel that you are ready you exhale and squeeze out the last bit out of your lungs. Take a slow controlled deep inhalation that will form the air you use for your breath hold. I find that filling up to 100% is difficult to control so 90%-95% should be fine, followed by the hold.
The breath hold must be a state of total neutral, with thoughts being allowed to come and go. Focusing on a thought almost puts a time-line in place and my mind then chases how far I am in the hold. Depending how far you have trained you can push until the contractions come or push through them to push the limits a bit.
Remember not to practice breath holding when in water on your own, as a blackout could most definitely result in drowning. Dry Breath holds are fine though but consult with a professional if you want to train to asses your fitness and training program. Hope this helps!