Dry Breath holds, what are the benefits?

The point of training is to get you used to the actual situation. The training must emulate the reality as close as possible in order for it to be effective in the actual situation.

The thing to me is do training that gets your body used to holding your breath while doing some sort of physical exertion. This can be breathhold training while climbing stairs or walking ,etc...

I posted this in your initial thread and Danielle was nice enough to save it for me. I will add that a static breathhold is not the same as a dynamic breathhold...

Static Breathholds are overrated in my opinion as it relates to diving and particularly spearfishing. Worse, I actually feel it is dangerous. Unless you are using it to train for a AIDA-like event or competition on static breatholds or to toot your on horn amongst your pals, then it is simply just an exercise in futility. It is however, somewhat useful if you want to know what it feels like to experience a contraction. Keep in mind experiencing a contraction at depth while diving spells disaster.

If I had to list the top ten aspects that make one a better spearfisherman, static breathholds would not be among them.

By the way Toledo, my opinion on statics is not based on what Rick has stated. Most comes from my experience reading about the physiology of diving and more so with an old diving buddy of mine who lived in South Florida for several years and later moved to the midwest. I learned more from him than anyone else and he was also a huge critic of statics.

interesting thread..

while i agree generally that diving is the best practice for diving, the ability to get used to not breathing is a huge benefit of dry statics. additionally, I have a lot of time I can use to do a 2- 3 minute dry hold but I cant get into the water everyday.

I feel like a lot of freediving is about mental ability and security and if you know that you can hold your breath for 4 minutes on your couch it helps you to relax and stay down for a minute or so.

I do not think that a person with the longest breath hold on land is the best freediver, but I bet they are still damn good at holding thier breath underwater

as for the element of exercising, i always try to hold me breath when I go get the mail or walk the dog, just for that very reason..it is all about replicating as much of the diving experience as possible while still staying aware that we cannot alway train the way we want

Training should involve adapting ones body to become more readily in tune to obtaining the dive reflex early during the course of the outing. Freediving is NOT about the ability to hold your breath, but rather the ability to slow down your system and increase its O2 consumption efficiency. The less O2 we need, the less CO2 we’ll produce and therefore… the less desire or need to breath. The more experienced divers will tell you that they never take a full inhale and some actually advocate not over exerting yourself during the inhale and in some cases and some techniques it will actually contract your carotid and increase your HR, thus negating an efficient dive.

Statics are nothing more than CO2 tolerance training. I believe that it is in no one’s interest(other than competitors with both freedive and scuba spotters) to lower the threshold of one of the most precise security features our body has. Our body does not read the levels of the O2 in our system(only in rare cases of some disorders) but rather the CO2 levels. If we’re forcing ourselves to tolerate these warning levels, it seems logical that our O2 levels would already be into their so called “reserves” when we finally start getting the “warning”. Before you know it, this type of training would deepen the characteristic depth of Shallow Water Blackout. Our partial pressures of O2 would drop past our brain’s cut-off point in possible proportions to the amount of CO2 tolerance training we do. I know I don’t have to spell it out for you, but this is not good. I guess(for you pilots out there) it’s like purposely adjusting your altimeter to a higher elevation and then trying to land with it. It’s a false security that has the potential of becoming fatal. That’s why I believe recreative snorklers and spearfishermen should realize that the goals of competitive freedivers are quite different than ours.

Good post Rolo.

Quote from LunkerBuster

I do not think that a person with the longest breath hold on land is the best freediver, but I bet they are still damn good at holding thier breath underwater

Precisely what separates a diver from a guy practicing yoga is that the diver taught his body to control/minimize oxygen consumption while doing certain kinds of movements and to minimize those movements while still being able to maneuver underwater. This is why like you mentioned in the other thread LB whenever we do a movement that is outside what we've been able to condition ourselves to, the increase in loss of oxygen is immediately apparent.

I have my theories as to the best training exercises for spearfishing, much of which I learned from years on deeperblue and my friendship early on with a very experienced and talented freediver.

The more we can mimick the training to the actual practive of spearfishing, the better. Sure static walks can help, but what I have a VERY BIG problem with is the image of the neophytes sitting in front of a pointless thread on spearbored holding their breath, turning blue, puckering up and watching their digital Casio tick off another second towards the pied piper of CO2 tolerance training. Or worse holding your breath while in the car:0.

Pool exercises are good with dynamics until slight discomfort where you mimick the descending kicks and then practice your recovery breathing. Static wall sprints can be useful too if pool is too small. Some incentives for relevant training should be to acheive shorter recovery times and to adapt quicker to the aquatic environment as most of you know that by the time we are in our "groove" we start to tire, get hungry or dehydrated. The key to successful training is to capitalize on the repetitive nature of what we do in the water: trying to recover for our next dive. I believe that 60-80% of our time diving is spent recovering and trying to adapt to the reflex.

"Training should involve adapting ones body to become more readily in tune to obtaining the dive reflex early during the course of the outing. "

Very good point.

I am constantly reminded of how important this reflex is on my first dive of the day.
It is the most sobering and unpleasant dive.

I find that if the first dive is preceded by a long swim, as happens on a beach dive, it is a much better dive. It seems like a certain level of exhaustion is conducive to relaxation.

Quote from Toledo970

Have any of you ever tried warming up before jumping in the water? I know it's difficult because of the limited space but I would think that if you did some breathe ups and jumping jacks(or whatever) this might help allot. No?

I generally try to stretch and do breathing exercises on the ride out on the boat. However, I only do this when I know I'll be diving deep or diving a tournament where I see the day as me exerting myself more than the usual diving escapade with some of the guys. Most of the time, I just due a few stretches and dive. On the days where I go through a series of prep exercises and stretches, I will also immerse my face in the cold water before diving to get the mammalian reflex flowing and get my heart rate down to a slower more efficient rate conduscive to diving. Again, most of the time where we are a bunch of guys just dicking around and going diving, I don't get as serious and just care about being in the water and enjoying the aspects of the day. In other words, it is not something I do all the time.

One interesting thing about " dry" breathold training is the hypoxy oriented resistence training. Theoretically muscles could be trained to perform under very low oxigen consumption (anaerobic)
I was wondering, do you think a heavy bag boxing routine could be any benefical for freediving/spearfishing purposes? I think it would , just mixing it up with even less air involved:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YFfy9lXFGE

Quote from Rolo

If I had to list the top ten aspects that make one a better spearfisherman, static breathholds would not be among them.

I definitely have to agree on this point, but would have to slightly disagree on others.

Personally, I HATE statics. I'm a big fan of breathing and no part of holding my breath out of water is fun. However, there are many aspects of static training that directly translate to spearfishing for me. It's very true that statics are a completely different animal than dynamics, but in general - both have very applicable components to spearfishing.

Statics definitely help refine breathe up techniques, relaxation methods, and mental focus. It's all about common sense and learning what translates from freediving to spearfishing and vice versa. I agree that those who don't understand the differences could easily get themselves in trouble. Just like hyperventilating - it's easy for a newer diver to get wrapped up in the easy gains, while ignoring the potentially dangerous pitfalls.

This conversation reminds me a lot of shooting accuracy. Everyone says the best practice for spearfishing... is to get out and go diving! While this is unequivocably true in many respects, for most of us, an hour of target practice with a new gun will be exponentially more beneficial than several hours of hunting. This is especially true for out here, where we can go a full day without even taking a shot... so every shot counts. When a shot is missed on a fish, the reason is not always as apparent - the gun might shoot off, elbow or wrist bent, fish might have flinched, or rigging issues. By learning how one's gun shoots, the learning curve is accelerated dramatically. With my new enclosed track Sea Sniper euro, I kept shooting over the top of the fish. Target shooting, I found that the bands stacked higher on the enclosed track and the shorter shaft overhang made triangulation slightly different. After a quick adjustment, I was soon stoning the majority of fish shot. This is analagous to the static debate as learning proper breathing and relaxation techniques out of water will help infinitely more than constantly diving for years with the same bad habits.

K, I'm rambling like usual. :crazy:

As a general FYI for this thread, the loose rule is that dynamic potential is roughly half of statics.

I'll throw in two cents from a grasshopper. One thing that I've learned from trying to hold my breath while walking, etc. is the value of slowing down. For me, being new, one of the impulses underwater is to move too quickly. Doing a little dynamic apnea out of the water has helped me to realize when I am moving unnecessarily quickly, and not getting the most out of the breath.

You rarely ramble Harold, thanks for chimming in.

You'll always get better statics in water as opposed to dry land.

when I first started, I was obsesed with doing static tables, I was convinced that doing them would make me a better diver. I never saw a real benefit from it, I got quite good at it with dry holds of over 4 mins without too much effort, but was never able to translate that into better diving. I quit doing this a while ago.

I agree with Rolo, training to increase endurance to CO2 levels is dangerous.

However, I have found something that helps me for both diving and as exercising. Pool Training.

Nothing hardcore like the competitive freedivers, but more of an endurance, technique focused swimming, getting my body remain comfortable in the water when I'm not able to get out diving, which can be as long as 1-2 months.

my training is basic apnea swims with long fins, normally swim sets of 50-75m, and focus on reducing recovery period. never really tried to do a max swim, not really interested in finding my limits, although I have done a couple of 100m swims under supervision that became a bit hard towards the end.

when I'm doing my normal swims, it takes about 50 secs to do a 50m swim, and I try to work on my recovery being 1min or less. it takes 1:25 or so for a 75m swim, recoveries are 1:30-2. Never push it, never hyperventilate. I'm actually trying to eliminate purging from my breathup. I'm down to 2, used to take 4-5 deep purges. If you've read Mullins posts lately, he explains how oxygen is best used when no hyperventilation is done. doing this may bring on contractions or urge to breathe quicker, but you'll actually survive longer this way. I think this is crucial information to all divers, specially new, who think hyperventilation extends bottom time, there are still many people out there who believe this, I was one of them.

Good post Oto. Glad to see you on here posting again, some of us have missed your posts on here and we actually commented on this yesterday during our outing.

I agree with you regarding purges. I used to do a few very deep ones. All i do now are 2-3 very shallow ones during breathup.