I had this experience on holiday - I was, by a fair amount, the largest person on the trip (6'3, mid 40s and probably about 250lbs) so there was no way I was matching some of the others (5'6ish, early 20s, female and skinny). Even with a 15l I was still not quite matching their dive times on a 12l.
Air Consumption
- Thread starter Dan Bower
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Shaun Delport
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As discussed above, trim is important. Trim is ever changing on one dive. Most of the elements we cannot control, current, surge, wash and up/down welling. What we can control is what we do in any of the aforementioned.
Here is where I watch what the marine life is doing, and do likewise. After all, it is their environment, so they know best. When there is surge for example, I watch the fish, when they stop in anticipation of a head on surge approaching, I stop. When the surge comes back from behind, the fish swim forward with the surge, so do I. Effortless diving.
Remember also that the air in your cylinder has weight. You have between 6 to 8 pounds of air in your cylinder, depending on cylinder size. As you breathe your cylinder is getting lighter and as your dive progresses you are, as a result, getting lighter. You will become positively buoyant and have to dump small amounts of air to become neutrally buoyant again, trim.
Here is where I watch what the marine life is doing, and do likewise. After all, it is their environment, so they know best. When there is surge for example, I watch the fish, when they stop in anticipation of a head on surge approaching, I stop. When the surge comes back from behind, the fish swim forward with the surge, so do I. Effortless diving.
Remember also that the air in your cylinder has weight. You have between 6 to 8 pounds of air in your cylinder, depending on cylinder size. As you breathe your cylinder is getting lighter and as your dive progresses you are, as a result, getting lighter. You will become positively buoyant and have to dump small amounts of air to become neutrally buoyant again, trim.
a year ago I
put a comment in the email I sent the dive OP while booking that I was terrible with air, and I was. won't get into detail but at the time had less than 30 dives and was terrible. Now I am at close to 80 dives and it is no longer an issue. Buying new equipment or trying different breathing techniques are not the answer, more diving is.
put a comment in the email I sent the dive OP while booking that I was terrible with air, and I was. won't get into detail but at the time had less than 30 dives and was terrible. Now I am at close to 80 dives and it is no longer an issue. Buying new equipment or trying different breathing techniques are not the answer, more diving is.
Another vote for proper weighting and trim here. That's the #1 thing to address. Carrying too much lead will waste a lot of air for several different reasons.
2nd, learn to breath from your diaphragm, low in the lungs, not high in the chest. An exercise is to lay on your back with a dive weight on your chest between your nipples. Practice breathing so that the weight is stationary (not moving up and down). That's how you want to breath on scuba to get better use of your air.
3rd thing to do is streamline you kit. Carry the equipment you need for "this dive" and leave the rest behind. With diving, more is not better, and what you have should be as clean as possible with regards to streamlining. Every pound of drag you eliminate is a pound of thrust you don't have to generate.
It won't happen overnight, it will take practice. However, you'll need to know what and how to practice for it to make a good difference. This is what to focus on.
That's 3 easy steps to getting air consumption on par with the best!
2nd, learn to breath from your diaphragm, low in the lungs, not high in the chest. An exercise is to lay on your back with a dive weight on your chest between your nipples. Practice breathing so that the weight is stationary (not moving up and down). That's how you want to breath on scuba to get better use of your air.
3rd thing to do is streamline you kit. Carry the equipment you need for "this dive" and leave the rest behind. With diving, more is not better, and what you have should be as clean as possible with regards to streamlining. Every pound of drag you eliminate is a pound of thrust you don't have to generate.
It won't happen overnight, it will take practice. However, you'll need to know what and how to practice for it to make a good difference. This is what to focus on.
That's 3 easy steps to getting air consumption on par with the best!
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Breathing from the bottom of the lungs is going to be a more efficient form of respiration because that is where we have the highest concentration of small capillaries for doing the gas exchange. By focusing the flow exchange there, we can maximize the level of gas exchange we get from the volume of gas respirated from the tank. This is the physical explanation, and from my experience, it works in practice with noticeable results.quite the opposite of was is advocated in a prior post: shallow inhalation from the top of your lungs..
I agree with you but I would like to have other's opinion.
lamarpaulski
Contributor
I was doing much better in air-consumption than my super-fit son at the beginning of a week on Cozumel. (I dive way more than he does.) By mid-week he had relaxed and become a comfortable diver and caught up to me. I'm sure with more diving he would way surpass me as I'm not as aerobically fit as he is by a long shot. Buoyancy, trim and warmth also really help. There is great individual variation too.
mi000ke
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For me this was key. Being a long time sax player who has practiced diaphramatic breathing for many (many, many) years, even as a novice my air consumption has always been extremely low and my breathing very efficient (like having to make one breath last for the next 12 bars of a slow tune). I remember CESA being about the easiest part of my cert course. And knowing that one good breath will pretty much get me up to the surface from 50' (about the time it takes to play those 12 bars) helps keep me even more relaxed on shallow dives (a small side benefit of efficient breathing). And yes, this has to be practiced, but if you can get comfortable with it, it will make a big difference. Maybe look for a yoga breathing course as well. Or take up the sax.
When you say "from the bottom of the lungs", are you talking about exhaling completely on every breath and only inhaling to 50 or 60% capacity as the most efficient gas transfer and to avoid chest expansion?
If so, THANK U.
All the other tips here do help, in an obvious manner but efficient gas exchange at the lungs is obviously the key to the maximum bottom time.
I will add one that is more a skill to be comfortable with than conservatory.
Manual bc inflation.
No need for the gas to go straight into your wing. Why not breathe it first? I will leave my inflator connected, but I'm gonna try to avoid using it in the future.
Disclaimer, if you are not 100% comfortable doing this, practice in chest deep water with supervision until you are!
Cheers
@wetwelder. If you are correctly weighted, think about the amount of air that you will use during a dive in order to maintain bouyancy . Mamy a few liters, less than a quarter. This represents less than half a minute of diving. 
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