How to increase breath hold?

[Fundive123]

Running and bike riding are also good, and can be fun, cardiovascular activities that can help along with practicing breathing techniques.

 

[olphart]

Hyperventilation is no longer considered safe and is not taught,except by PADI. Free Divers are doing something called oxygen packing instead.
Hyperventilating has caused too many blackout deaths. The free divers have totally gone away from it, according to their forums and videos. I'd love to take a good class sometime.

I just watched the video, and it sure looks like he was hyperventilating to me. At least that's what I used to do many years ago and that's what I was told I was doing.

 

[Hank49]

Increasing static breath hold and trying to increase breath hold for free dive spearfishing are kind of two different things.

You can relax in water just floating, and breath up. Take long deep breaths, 10 seconds in, 10 seconds exhale. If you do this over and over, your breath hold time will go up. Most likely way beyond what you thought possible if you'd never tried it before.

Free dive spearfishing is a bit different. You're moving and may be swimming against a current. In this case. recovery time, or cardiovascular shape is a big factor. I started riding a stationary bike and it increased my dive times by 15-20 seconds.
Also, dive on an empty stomach. Don't eat a big breakfast. Eat a lot of carbos the night before free diving all day. Digesting takes a lot of oxygen and will cut your bottom time.
As much as possible, relaaaaaaaxxxx. Relax your eyelids. And even with all that, some days I just dive better and can do 2 minutes at 30-50 feet. 1 min 30 sec at 60-70. I don't know why. Sex before diving? haha.

And always do this with a buddy. Don't push it in a 4 foot pool alone. You can black out and die in 2 feet of water.

The FII instructor who chimed in can help you a lot. But again, spearfishing changes the game a bit. I also did the PFI intermediate course. Have fun. Dive safe.

 

[John from the burg]

The safety thing is not being stressed enough here, you don't have to be deep to die freediving, more than one pro has died in his pool doing normal training they had done 1000 times before. The human body is just not known well enough to substitute good supervision with anything. Never, ever, EVER breath hold train in water alone, your asking for it and anyone worth their salt will say the same.


If you want minute plus dive times the best thing to do is dynamic holds, find a grassy field and walk or trot while holding. Anything that gets muscles moving while your holding will help train you body for working without air. Then with a buddy do laps at the pool while holding but stay with each other, cant stress the safety thing enough dude, guys are dying every damn month from this ****.


Even all this will not truly prepare you for the real deal, kicking horizontally a couple feet away from the surface is wayyyyy different than going head down and hitting depth. Your mind is your greatest obstacle and there is no replacement for real experience.

Never dive alone, really cant be overstated.

 

[Subcooled]

It is possible to freedive, even at constant depth, until one faints. It feels really bad (it's relative) until it doesn't anymore, but it can be done. A safety diver will be needed, if (when) you resurface partly or fully incapacitated. Or don't resurface.

Too keen breathing (hyperventilation) prior to the dive does nothing to increase blood oxygen content (it's already full) but it removes carbon dioxide. Hyperventilation only makes it possible to leave this world in greater comfort, possibly by drifting away without noticing. This video may help you understand how lack of oxygen feels: hypoxia - YouTube

Hyperventilation is life threatening and must not be done.

The method called 'packing' is not recommended anymore, either.

 

[tedshark]

Don't you guys look at thread dates before answering, the person that started this thread probably has not been here since last year.
the guy has only 1 post.

 

[gcarter]

Is this information only relevant to the OP? Does the information's value or the question's value somehow diminish with time?

What exactly is the problem?

 

[Subcooled]

This thread was date-wise old, but also one of the later posts in its subforum and new in that sense. Many people will read it.

 

[Ron Brandt]

Yes...many WILL read it. I had a 5 year old thread revived once and it was on Free Diving long before there was a sub forum for it...I personally have not been on here for quite a while but nice to some things never change
Ron

 

[Rabies Rabbe]

Nothing wrong with hyper ventilation as long as you don't exceed safe limits.