Excellent question, I am going to work on that...my question would be if you fill your lungs and take shallow breaths will that cause you to hyper ventilate? And will this technique cause you to consume your gas faster than normal
Pause breathing to control buoyancy
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underwaterfrank
Registered
Hmmm...best lesson I ever learned from a very experienced instructor is...NOT to try to regulate your breathing by holding it for any amount of time.
During my first 30 dives or so I was worried about air consumption, regularly held my breath for 4-5 seconds almost every breath. Often ended up with major headaches especially after deeper dives.
His simple advice was, always make sure to exhale thoroughly. Many divers feel an underlying fear/stress about exhaling most of their air as there is this idea that there may not be a next breath coming from that regulator. It's often subconscious, you won't know it's happening. If you want to try anything at all then try actually exhaling more air between breaths than you normally would. You actually will expel more CO2 from your lungs, which of course is the gas that makes you feel like as if you are out of breath and causes a sense of panic if it builds up too much, so you end up more relaxed and your breathing will actually slow down but become more efficient. So in one line, breathing more deeply in and out actually uses less air. It feels counter-intuitive because a lot of divers will breathe in a more shallow way when they are underwater, as compared to being on land. remember, for proper lung ventilation, it is better to exhale more thoroughly than to inhale more deeply.
During my first 30 dives or so I was worried about air consumption, regularly held my breath for 4-5 seconds almost every breath. Often ended up with major headaches especially after deeper dives.
His simple advice was, always make sure to exhale thoroughly. Many divers feel an underlying fear/stress about exhaling most of their air as there is this idea that there may not be a next breath coming from that regulator. It's often subconscious, you won't know it's happening. If you want to try anything at all then try actually exhaling more air between breaths than you normally would. You actually will expel more CO2 from your lungs, which of course is the gas that makes you feel like as if you are out of breath and causes a sense of panic if it builds up too much, so you end up more relaxed and your breathing will actually slow down but become more efficient. So in one line, breathing more deeply in and out actually uses less air. It feels counter-intuitive because a lot of divers will breathe in a more shallow way when they are underwater, as compared to being on land. remember, for proper lung ventilation, it is better to exhale more thoroughly than to inhale more deeply.
Crush
Contributor
I continuously use my BC to control my buoyancy (and adjust the air in my drysuit as needed to keep some loft in it) - I strive to keep it neutral at all times. I routinely use my breathing to make fine adjustments to my buoyancy if I want to rise a bit or settle down a bit. I find that if I try to use my breathing to do what the BC should be doing I end up feeling sore inside - not from over-expansion, but from over-exertion.
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