serambin
Guest
what is the XALER method?
Stan
Stan
Tips / Hints / Suggestions for Lowering SAC?
- Thread starter Daylonious
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
- Messages
- 6,921
- Reaction score
- 25
- # of dives
- I just don't log dives
Be more efficient and be lazier.
Take the time to adjust your weights you your buoyancy is perfect (eye-level in the water with an empty BC and 500 PSI in your tank).
Then take the time to adjust the placement of your weights, tank, BC and anything else you have that's adjustable or movable to let you remain horizontal in the water with no extra effort.
Now that that's done, relax, move around less and don't fight currents.
Every calorie you burn is done using the oxygen in your tank, so less work = less air used.
Terry
Take the time to adjust your weights you your buoyancy is perfect (eye-level in the water with an empty BC and 500 PSI in your tank).
Then take the time to adjust the placement of your weights, tank, BC and anything else you have that's adjustable or movable to let you remain horizontal in the water with no extra effort.
Now that that's done, relax, move around less and don't fight currents.
Every calorie you burn is done using the oxygen in your tank, so less work = less air used.
Terry
Daylonious:
The right fins are really important. Like having the right prop on a boat, it hugely impacts performance and fuel efficiency. You have to identify the type of diving you'll be doing, and perhaps own more than one set of fins. I spearfish mostly, so long full-foot fins are the most effective for me, on scuba and while freediving. Decades ago when I switched from Jetfins, it made a difference of 25% in air consumption.
Move like you're swimming in molasses. Every body motion, not just finning.
Pace your breathing. Consider getting an air-integrated computer and download your dives, to see where you need to smooth out your consumption. You'll get to where you can stop the breathing spikes most of the time, no matter what you are doing.
Cheat wherever you can! Like a cyclist drafting behind another rider, use current breaks from wrecks, pull down the anchor line where possible, and pull along rocks on the bottom. Keep your head down and feel how the current is flowing down your body.
Get rid of everything you don't use, and tuck away everything you do.
Hang as high as you can when there is no current. Keep the gas in your tank... not in your body!
Chad
Move like you're swimming in molasses. Every body motion, not just finning.
Pace your breathing. Consider getting an air-integrated computer and download your dives, to see where you need to smooth out your consumption. You'll get to where you can stop the breathing spikes most of the time, no matter what you are doing.
Cheat wherever you can! Like a cyclist drafting behind another rider, use current breaks from wrecks, pull down the anchor line where possible, and pull along rocks on the bottom. Keep your head down and feel how the current is flowing down your body.
Get rid of everything you don't use, and tuck away everything you do.
Hang as high as you can when there is no current. Keep the gas in your tank... not in your body!
Chad
DI_Guy
Contributor
When I started, I was at 1.14 cu ft/min and now I am down to 0.6 cu ft/min. I am 6'1 and 200 lbs. I attribute the SAC improvement to getting more dives under my belt but also a gal suggested that I put my tongue against the roof of my mouth when I breathe. It does reduce the air flow, try it, you may be amazed at the results.
kalvyn
Guest
Read 'XALER' from right to left.serambin:
Jimmie
Also, with some of these guys from the Puget Sound like Jimmie, you might double check to see if your buddy's taking a ride on your tank!kalvyn:Read 'XALER' from right to left.
Jimmie
Daylonious
Three trains of thought for you.
First this is about you. You are only in competition with yourself. You're not a 98 pound aerobics instructor. You're a good sized guy and that means there is a lot of living tissue there to support. How much if Krispy Kreme is between you and your weightbelt. At some point you will need what you need for air. The consider a cylinder that lets you execute the dives you want to make.
Now non diving activities.....
1. On days when you can't scuba dive for lack of a buddy etc. Go skin diving for an hour or 2. Sustained oral breathing, face in water and swimming are excelent conditioners for diving and general fitness. Go around to scout dive sites.
2. Sing, loud and with verve, preferably alone in the car. Hold long notes, feel your diphram and sqeeze every note you can out of those lungs. I'm not kidding. Long slow deep breaths are what it's all about and this will help.
Now was for diving.....
1. Get the weight you carry donw to what it needs to be and no more. Plenty of psosts on foing a good weight check.
2. Get that weight into the right places so you hovver like a gull in the breeze. If you are flapping your arms you need to work on your trim. If your heavy in the legs it may mean your really light in the lungs, move some weight up into a BC trim pockets, onto the tank or hike the tank up iin the bands. You are a lever. Look at stuff like that you should be able to float horizontal in the water column, like a skydiver in freefall, but you're not falling.
3. Take your time diving, kick, glide, stop and observe.
4. Long slow deep breaths. You're breathing at multiple atmospheres so your body has many molecules of oxygen available to it. The critical thing is to drive the stale breath out of your lungs. CO2 will trigger the need to breathe, get it out of there. Retaining CO2 can also give you a headache.
5. Dive, dive, Dive.
6. See #5
Dive safe and often.
Pete
Three trains of thought for you.
First this is about you. You are only in competition with yourself. You're not a 98 pound aerobics instructor. You're a good sized guy and that means there is a lot of living tissue there to support. How much if Krispy Kreme is between you and your weightbelt. At some point you will need what you need for air. The consider a cylinder that lets you execute the dives you want to make.
Now non diving activities.....
1. On days when you can't scuba dive for lack of a buddy etc. Go skin diving for an hour or 2. Sustained oral breathing, face in water and swimming are excelent conditioners for diving and general fitness. Go around to scout dive sites.
2. Sing, loud and with verve, preferably alone in the car. Hold long notes, feel your diphram and sqeeze every note you can out of those lungs. I'm not kidding. Long slow deep breaths are what it's all about and this will help.
Now was for diving.....
1. Get the weight you carry donw to what it needs to be and no more. Plenty of psosts on foing a good weight check.
2. Get that weight into the right places so you hovver like a gull in the breeze. If you are flapping your arms you need to work on your trim. If your heavy in the legs it may mean your really light in the lungs, move some weight up into a BC trim pockets, onto the tank or hike the tank up iin the bands. You are a lever. Look at stuff like that you should be able to float horizontal in the water column, like a skydiver in freefall, but you're not falling.
3. Take your time diving, kick, glide, stop and observe.
4. Long slow deep breaths. You're breathing at multiple atmospheres so your body has many molecules of oxygen available to it. The critical thing is to drive the stale breath out of your lungs. CO2 will trigger the need to breathe, get it out of there. Retaining CO2 can also give you a headache.
5. Dive, dive, Dive.
6. See #5
Dive safe and often.
Pete
That's right, probably your two biggest factors are to relax and ensure bouyancy is correct. I only have 21 dives but I can dive at 40-50 for 60-70 minutes and still come out with 1300-1500 psi in the tank. I also think my jet fins make a difference as I just sort of putter along while my friends seem to fin along about 1/2 again faster that I have to. Even when doing 100-130 foot dives for my deep specialty (last week) I came up with as much air or more left in the tank than my instructors did. I just can't overstate how much being totally relaxed and having your bouyancy set right can have an effect on this.
I helped two of my buddies that were having trouble with their consumption to get their weight down a few lbs and relax more when they are out and they noticed an immediate and marked improvement on the very next dive.
I helped two of my buddies that were having trouble with their consumption to get their weight down a few lbs and relax more when they are out and they noticed an immediate and marked improvement on the very next dive.
I took this one step further...I started singing underwater (makes my wife/buddy nuts). My rationale is if I'm singing, I'm breathing out, not in. As a musician, I was taught from 8 years old on to breathe in deep and fast, then control exhalation in order to play complete phrases without needing another breath. When I finally applied this concept to diving, my SAC rate was cut in half almost immediately.spectrum:
Similar threads
