Yoga to decrease Air Consumption?

[drbill]

I believe I mentioned in that other thread that a friend of mine who is a well known scientist and diver told me that yoga helped him with his breathing. I've never tried it myself, but it makes sense to me. Of course there are a number of other ways such as the Zen-like state (which I practice" or being "in the Groove" like Papa Bear.

Being a videographer I often sit still and wait for things to happen which cuts down on air consumption vs jetting around to take in the entire dive site in one dive.

 

[scubadobadoo]

there is a clear cut difference between people who are in good shape to those who arent.

Yep. Therefore, if you aren't in shape and you start to do yoga regularly then it WILL help your sac rate. A little exercise it better than no exercise. Plus, I think most people find even middle of the road yoga to be more strenuous and difficult than they thought it would be.

 

[Protist]

Yup. Will do. Class starts Nov. 5th. And its a 1 month class. I'm well aware that just one month of that class isnt going to do too much. But I have hopes that within that one month I can learn and memorize what they teach so I can continue it on my own for the rest of the fall and winter months.

 

[paddler3d]

I look forward to seeing your results.

An idea to make your experiment more controlled would be to do two things. I thought about this for checking my SAC rate without having to drive to dive.

Simply don your gear at home, relax, record your air and breath for 30mins or something. Then repeat except moving.

My rig is less than what I had to carry in the Army, but it may look funny.

Do it weekly during your YOGA.

The one catch would be to make sure your YOGA is doing it is to make sure that the YOGA is the ONLY thing that you have changed during your experiment.

I expect the YOGA will do something. Freediving and SCUBA are different disciplines, but a lot of freedivers are into YOGA.

 

[crimedog72]

A big part of yoga is focusing on your breath, controlling it, and coordinating movements with it. If you end up liking yoga, you start doing that subconsciously as you're doing other things (at least I did). It tends to slow the breathing down and make you more mindful of how you breathe, and that alone should be good for SAC rate.

If it works for you, you may be surprised at how fast you start to see results. I don't think a month would necessarily be unreasonable. Of course, as others have mentioned, there are about a zillion other variables, so it's hard to really completely attribute SAC improvements to yoga. But at the very least it shouldn't hurt.

 

[Aquabear]

I have done yoga for the last few years -after an intro from my wife.
Taking classes is a great start and if you want to continue after you can get DVD's to practice at home.
We take yoga at Golds Gym (no extra$) and at home our "GEAR room" turns into a yoga studio with some candles and a dvd on our laptop
One month will help, if you can add it to your normal exercise program.

Yoga benefits:
Increased range of motion, flexibility, relaxation, strength, focus
decreased stress, fatigue, stiffness
Relaxing will help with your breating- technique and volume
Aerobic exercise can really boost how your breathing as well.

People look surpirsed at me and Yoga since I am the weights kinda guy but it's benefits are incredible!

And also as said when diving find your Zen - thats what i thought we were all here for anyway, no?

Namaste

 

[limeyx]

A big part of yoga is focusing on your breath, controlling it, and coordinating movements with it. If you end up liking yoga, you start doing that subconsciously as you're doing other things (at least I did). It tends to slow the breathing down and make you more mindful of how you breathe, and that alone should be good for SAC rate.

If it works for you, you may be surprised at how fast you start to see results. I don't think a month would necessarily be unreasonable. Of course, as others have mentioned, there are about a zillion other variables, so it's hard to really completely attribute SAC improvements to yoga. But at the very least it shouldn't hurt.

For me, my "best/normal case" SAC did not dramatically improve with Yoga, even going 3X a week.

What did happen was really two things (breathing-related)

1) my "worst case"/stressed SAC dropped considerably. This is really important to me because having a consistent SAC makes emergency gas planning much much easier, especially on deeper dives
2) It really helped mentally. Before Yoga, I would get anxious and worked up before a deeper dive. Now I am much better able to handle things before the dive, which is a big bonus

From a physical perspective, I get a better workout in about the first 10 mins of a yoga class than from 30+ mins playing soccer. My back and legs are much stronger than they used to be which is invaluable when lumping heavy gear.

Yoga has been one of the best things I ever did for my diving.

 

[Bubbletrubble]

The one catch would be to make sure your YOGA is doing it is to make sure that the YOGA is the ONLY thing that you have changed during your experiment.

@paddler3d: I agree with you. Since the OP is a beginner diver, how will he know if the yoga has improved his air consumption or if simply doing several more dives (experience) has?

To be more convincing, I think the results would probably have to come from a more experienced diver. In my personal experience, the biggest improvement in my air consumption occurred from dives 5 - 50. I suspect that I improved a little more from dives 51 - 100 (I'm just throwing out dive #'s off of the top of my head). I'm talking about a dramatic improvement here...going from a SAC rate of 0.75 cuft/min to 0.35 - 0.4 cuft/min. I'm sure a lot of other divers have had similar experiences.

Don't get me wrong, though. The OP should give yoga a try and experience the health benefits right away. It's just going to be tough to figure out whether it's the additional experience, the yoga, or both (most likely) that helped improve his SAC rate.

 

[syntaxtree]

Yes...there are many variables.It will be rough. But perhaps my interest in this will spark the interest in other divers to maybe perform a similar experiment? More people the better for longitudinal studies. But I thought this would be more of a cross-sequential research(multiple groups over time)assuming at least one other person became interested.

Now that is almost a year later, I am curious as to the results of your experiment. Were you able to notice a difference after the yoga classes?

 

[Thalassamania]

Yoga breathing will, I know, make you a better free diver. The better your free diving skills, the more more relaxed you tend to be as a scuba diver, thus, as an indirect effect you air consumption rate may well drop.