Heart Rate vs Air Consumption

Hi All,

I see all these threads about air consumption and relaxing. I was wondering if anyone correlated air consumption vs heart rate. I.E. the more relaxed you, you have a lower heart rate and lower air consumption

Cheers
Brad

There's probably an indirect connection. People with lower heart rates are typically fitter than people with higher heart rates and fitter people tend to have lower air consumption.

R..

I can do an experiment for you if you like. I have a very high resting heart rate (not usually below 85 when I sleep and generally around 112 when awake) although I do not have a wieght problem. That doesn't mean I'm especially aerobicly fit either but my heart rate doesn't seem to decrease even when I do exercise actively and regularly. Anyway I can record my air consumption and heart rate over multiple dives and I can do the same with my buddy and then I can run a regression analysis when the data set is large enough to be statisticly significant. Not a perfect experiment since you're supposed to determine your resting heart rate when you first awaken and of course diving conditions may vary even at the same site but it would me neat to look at just the same.

bradcurtis:

Hi All,

I see all these threads about air consumption and relaxing. I was wondering if anyone correlated air consumption vs heart rate. I.E. the more relaxed you, you have a lower heart rate and lower air consumption

Cheers
Brad

Click to expand...

Assuming that a diver's breath cycle is being determined by metabolic need alone (leaving out effects of bad trim, changes in depth, etc.), then the heart rate of any one diver should be correlated with gas consumption, though probably not linearly. It would be much less robust to compare HR of one diver to another, as HRs are affected by some genetic factors that don't necessarily represent fitness level.

Another way of putting it is that if you dive in a way to keep your heart rate at a reasonable level, your gas consumption should be relatively low because your metabolic need would be relatively low. Again, there are other reasons why divers, particularly new divers, use more gas than required by their metabolisms, but that is beyond the scope of your question.

Cameron

I would think you'll see a correlation in a single diver. That is, when my heart rate is low for me, my gas consumption would be low also, and vice versa.
While there may be some correlation in the general population, I think you'll find there are more exceptions to the rule than adherents. In other words, a high resting heart rate doesn't necessarily correlate with high gas consumption. For example, my resting heart rate has been on the high end of normal all my life, even during my swim team and football days, but my gas consumption is on the low end of normal, or maybe even a little abnormally low.
Rick