SCUBA_Morg:
Hi,
I was wondering if any of you know good exercises that will help build larger and more stronger lungs?
I want to stay under water a lot longer then I currently can and I haven't seen any good exercises that will help me do this.
Any info is appreciated eyebrow
SCUBA_morg,
Exercises may be good (see above) but nothing replaces good technique. I've been breathhold diving for a long time now, and my advise is to get into a pool, and do rythm breathholding, after telling the lifeguard what you are doing, and having them watch closely. Before I dive, I take no more than three deep breaths (more on hyperventilation later). I surface dive, relax and swim around underwater (I do not stay motionless, as that would be a signal to the lifeguard that I'm in trouble--I tell them that). I stay down until I feel the urge to breath, then surface. I stay on the surface a full minute, then take my three deep breaths, and go down again, again staying down until I feel the urge to breath, then surfacing. I do this for quite a while (up to half an hour or more).
What happens is that the body adapts, and after awhile you will find yourself staying down for extended times. But again, when the urge to breath comes, follow it. After half an hour, I commonly can stay down a minute or more while swimming around. It is this adaptation to breathholding that you want to develop.
Now, about hyperventilation--
DON'T DO IT. With extensive hyperventilation, you lower the amount of CO2 in your blood stream. It is the CO2 that triggers the "must breath" response in the body. If you blow that off, then what happens is that the oxygen levels decline in the blood, but the CO2 levels don't go up fast enough for you to think you need a breath,
AND YOU COULD BLACK OUT!. This is known as
shallow water blackout, and people have died from it. It can happen either in a pool, or in open water through two slightly different mechanisms.
--In a pool, after extensive hyperventilation and the underwater swimmer tries to break a record (which happened to me).
--In open water, when you don't get the "must breath" signal from the CO2 buildup until it's too late, and you head to the surface from depth (greater than 20 feet). As the pressure lessens, there can be a reversal of the gas diffusion process, and the oxygen actually goes from the blood back into the lungs. Typically, the free diver blacks out about ten feet underwater.
In my case, on a swim team in the 1960s, my friend had already swam 4 lengths of a 20 yard pool underwater (no fins). I hyperventilated for almost a minute (until I tingled), then took a deep breath and began my underwater swim to beat Tom's record...more later, as it is breakfast time for me...
...It's after breakfast, so I'll tell the "rest of the story."
As I said, Tom had swam 4 lengths of the pool. I was determined to beat his "record," and so as I swam, I took inventory. At my second turn, to lap #3, I was feeling pretty good. We were swimming a modified breast stroke underwater (not with diving equipment, just wearing a swim suit--before even goggles made it to swim team). I approached the third turn, and was beginning to feel the need to breath. No problem, as it wasn't strong at all. I pushed off and stroked toward the fourth turn, the turn that would give me the record. As I approached it, I told myself that I would make the turn, take one stroke underwater, then surface and swim to the side of the pool...
...The next thing I remember was being at the side of the pool, hanging onto the gutter. I was told that I had done exactly what I told myself I would do, I had made the turn underwater, taken one stroke, surfaced, started breathing, and swam to the side of the pool. The only problem was that I had no memory of those events. I then told our coach, Margarette Lengyl, who was Tom's mother, immediately stopped all underwater swimming for distance.
I later researched the physiology of shallow water blackout, and found two reference articles in physiology journals. They documented that there were several examples of underwater swimmers for distance records who simply continued swimming until they had stopped moving. Lifeguards trying to revive them were not successful, and they had been underwater swimming for extended times. They had most probably lost consciousness some time before, and when they had stopped moving, they were over two minutes without oxygen to the brain--very close to death at that point. I firmly believe that, had I not told myself to surface after that first stroke, I would have become a similar statistic.
This is why I emphasize not to hyperventilate, and to make sure that you let your body adapt to the water, and to breathholding, over a period of many minutes.
By the way, the person who was my coach at the time, Margarete Lengyl, was most probably also the swimmer named Eva Szekely from Hungary (probably her name before she was married). She was Hungarian, and I was told she had won the silver medal in the 1956 Olympics. I just looked it up, and here is the results of that swim for the 200 meter Breaststroke for women in 1956:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimming_at_the_1956_Summer_Olympics#200_m_Breaststroke.2C_Women
Margarete teased me at a summer camp in Silver Creek Falls with the YMCA, when she came over to the side of the pool and spoke to me in Hungarian. I had never heard a foreign language before, and thought my ears were full of water, and so tried several times to get the water out of my ears so I could understand her. But she broke up after my third try, and told me what she was doing. She was one really wonderful person.
Years afterward, I saw her at the YMCA pool in Salem, Oregon. This was probably in 1978. I didn't recognize her at first, until she jumped into the water and began swimming the breaststroke. The stroke was very familiar, and so I introduced myself to her again. A big smile came over her face as she recognized the child she had coached some fifteen years prior. We exchanged information, and I asked about Tom and Andy, and her girls. It was a very nice chat.
SeaRat
