ScubaJoy65
Contributor
I've been on eight dives now and realize that apparently I'm an air hog. Any tips, besides going on more dives, on how to not suck down my air so quickly?
:scubadive
:scubadive
I'm an air hog
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No your not,you're just new to diving
Just go diving,it WILL get better
Be sure to work on your trim,once that is perfect,it'll save a lot of air.
OP
ScubaJoy65
Contributor
Scott M
Contributor
Yup, what he said, Just go diving. Being comfortable in the water has a lot to do with it. Proper weighting, your trim and streamed lined gear will all help. I was also taught to be methodical in my breathing, count to 5 slowly on the inhale, pause (do not hold, just pause) then count to 5 on the way out slowly. This helped me a lot for two reasons, first it got my breathing under control and made me aware of it and second it got my mind off things and allowed me to just enjoy the dive more which relaxed me. If all that fails.....just get bigger tanks, ;-)
Scott M
Contributor
Your trim is how you swim in the water, most like to be completely horizontal that way while swimming you will have less drag therefore easier to swim. If your trim is off, say your feet heavy you will constantly be fighting to get horizontal to swim so you will be burning through more air.
This is a very common problem for new divers!
There are really two answers to this question, and they are interrelated. One is relaxation, and the other is efficiency.
When you are a new diver, the very mechanics of being underwater and managing your buoyancy, navigation, and all your equipment use up a lot of bandwidth, and very new divers are rarely completely relaxed. Tension causes you to breathe inefficiently, keeping your lungs fairly full and just exchanging a small amount of gas with each breath (this contributes to the difficulties with buoyancy that new divers have, too!) Because a large part of each breath is only ventilating the trachea and major bronchi, structures which do not participate in gas exchange, a lot of the breath is wasted as far as getting oxygen into the bloodstream and CO2 out are concerned. Therefore, you have to breathe at a higher rate, wasting a lot of your consumed gas into the water.
But a major thing that contributes to tension, and massively contributes to gas utilization, is inefficiency. What do new divers do that's inefficient?
To begin with, they often do not have their equipment properly balanced. Especially when diving in cold water, where a lot of weight is necessary, it's important to distribute that weight so that the diver in a horizontal position will tend to REMAIN in a horizontal position. If you are carrying a lot of weight low on your body, as the integrated weight pouches of many BCs will place it, then you will always tend to float in a feet-down position. Once you think about it, it becomes pretty obvious that, if you are feet down, every kick drives you UPWARD. In order to stay at the same depth, the diver has to keep himself negative, so the upward drive of the fins is countered by the sinking created by the negative buoyancy. What that means is that a good portion of the effort expended in every kick results in no net motion at all! Since muscle activity uses more oxygen and creates more CO2, this means that all that useless motion is sucking gas out of your tank.
In addition, because of the lack of balance, new divers often swim with their hands. The hands are not an efficient means of propulsion underwater, especially not compared with fins, so again, this is largely wasted motion.
When you are not balanced so that you can remain still, you must swim constantly. I can remember my own beginning days -- it irritated the daylights out of me that my buddies could simply STOP and look at something, when I would have to swim circles around them, because I simply couldn't be still. Achieving a good, flat body posture and balancing my equipment allowed me to learn just to hang in the water, which is not only a great way to look at things, but is great fun in its own right.
Achieving good buoyancy control, which includes getting properly weighted, helps with gas consumption as well. You probably learned during OW that you could affect your buoyancy with your breath. This is very true, but if you overuse this mechanism, you waste a lot of gas (not to mention setting yourself up for a CO2 headache). In the beginning, when you aren't quick to detect changes in depth, and when you are perhaps not as judicious in adding and venting air from your BC, you will make many buoyancy adjustments, both with the BC and your breath. As you gain experience, you will learn how to anticipate the need to change buoyancy, and you'll learn to add or vent air in very small amounts, keeping your buoyancy from ever being far from neutral. Gas consumption will go down with this facility, as well.
Finally, there is a level of gas consumption that will be required by your body and your degree of fitness. My favorite dive buddy is one of the most beautiful divers you could hope to see -- He is relaxed, extremely still in the water, and VERY skilled with his buoyancy. But his gas consumption is almost twice mine, simply because he's about twice my size. It would be absolutely counterproductive for him to work on his gas consumption as an end in itself; we simply dive different sized tanks, and life is good for both of us.
Have fun with this, and don't get anxious about it. Do, if you can, spend some time in a pool working with the trim pockets on your BC, or some weight pouches on your cambands, and try to get your rig balanced so you can hover in a horizontal position. This will result in a very big reduction in your gas needs.
There are really two answers to this question, and they are interrelated. One is relaxation, and the other is efficiency.
When you are a new diver, the very mechanics of being underwater and managing your buoyancy, navigation, and all your equipment use up a lot of bandwidth, and very new divers are rarely completely relaxed. Tension causes you to breathe inefficiently, keeping your lungs fairly full and just exchanging a small amount of gas with each breath (this contributes to the difficulties with buoyancy that new divers have, too!) Because a large part of each breath is only ventilating the trachea and major bronchi, structures which do not participate in gas exchange, a lot of the breath is wasted as far as getting oxygen into the bloodstream and CO2 out are concerned. Therefore, you have to breathe at a higher rate, wasting a lot of your consumed gas into the water.
But a major thing that contributes to tension, and massively contributes to gas utilization, is inefficiency. What do new divers do that's inefficient?
To begin with, they often do not have their equipment properly balanced. Especially when diving in cold water, where a lot of weight is necessary, it's important to distribute that weight so that the diver in a horizontal position will tend to REMAIN in a horizontal position. If you are carrying a lot of weight low on your body, as the integrated weight pouches of many BCs will place it, then you will always tend to float in a feet-down position. Once you think about it, it becomes pretty obvious that, if you are feet down, every kick drives you UPWARD. In order to stay at the same depth, the diver has to keep himself negative, so the upward drive of the fins is countered by the sinking created by the negative buoyancy. What that means is that a good portion of the effort expended in every kick results in no net motion at all! Since muscle activity uses more oxygen and creates more CO2, this means that all that useless motion is sucking gas out of your tank.
In addition, because of the lack of balance, new divers often swim with their hands. The hands are not an efficient means of propulsion underwater, especially not compared with fins, so again, this is largely wasted motion.
When you are not balanced so that you can remain still, you must swim constantly. I can remember my own beginning days -- it irritated the daylights out of me that my buddies could simply STOP and look at something, when I would have to swim circles around them, because I simply couldn't be still. Achieving a good, flat body posture and balancing my equipment allowed me to learn just to hang in the water, which is not only a great way to look at things, but is great fun in its own right.
Achieving good buoyancy control, which includes getting properly weighted, helps with gas consumption as well. You probably learned during OW that you could affect your buoyancy with your breath. This is very true, but if you overuse this mechanism, you waste a lot of gas (not to mention setting yourself up for a CO2 headache). In the beginning, when you aren't quick to detect changes in depth, and when you are perhaps not as judicious in adding and venting air from your BC, you will make many buoyancy adjustments, both with the BC and your breath. As you gain experience, you will learn how to anticipate the need to change buoyancy, and you'll learn to add or vent air in very small amounts, keeping your buoyancy from ever being far from neutral. Gas consumption will go down with this facility, as well.
Finally, there is a level of gas consumption that will be required by your body and your degree of fitness. My favorite dive buddy is one of the most beautiful divers you could hope to see -- He is relaxed, extremely still in the water, and VERY skilled with his buoyancy. But his gas consumption is almost twice mine, simply because he's about twice my size. It would be absolutely counterproductive for him to work on his gas consumption as an end in itself; we simply dive different sized tanks, and life is good for both of us.
Have fun with this, and don't get anxious about it. Do, if you can, spend some time in a pool working with the trim pockets on your BC, or some weight pouches on your cambands, and try to get your rig balanced so you can hover in a horizontal position. This will result in a very big reduction in your gas needs.
bouancy(no spell check) is key, as well. The more you deflated/inflate your BCD, the faster you burn through your air. So as you get better at controlling it, the less air you'll use.
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Ok Scott beaten me to it.
Buoancy and trim,2 of the main factors of air consumption.
Get your weights right and get your horizontal position right and you're on your way.
Mind you this takes practice,so go diving. alot.
And some others I see.
Buoancy and trim,2 of the main factors of air consumption.
Get your weights right and get your horizontal position right and you're on your way.
Mind you this takes practice,so go diving.
alot.And some others I see.
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TS&M gave a great response to you..which you should read carefully....but one other thing you could do, if you really want to be good with air consumption, is to take up freediving......If you do this, even for 6 or 7 outings, a few major things should result...
- You will be forced to learn perfecct bouyancy, so that you will not have to work to stay on the surface, or have to work hard to dive down to 20 or 30 feet deep ( or much deeper
- You will begin swimming perfectly horizontal, and will learn what this feels like---feedback like this will help you later when you are wearing the scuba tank, as you will KNOW how you are supposed to move through the water finally.
- Freediving will teach you kick and glide, and allow you to see the effects of no drag on efficiency in the water. You will then be more likely to be aware of high drag problems on your scuba gear configuration. Also note---a backplate and wing will have dramatically less drag ( equals less air wasted with extra work in swimming) than a pufferfish style BC with lots of air in the bladder...
- You have so much more feedback in what happens when you do anything in freediving ( kicking and maneuvering, and speed/efficiency issues) than you have on scuba, that you can make yourself a much better scuba diver, by training in freediving.
don Francisco
Contributor
You've gotten good advice here, especially from TSandM.
The key to lowering air consumption is to stop worrying about air consumption (except for monitoring your air supply).
Focus on what causes you to consume air; unnecessary swimming effort due to bad trim or a sense of urgency that causes you to flit all over the place, excessive hand movements, poor finning technique making you work too hard, stress and over-reaction to all that's going on around you, worrying about not making any mistakes, etc.
There's also the awe factor, it's all new and exciting, which will go away somewhat with time, and hopefully dives will remain exciting and fresh but without that big intake every time you see something cool.
One of the hardest things for newbies to learn is to stop using their hands. On the surface we use hands for everything, so it carries into diving. If you can't simply stop, put on mental handcuffs by holding your hands behind your back, (or crossing your arms over your chest) and making up some kind of penalty for every time you use them. The goal is to complete a dive without letting go, except to use the BC inflator. Once you break the hand use habit you'll stop for good, and realize a big improvement in air use.
Lastly, you might have to accept that your consumption will remain at the high end of the range. At a base leve,l air consumption is linked to your metabolism and will correlate somewhat to your caloric intake. It takes oxygen to metabolize all those nutrients, so if you're a big 3,500 calorie per day guy, you'll never get by with the same amount of air as some tiny lady who eats like a bird, and you shouldn't try to.
After doing what you can to optimize your air use, accept who you are, and if it makes sense, consider a larger tank.
The key to lowering air consumption is to stop worrying about air consumption (except for monitoring your air supply).
Focus on what causes you to consume air; unnecessary swimming effort due to bad trim or a sense of urgency that causes you to flit all over the place, excessive hand movements, poor finning technique making you work too hard, stress and over-reaction to all that's going on around you, worrying about not making any mistakes, etc.
There's also the awe factor, it's all new and exciting, which will go away somewhat with time, and hopefully dives will remain exciting and fresh but without that big intake every time you see something cool.
One of the hardest things for newbies to learn is to stop using their hands. On the surface we use hands for everything, so it carries into diving. If you can't simply stop, put on mental handcuffs by holding your hands behind your back, (or crossing your arms over your chest) and making up some kind of penalty for every time you use them. The goal is to complete a dive without letting go, except to use the BC inflator. Once you break the hand use habit you'll stop for good, and realize a big improvement in air use.
Lastly, you might have to accept that your consumption will remain at the high end of the range. At a base leve,l air consumption is linked to your metabolism and will correlate somewhat to your caloric intake. It takes oxygen to metabolize all those nutrients, so if you're a big 3,500 calorie per day guy, you'll never get by with the same amount of air as some tiny lady who eats like a bird, and you shouldn't try to.
After doing what you can to optimize your air use, accept who you are, and if it makes sense, consider a larger tank.
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