Controlling and reducing air consumption

[Blasto]

Need instructor to work on buoyancy and trim

RAID has become quite popular in Italy. I suggest you look for a RAID school for any courses to take next - they have an "always in trim" policy, and the instructors are experienced in teaching it to total beginners.

With PADI/SSI, there is some risk that the instructor won't be good at trim themselves, or not good at teaching it as they never had to. Tech agencies enforce trim as well, but they come with a lot of other baggage.

Some people are naturally good at learning trim on their own, others not so much. BP/W help, but it's overkill to get one just for better trim. Once it "clicks", it will only take a few dives for trim to become the natural position. Add frog, helicopter and backward kicks to the arsenal, and your confidence will grow; you'll just need to look somewhere for your body to go there.

Air consumption is a matter of low effort and calm mental state. Think walking on the edge of a cliff vs walking on the edge of a sidewalk, even though you're doing the same exact thing. Once underwater feels like the latter, your air consumption drops. General fitness helps with air too, but it takes a lot of it to make a difference, compared to just better diving technique.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Look for the little things. There are thousands of tiny animals on reefs that most divers swim past. Stop and check out each rock carefully. If you get a camera with a macro lens you will find yourself not moving for several minutes at a time. I often spend an entire dive remaining in an area not much larger than an average bathroom.

 

[caruso]

Don't think this one was covered if so my apologies.

If you have gotten to the point where your buoyancy and trim and skills are not significantly affecting your gas consumption then take a good hard look at your state of physical fitness.

If you aren't at the gym regularly and you've got some extra pounds on you, then addressing those deficits will make a huge difference and also make diving safer.

If you smoke then I don't have any advice for you other than to say that you are your own worst enemy and it goes far beyond shorter than normal bottom times due to poor air consumption rates.

 

[Blasto]

Don't think this one was covered if so my apologies.
If you have gotten to the point where your buoyancy and trim and skills are not significantly affecting your gas consumption then take a good hard look at your state of physical fitness.

It's been. But physical fitness takes a lot of effort to improve. It's not enough to go to the gym a bit, it has to be regular, combined with diet, discipline...

For technical diving, which is almost a sport, that's a reasonable cost. But a novice rec diver will get more improvement from a few trim and technique training dives in one week than they will from a few months of three extra gym workouts a week. Doing both is best, of course, but most vacation divers in average to reasonable shape are much shorter on technique than they are on fitness.



Smoking is different though. I avoid smoking buddies, recommend students who can't refrain from smoking to quit first, and never recommend diving to smokers. They can dive, but the increase in risk is very significant - active smokers have a fraction of the apnea time of a healthy person, making any air problem potentially fatal even without overhead, and I don't want that on my conscience.

 

[Streydog]

The type of diving I do requires less energy than walking, not to say being in shape is not beneficial.

 

[caruso]

Smoking is different though. I avoid smoking buddies, recommend students who can't refrain from smoking to quit first, and never recommend diving to smokers. They can dive, but the increase in risk is very significant - active smokers have a fraction of the apnea time of a healthy person, making any air problem potentially fatal even without overhead, and I don't want that on my conscience.

I avoid smokers too but for my own selfish reasons. The last thing I want to do while I'm enjoying a bright sunny day on a dive boat, breathing in fresh salty air is to inhale a lungful of smoke. And smokers tend to be ignorant about the nasty effects they have on nonsmokers.

The type of diving I do requires less energy than walking

What sort of diving requires less energy than walking? Do you use a DPV?

 

[stepfen]

I only went through the replies fast so I might have missed the following point: You’ve got plenty of valuable suggestions and stuff to consider here but keep in mind that some people do have higher gas consumption than others. You will find out about yours after 50 to 100 dives or so. Anyway don’t stress about it. Even if you do have increased consumption for whatever reason there are ways to cope with it (e.g. use larger tanks, stay shallower, plan ahead safe ways to terminate your dive earlier than others etc). Don’t worry too much about things you can change and things you can’t change.

 

[АлександрД]

smoking did not affecting on air consumption (may be even oposit - smoking peoples COULD spent less air).
Body size - has much greater influence. Small people (e.g. girls) spent much less air, than big people (e.g. bodybuilders).
This is just personal statistics, that I collect in my dives from many many divers, because I also had worry for my air consumption in the beginning....

P.S. sidemount also allow to spent less air because you body and equipment is more flow rounded

 

[caruso]

smoking did not affecting on air consumption (may be even oposit - smoking peoples COULD spent less air).

Smoking damages the lungs without question and reduces the effectiveness as to how breathing gas is exchanged and absorbed into the vascular system. Anyone who maintains that the lungs of a smoker are more efficient at gas exchange is in the same camp as those who say recreational drugs are good for brain cells because they only kill off the weak ones.

Body size - has much greater influence. Small people (e.g. girls) spent much less air, than big people (e.g. bodybuilders).

There is certainly a correlation between body size and gas consumption- they tend to be directly proportional to one another but it is not an absolute. I have known many larger divers whose SAC rates are considerably lower than smaller divers.

Body size as it relates to frame size and height is irrelevant to the topic of this thread because we are discussing variables that can be changed. It's likely that a muscular body builder would use less gas during a dive than a person who weighs half as much but is in poor physical shape.

P.S. sidemount also allow to spent less air because you body and equipment is more flow rounded

If you're trying to say that all other things being equal, a diver with tanks on his or her back will use more gas than a diver with sidemounted tanks because the latter is more streamlined - I agree with this as much as I agree with everything else you wrote.

 

[tdallen]

If it's a group dive, I try not to be in the middle of things. If I'm in the middle of closely packed divers it's stressful and I'm constantly trying (in an inefficient new diver kind of way) to make micro-adjustments to my buoyancy and direction. Being a little on the outside and following along (with my buddy within reach, of course) makes it a lot easier for me to focus on buoyancy and breathing without worrying about other divers.