Holding Breath When Diving

[kerrycorcoran]

Excellent thread. I experimented with this quite a bit during the recent Roatan Invasion. I'm quickly learning experience is the key to locking in good buoyancy. I saw SEVERAL folks on the Invasion that were phenomenal at their buoyancy.

 

[uncfnp]

I find I most often use controlled breathing to descend slightly. Usually it's to see something below me or take a photo. I will start to exhale after a normal breath and control a slow long exhalation until I am pretty much where I want to be. There will be a slight delay before you actually start down. Then I will inhale until stable at new depth and resume normal breathing. And of course over expansion is not an issue descending, the depth changes with this technique are modest and you are never truly holding your breath but rather extending (descending) or shorting (stabilizing at new depth) the respiratory cycle instead. Once you are comfortable with this then try the reverse to ascend.