SAC Rate improvements

[LavaSurfer]

Just a little excited!
Over the past few months I have really been working on strength and endurance.
Weights and Running.

When I started diving my SAC was between 0.65 and 0.75
After much work and lots of dives I seemed stuck around 0.54
Yesterday I did two dives in Kona wearing a wetsuit (which I never use) so I even had 2 extra pounds on me and my SAC rate for both dives was 0.46.

I was excited! thats some serious improvement and it was nice to dive well over an hour on both dives and still come up with 1200 PSI on an AL80.

Now the question
Was it experience, my wing, equipment optimization or fitness?
My guess is all of the above but certainly the fitness played the biggest roll.

 

[Diver Dennis]

Great improvement! I would say it is probably a combination of experience and fitness but the main thing is you've seen a marked improvement. Good job.

 

[bperrybap]

It could be wetsuit. My SAC rates are around .4 unless i'm
chilled. When I'm cold they jump as high as .7 - .8

--- bill

 

[ChrisA]

Just a little excited!
Over the past few months I have really been working on strength and endurance.
Weights and Running.

When I started diving my SAC was between 0.65 and 0.75
After much work and lots of dives I seemed stuck around 0.54
Yesterday I did two dives in Kona wearing a wetsuit (which I never use) so I even had 2 extra pounds on me and my SAC rate for both dives was 0.46.

I was excited! thats some serious improvement and it was nice to dive well over an hour on both dives and still come up with 1200 PSI on an AL80.

Now the question
Was it experience, my wing, equipment optimization or fitness?
My guess is all of the above but certainly the fitness played the biggest roll.

Experiance. A new diver with only a dozen dives can DOUBLE his ecperiance by only doing a dozen dives. Someone with 250 dives would have to do 250 more dives to double his experiance. So we notice the fastest rates of improvments with the newset divers. My thoery is that we gain the nest level of experiance only with each doubling of the number of dives all else held equal. (Of course trainning and jumpping into new environments can speed of this process)

The wetsuit helps. The body uses O2 to make heat. In fact unless you are doing a tour de france race MOST of the energy th body uses is used simply to keep you body temp above the environmental tamperture, Running for an hour does not use much energey compare to keeping your body above 96F

I've often thought that soaking in cold water woud burn more calories than running. Would do nothing for your legs or cardio but cold water does suck out calories. Notice that the dictionay deffinition of "calorie" is a "unit of heat". The oxygen required to metabolize those calories has to come out of the scuba tank. Cut back on the calorie usage and you cut back on the air usage. breathing more smoothly and slowly not only uses less air directly but the body burns fewer calories due to the work of pumpping air, Every motion you make burns calories, and therefor oxygen.

If you would remain perfectly motionles in a drysuit you'd burn even less air. I actually know people who dive like that too. They seem to barely move even to the point of clipping the SPG to the hip d-ring and look down rather then bringing the spg to the eye and venting the drysuit by slow body roll rather then a larger arm motion. that coupled with yoga-like relaxization and certainly don't try to heat up the ocean with body heat either. It takes years to get to that state, No I'm not there ,long ways to go.

 

[ChillyWaters]

Running for an hour does not use much energey compare to keeping your body above 96F

Running burns a LOT of calories. It all depends on your weight, etc., but running roughly burns between 100-130 calories/mile -- regardless of speed. So if you run 7minute/miles, we're talking about a 1000 calories per hour.

I'd think you'd have to be mighty cold to burn off 1000 calories doing nothing -- perhaps a _lot_ of shivering.

- ChillyWaters

 

[LavaSurfer]

It could be wetsuit. My SAC rates are around .4 unless i'm
chilled. When I'm cold they jump as high as .7 - .8

--- bill

Could be but its only a 2 mil shorty and I usually dive a 2 mil diveskin that is neutral bouyant. I noticed a slight difference in comfort on the dives but then the water temp is up 2 degrees from my last set of dives a month ago. I figured the added weight of 2 lbs would offset any benefit from the additional protection of the wetsuit.

Maybe to test the theory I should rent a 3 mil full suit and see if I get any more improvement. Tat might tell me something.

Now my goal is 0.40 I would be happy getting down there

 

[LavaSurfer]

Running burns a LOT of calories. It all depends on your weight, etc., but running roughly burns between 100-130 calories/mile -- regardless of speed. So if you run 7minute/miles, we're talking about a 1000 calories per hour.

I'd think you'd have to be mighty cold to burn off 1000 calories doing nothing -- perhaps a _lot_ of shivering.

- ChillyWaters

Actually I burn about 180/mile at 220 lb.
I think a lot of it has to do with my heartrate.
Before I started running I had a resting HR of around 75 and any activity at all would kick it up to 100. Now my RHR is 54 and activity like diving bumps it up to maybe 65.