Thread: Ask or tell me about breath-holding skill underwater

Hi everyone,

I am wondering if anyone else here has such a love for water as I do. I took some SCUBA courses, and came quite close to being certified. However, I never finished. I now however, am interested in the sport of skindiving, or breath-hold diving, which involves less preparation than SCUBA, but can still be quite dangerous.

Does anyone here do this, or train themselves to stay down for extended periods of time?

I have been training myself for a good amount of time. On land, max ever, I did a 3 minute breath hold, actually quite bad among the real standards. And in the water, with about 10 lbs of weight sitting on the bottom, I've pushed to a minute and a half (now 2:15), and can do 1:30 of swimming around. I'm afraid to progress to quick for fear of passing out, a bad thing to have happen underwater.

I may have mislabeled the thread as I am no expert by any means in freediving, though I have a bit of knowledge, but created this solely for the means of discussion, anyone interested in this sport?

I seek breathold ability really in case I go snorkeling somewhere, and it's nice to be able to swim in the pool for a while underneath since I love being under, and don't want to have to come up right away.

Any thoughts, experiences, questions or answers welcome.

P.S yay, I just went 2:15 under there...Yay!!

I can hold my breath for about three minutes underwater pretty easily, probably three and a half if I really needed to, on land I could probably do four.

There are a couple of things that you need to remember. Before you start, flush out all the CO2 from your body. Do this by taking really deep, really fast breaths, sort of like hyperventilating on purpose.

Slow down your heart rate, the slower your blood moves, the less oxygen that it uses.

Move as little as possible. If I want to dive deeply, I go slow and use short strokes rather and long quick ones. It'll take you longer to get down, but you will be able to stay down for longer.

I'm not a skin diver, but I snorkel quite a bit and always go down to check out things a little closer if I see an eel or octopus or something cool so that's how I've learned.

I also believe that simply being athletic and a good circulatory system helps out a lot. I've been a distance runner for a long time so I have good aerobic stamina.

Damn 3 minutes eh? I broke my personal best with 2:15 yesterday, but that was pushing it, I came up with a splitting headache...

Here's an exercise to try. I do it for two weeks before a vacation where I know that I will be swimming and before a marathon. It's based on David Blaine's training method.

Hold your breath for one minute, then breathe for thirty seconds. Repeat ten times. It will last fifteen minutes and you've only breathed for five. If you find that easy, try a minute thirty with forty five seconds of normal breathing, or two minutes with a minute of breathing.

It will help you overcome that burning sensation that happens after about a minute, once that passes it's a bit easier to hold your breath, but most people give up during it.

Thanks man, I will be sure to give it a try.

I'm just not sure though about this:

The strange thing is, when I go down, I start to feel like I really need to breathe at 1:00, towards, 1:30 i can hear my pulse, higher than that, into the 2 minute range ill be glancing at my watch with wide eyes, wondering why the time is going so slow, fighting the contractions and agony in my lungs. Will this subside a little bit If I push even more? This si what I've read. Or is that just dangerous?

I find that my lungs burn around a minute thirty and then it stops. My diaphram starts expanding and contracting as if I was breathing and after a half a minute or so it goes away. It's not going to feel comfortable, then I'm past the part that hurts.

No, I've never heard or read anything that said that it was dangerous. Your brain cells can go for four minutes without your heart beating before brain damage kicks in, and simply holding your breath doesn't deprive your body of oxygen as much as you'd think, blood is still flowing to the brain and O2 doesn't get metabolized fast enough to get to dangerously low levels. I wouldn't go for more than five minutes, but I doubt I'll ever get there anyway.