Can't remember whether i have posted this before but i noticed a few people talking about breath training in the surf reports topic
this is from a mate"s brother who held the depth record and was the first aussie to go past 100m freediving cheers thanks benny
note the warnings !!!!
courtesy of ben noble www.freedivedownunder.com/


One thing that is brilliant for surfers is training carbon dioxide tolerance, aka CO2 Training or CO2 Tables. The thing that makes you want to breath is the build up of CO2. If you can train to tolerate CO2 better, you can stay down for longer. The body is designed to have a whole bunch of survival mechanisms and they kick in very early. For example on a static breath hold (just lying there not moving) I get the urge to breath after about 1:30, but I can hold my breath for over 6 minutes - it's all about learning to tolerate CO2.

You can do a CO2 Table on dry land which is great because you can do it any time and at home in front of the telly. Don't ever train alone at the pool because it doesn't matter how fit you are, if you black out you're dead and if that happens i'll get banned next time I head to the pool because they hate freedivers. Pretty good freedivers have drowned at the pool in the past when they've been training alone.

The idea of the CO2 table is not to hold your breath for the longest time, but to hold it at about 60% of your max effort and gradually reduce your recovery time.


Classic CO2 table

Do this one at home on the bed or lounge in front of the tv - you should not be moving around, just staying still (Static Apnea we call it). The idea is to do a few breath holds and to gradually reduce your recovery time. What this does is it gradually builds up your CO2 levels which is your trigger to breath. In between breath holds you have time to recover and to re-oxygenate, but you'll still have a build up of CO2 as this takes longer to breathe off. As you go along, the breath holds should get harder and harder as your CO2 levels build up.

Important: you don't want to be doing breath holds that are close to your best performances, the idea is to work on CO2, not the length of the breath hold. I recommend a breath hold that's about 60% of your best. So if you're capable of a 3 or 3 and a half minute breath hold, I would use 2 minutes as a rough starting point.

The table:

Breath for 2 minutes; Hold breath for 2 minutes
Breath for 1:45; Hold breath for 2 minutes
Breath for 1:30; Hold breath for 2 minutes
Breath for 1:15; Hold breath for 2 minutes
Breath for 1:00; Hold breath for 2 minutes
Breath for 0:45; Hold breath for 2 minutes (should be starting to get hard by now)
Breath for 0:30; Hold breath for 2 minutes
Breath for 0:15; Hold breath for 2 minutes

Variations:
If it's too easy, extend the breath hold by 10 or 15 seconds.
If it's too easy, work your way down to the last 15 second rest then continue to do breath holds every 15 seconds.
If it's too hard; take a few seconds off the breath hold
If it's too hard; add a little bit more recovery time.

If you're bored or short on time, just start from a later point in the table.

Do this one 2 or 3 times a week, no more than that.

Apnea Walking

There'a a bunch of different ways of doing this, the way I usually do it is based on counting number of steps rather than time.

Start walking at a normal pace.
Take a deep breath in and hold it for a certain amount of steps (try around 30 and adjust up or down)
Once completed, breath for the same amount of steps (eg. 30)
Take another breath and walk again for a set amount of steps (eg. 30)
Breath for 30 steps etc etc.

Do this for a while (10-20 breath holds, or approx 20 minutes), but make sure you don't breath hold for too long because if you black out you'll hurt yourself when you fall, plus you want to be training high CO2 levels, not low oxygen levels.

Variations: take more steps or fewer steps in both the breath hold or the recovery. For example if it gets too easy then do the same amount of steps (eg. 30) but give yourself 5 or 10 breaths to recover.

A couple of years ago I modified this program and extended it so I was walking 20 steps with one breath and then would only take one breath in between breath holds, and walk home from work which was about a bit over 4km. I used to get huge levels of CO2 so I was getting the urge to breath non stop for nearly an hour - had tunnel vision by the end and had this "wahhh wahhh" ringing in my ears... good training.

I would do apnea walking 2-3 times per week. If you are doing the other CO2 table as well I would not do more than 5 training sessions a week. It's easy to overtrain and you can lose motivation as well as get sick - lots of breath holds can create lots of free radicals and lower your immune system so get a good multivitamin into you.


CO2 Tables and Apnea walking are pretty good staples for training for a lot of freedivers. And when I was training Mark Visser I was giving him some pretty tough CO2 tables in the pool.

Good stuff prawn. What sort of frequency do you have to do this program? I.e. if you start in autumn and get up to speed, can you drop it to once or twice a week as a maintenance program? Or do you need to do the full five times a week program right through winter to get the maximum benefit?

Good stuff mate. I can vouch for the pool safety issue.

My spearo mate and myself were doing static breath holds under water. One would do the holds the other would stay on the surface and go down every minute to get an OK signal. At about 5 minutes I swam down, tapped my mate on the hand to get the OK signal and got nothing. He wasn't fully blacked out but was in a very weird 'trance' (poor use of words I know) and took a bit of shaking to get him to snap out of it.

Scary stuff. Especially after we recently lost a spearo down south from a blackout.

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Legion said...

Good stuff prawn. What sort of frequency do you have to do this program? I.e. if you start in autumn and get up to speed, can you drop it to once or twice a week as a maintenance program? Or do you need to do the full five times a week program right through winter to get the maximum benefit?

good question legion,FckedIfIknow, i am flat out remembering to practice it at all,when i was doing a bit i could comfortably swim/snorkel around for a minute and would sometimes swim down after a small wave pounding for another few seconds to push it a bit (have to watch out for the second wave washing over you ) i think you would have to measure your own performance in relation to what you are doing it for and how long/how much improvement in your tolerance you want.i felt a bit inadequate because some of the guys i was snorkelling with were doing well in excess of 2mins sometimes 3 but i was happy to get to a minute! So maybe measure your current level and then set a reachable goal and go from there ,in the little bit i have done i quickly came to the realisation that it is more mental than physical (resisting the reflex to gasp)it certainly helps to train but if you can get to a level where you are comfortable and do it once a fortnight great
if you look at any of the Freediving stuff most of them are into yoga/ mediatation
style of control
I think it helps a bit too if you have a trip to go on or a particular mission/ wave you want to surf ... the thing that provoked me was more a legrope entanglement and not being able to get to it for a few seconds gave me a little scare rather than a bigger wave hold down .Now that it is almost back in summer and i have forgotten the minor panic the lounge is more for beer than breathing exercises
no doubt the next time i am gasping for air and yelling for my mummy i"ll be cursing myself
i certainly wouldn't exceed what ben has laid out

The best training you can do is,
Go to a job site on a 38 degree stinken hot day,
and use the plastic porta toilet on site.
You have good motivation not to breath in.

It will be the fastest poo you ever do.