Tuesday, 3 February 2009

Dry Training Week

I've never been one to do much dry training but this year i have set myself to do dry training one week out of ever four. My dry static times are never great and i strongly believe that dry holds are harder than in the pool as there is no dive reflex when you train dry.

Anyway, i tried something a bit different this week as Co2 / O2 tables have never been my thing either! (god it sounds like i don't like many freediving training techniques at all) well...i don't!

Dry training on Monday went something like this...

2mins normal tidal breathing (no purges / no packing)
Hold 1 : 1.53sec (no contractions)
2mins normal tidal breathing (no purges / no packing)
Hold 2 : 2.07sec (no contractions)
5mins 2sec inhale 4sec hold 2sec exhale I'll refer to as (2/4/2) (5 purges / 5 packs)
Hold 3 : 2.58sec (no contractions)
10mins (2/4/2) (5 purges / 5 packs)
Hold 4 : 3.40sec (no contractions)
10mins (2/4/2) (5 purges / 5 packs)
Hold 5 : 5.05sec (20 contractions)

Confused, yer me too! I found this technique on http://uk.youtube.com/ which a guy uses to great effect (His P.B 7mins 18sec) with little or no contractions, he also believes that you should not take any contractions whilst warming up as these would fatigue you. (can't say i would argue against that!!)

I must admit i felt very close to blackout a few times but did put myself through it without any real dramas so i tried it again tonight and the results are as follows.

2mins normal tidal breathing (no purges / no packing)
Hold 1 : 1.59sec (no contractions)
2mins normal tidal breathing (no purges / no packing
Hold 2 : 2.13sec (no contractions)
5mins 2/4/2 (5 purges / 5 packs)
Hold 3 : 3.36sec (no contractions)
5mins 2/4/2 (5 purges / 5 packs)
Hold 4 : 4.28sec (no contractions)
5mins 2/4/2 (5 purges / 8 packs)
Hold 5 : 5.15 (10 contractions)

As you can see tonight i brought the 10mins 2/4/2 breath up down to 5mins which helped me from feeling hypercapnic before the hold. Still some tingling but better.

I'm in the pool tomorrow so hopefully with the dive reflex on my side i should be getting back somewhere close to the 6min mark again.

1 comment:

erdooom said...

Hey, what you are doing is hyperventilation. I must admit is started doing it as well last year, with it i could easily do 6 min at the end of a long pool session after doing a few dynamics. On the other hand, the pros ... don't do it like that, they say they have contractions for about half the time of the breath hold. This is what i heard from all of the guys who do 8-9 min and above. Now im working on it, doing less hyperventilation. Also for deep diving hyperventilation is very very bad, so its a bad habit to get used to (gets to be your regular breath up routine).

Cheers

Eri