Freediving How to hold your breath longer - Breathe up techniques
From io9
Illusionist
and stunt performer Harry Houdini was famously capable of holding his
breath for over three minutes.
But today, competitive breath-hold divers
can squeeze ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes out of a single lungful
of air.
How do these divers do it — and how can you train to hold your
breath for longer?
World class waterman, surfer and free diver, Mark Healey talks about letting go.
"I think it's about 5:30."
Martin Stepanek - the world top freediver in a film by Mirek Hrdy.
A sample from the legendary film about the Czech freediving team and Martin's attempt to break the world record during the world freediving championship in Hawaii.
But to the world’s foremost practitioners of "static apnea" – a
competitive discipline in the sport of freediving in which a person
holds his or her breath underwater, without moving, for as long as
possible – five minutes is small change.
In 2001, renowned freediver
Martin Štěpánek held his breath for a then-unprecedented 8 minutes 6
seconds.
His record stood for nearly three years, until June of 2004,
when freediver Tom Sietas bested it by 41 seconds with a time of 8:47.
Stephane Mifsud free diver
In 2009, Mifsud spent a lung-searing 11 minutes 35 seconds below
water on a single gulp of air.
Static
apnea is the only discipline in freediving measured in units of time,
but it is arguably the purest manifestation of the sport.
These
events include "No Limit" (the "absolute depth" discipline, whereby the
freediver descends with the help of a ballast weight and ascends via a
method of her choice) and "Dynamic Without Fins" (whereby the freediver
travels in a horizontal position under water attempting to cover the
greatest possible distance in the absence of propulsive aids), and are
measured in units of depth and distance.
Other events allow for the use
of fins, ropes, weights, sleds and even specialized vests with
inflatable compartments, but every single one boils down to the
athlete's ability to make the most that he or she can out of a single
breath’s worth of oxygen.
Above:
A freediver with his safety diver, competing in the AIDA category of
"Dynamic With Fins" (DYN) at the 2nd Great Camberwell Breath Hold
Freediving Competition held in London on 31 May 2009 | Photo and Caption
The oxygen
you breathe is transferred to your blood and delivered to the various
tissues of your body, where it is converted into energy.
The waste
product of this process is CO2, which is carried back to the lungs and released from the body upon exhalation.
When you hold your breath, O2 is still converted to CO2,
but the latter has nowhere to go.
It recirculates in your veins,
acidifying your blood and signaling your body to breathe, first with a
burning sensation in your lungs, and eventually in the form of strong,
painful spasms of your diaphragm.
The blood
of a seasoned free diver has been shown to acidify more slowly than
those of us who spend our lives inhaling and exhaling reflexively.
Activation of the sympathetic nervous system causes their peripheral
blood vessels to contract soon after they stop breathing, thereby
conserving oxygen-rich blood by redirecting it from the extremities to
the vital organs, especially the brain and heart.
Many freedivers also
practice meditation to literally calm their hearts.
Reducing the body’s
metabolic rate attenuates the conversion of oxygen to CO2.
Meditation has a calming effect on the mind, as well; much of the
battle, when holding one’s breath, is mental.
To know, logically, that
your body can persist on the oxygen already available to it.
To ignore
outright the mind and body’s compulsion to breathe.
There are
other tricks to holding one’s breath that rely less on extended training
and more on increasing what divers refer to as one’s “total gas
storage.”
Take “buccal pumping,” for instance, which was developed by
spear-fishing breath-holders long ago and introduced to sport diving by
U.S. Navy diver Robert Croft in the 1960s.
Also known
as “lung packing,” buccal packing involves taking the deepest breath
possible, then using oral and pharyngeal muscles, along with the
glottis, to hold the throat shut while shunting air, cheekfulls at a
time, from the mouth down into the lungs.
It’s been said that by
repeating this pumping movement up to 50 times, a diver can increase his
total lung capacity by as much as three liters.
Then there’s hyperventilating, which divers often do to flush their systems of CO2
and pre-load their bodies, instead, with unconverted oxygen.
The most
extreme version of this technique involves breathing nothing but pure O2 for as much as 30 minutes before submerging one’s head beneath the water.
The air we breathe is
only about 21% oxygen
(the rest is mostly nitrogen), which means that a breath held on
atmospheric air will last significantly shorter than one held on pure O
2.
In this highly personal talk from TEDMED, magician and stuntman David Blaine describes what it took to hold his breath underwater for 17 minutes -- a world record (only two minutes shorter than this entire talk!) -- and what his often death-defying work means to him.
(It bears mentioning that “static apnea,” as discussed earlier, is
defined by AIDA, and so is distinguished from the Guinness World Record
for “breath holding underwater,” which allows for the use of pure oxygen
in preparation.)
All of
these techniques and training methods carry with them a significant risk
to one’s safety. Exceeding the limits of oxygen deprivation can lead to
loss of consciousness or even to death, while extended exposure to pure
oxygen
carries its own set of risks.
Nicholas Mevoli's life and death reflect the spirit, and dangers, of a niche sport that has grown exponentially.
The sport’s last major loss occurred last November, when 32-year-old
Nicholas Mevoli died while attempting a record-setting free-dive of 236
feet.
He was underwater for 3 minutes and 38 seconds, and while he
returned to the surface by his own power, he lost conscious shortly
after surfacing and was pronounced dead soon thereafter.
Studies
that predict future performance in competitive diving claim that there’s
still a ways to go before the physiological limits of the sport are
met, noting that current training methods and strategies suggest that
duration can be prolonged still further.
AIDA’s official statement claimed that Mevoli’s death was the first in
more than 20 years of its competitions.
Given the pursuit of that
15-minute barrier, and other, more extreme diving performances, it’s
hard to believe that his will be the last.
Links :
- YouTube : the yogi art of breathing less than normal (hypoventilation)
