Controlling and reducing air consumption

[The Chairman]

@The Chairman wrote an article about it once as I recall: if you're not properly trimmed -- you're usually head-up -- then your kick propels you up. Then you add weight to compensate, and then when you stop kicking you start sinking. You have to keep kicking and burning air.

This is true. However, experience allows you to relax which can reduce the weight needed and also your air consumption.

 

[TMHeimer]

@The Chairman wrote an article about it once as I recall: if you're not properly trimmed -- you're usually head-up -- then your kick propels you up. Then you add weight to compensate, and then when you stop kicking you start sinking. You have to keep kicking and burning air.

By the same token your air consumption shouldn't change with "experience" if you started perfectly trimmed, relaxed, and all that.

Yes, agree with that process that occurs. I guess the problem is that if the divers are properly weighted after the initial weight check, they don't figure that their improperly trimmed and assume the weight check was wrong. Thus add more weight.
As you say, if every thing is correct to being with, both air consumption and dropping weight with experience shouldn't occur.

 

[The Chairman]

As you say, if every thing is correct to being with, both air consumption and dropping weight with experience shouldn't occur.

I don't agree, but Dive and let Dive.

 

[dmaziuk]

I don't agree, but Dive and let Dive.

It's about the baseline.

My air use tends to be up on the first couple of dives of a trip after the winter break, and down when I don't carry the camera. I would say those first couple of dives got "less bad" with experience, but not drastically so. Just like I lost all of two pounds of lead after switching from rental jackets to a bp&w: no miracles there.

I swam, as in kid athlete, through school, snorkeled and did breathholding dives whenever I could, and I took up swimming again over a decade ago after squashing a disk in my lower back. So my baseline may be a little different from the average.

(On our last trip those first couple of dives were mostly about learning to blow back into the rental reg on every breath to make it stop, and that's after I returned the first one and asked for the most detuned set they had. I guess there are downsides to all that swimming.)

 

[wKkaY]

For what it's worth, lengthening my breathing cycles gave me really good air consumption, but I'd end the dive with headaches and photosensitivity.

After I stopped being mindful about breathing and just let myself breathe naturally, I stopped having those problems while using only a little more (around 10-20%) air.

 

[The Chairman]

For what it's worth, lengthening my breathing cycles gave me really good air consumption, but I'd end the dive with headaches and photosensitivity.

Yeah, about skip-breathing: DON'T DO IT!!! The anxiety that will be produced by this usually negates any fun and can increase your overall respiration.

 

[Sbiriguda]

Do the environment and the creatures you see have an impact on how relaxed or anxious you feel? Can you control that? For example by now I saw only small sharks. I tend to have a calm attitude underwater, but I never saw a relatively big shark like the thresher until now. Fear or even just excitement could increase air consumption

 

[dmaziuk]

Yes, critters are definitely bad. Trying to get a better shot of one and then putting up a burst of speed to catch up with the group is what kills my gas economy.

 

[Sbiriguda]

Yes, critters are definitely bad. Trying to get a better shot of one and then putting up a burst of speed to catch up with the group is what kills my gas economy.

Haha will keep that in mind

 

[Sbiriguda]

I was diving in Panglao these days and I tried to apply some of the suggestions I got here. I used frog kick and avoided sculling with the hands. mostly I can do that. I noticed that close to a wall I started sculling when I got very close to the corals in order not to hit them and the reef. When watching nudis and other little creatures I can’t keep an horizontal position, at least not always. When I approach to the reef my hovering is already quite good but probably needs some tuning. Sometimes I have to do this tuning by sculling