eckoback
Registered
I still consider myself to be a relatively newish diver at around 100 dives, and up until now, I haven't really paid any attention to my air consumption. I'm never the first to surface while just "breathing normally," so that's been good enough for me. I recently started to pay more attention to my breathing pattern because you can never stop learning to improve different aspects of your diving, right?
I've been experimenting with various breathing rates or techniques like emptying out your lungs more to reduce CO2 absorption. Thing is, I found that emptying my lungs to be way easier at shallower depths. For example, I can slowly exhale and empty my lungs for 10+ seconds at around 40-50ft, but when I go deeper to 60-70+ft, I struggle to even exhale and empty my lungs at like 4-5 seconds. And when I go deeper and try to fully empty my lungs, it feels like I have to catch my next breath and have to inhale sharply -- it's not a "smooth" breathing loop if that makes sense.
I'm trying to recall back to my OW cert and am struggling to figure out why this is the case. Air is denser at depth, but shouldn't that only impact your inhalation and not exhalation?
I've been experimenting with various breathing rates or techniques like emptying out your lungs more to reduce CO2 absorption. Thing is, I found that emptying my lungs to be way easier at shallower depths. For example, I can slowly exhale and empty my lungs for 10+ seconds at around 40-50ft, but when I go deeper to 60-70+ft, I struggle to even exhale and empty my lungs at like 4-5 seconds. And when I go deeper and try to fully empty my lungs, it feels like I have to catch my next breath and have to inhale sharply -- it's not a "smooth" breathing loop if that makes sense.
I'm trying to recall back to my OW cert and am struggling to figure out why this is the case. Air is denser at depth, but shouldn't that only impact your inhalation and not exhalation?