Being a Cyclist and Scuba Diver problem

[Soloist]

You are aware and asking questions about your breathing and “bicycling” in the water, so that’s half the battle. I was on a dive boat two months ago with an older couple that had been diving for years and years. Upon hitting the water both of them instinctively jumped on the hamster wheel. Zero current, zero surge, yet their legs were in perpetual motion. Completely oblivious. I watched a benign video recently taken in what appeared to be very calm conditions. It sounded like the videographer was hyperventilating. Very short, quick, repetitive and inefficient breaths. These are simply observations, however, it’s always good to critique yourself in an effort to improve. Good luck!

 

[KCB]

HA HA HA HA, No I'm worse than a roadie........I'm a Brompton folding bike owner, and I'm damn proud of it, because I can check my bike in an airplane baggage, and not have to pay an extra fee, and yes I have climbed hills with her, and she climbs well. There are a lot of great youtube video's out there on good trim and frog kicks, it seams to me that just like you have to adapt to riding a bike better, as in not swerving around the road over correcting your steering because you scared of falling off that, there's a point in which in diving, you just become adapted to being horizontal not moving around as much, because your less scared about crashing same as on a bike. I feel this is a quality that both sports have in common.

I mountainbike 5-6 times a week, ~12-15 mile rides and am consistently with the top 10 fastest rides of the day.
I don’t think cycling has anything to do with the “problems” you’re describing, in fact, had you omit the part about cycling in your post, everything you’ve said still would make sense and it is the typical problems new divers, with improper gear and sub-optimal technique experiences. Consider this, does anything else you do in your daily routine, done like as if you’re on your bike? Do you walk to get the mail like a locomotive? As you sit on your chair reading/typing this, are you breathing heavy as if you’re on your bike? I know a bunch of avid cyclist which are also experienced divers, the answer to all of us is no.

Using up more air than the rest is a subject discussed very often, probably because every new diver experiences it and new divers are joining the sport all the time, so it’s constantly brought up, and it is normal, don’t overthink it, we can discuss all kinds of technique and in the end it’s simply more time in the water, it will improve with more diving.
Having your own gear will help things a lot too, you’ve realized that and understands why.
About the frog kicking, one less discussed aspect of it that helps you have a more relaxed diving with a slower pace and thus, energy saving, it’s that it makes it easier, more natural, to do a pause, because it’s symmetrical, after you kick and stop moving your feet, they’re both in the same position, we call it the gliding phase, after you kick, just keep the feet close together, with the blades parallel to the ground and slowly bring them up (bending knees), glide for as long as you can, my gliding phase will last no less than twice the time of the kicking phase.

Your(everyone’s) air consumption will improve the more diving you do, even if one maintains poor buoyancy/trim/technique through ones diving career, whatever their air consumption is early on, will improve if they keep diving regularly, but huge improvement will be very difficult without proper buoyancy and trim, and these two must come together. It is possible to have perfect neautral buoyancy and poor trim, but only if you’re stationary, otherwise, any propulsion you generate will move you either up or down in the water colum.
Poor buoyancy though, is the worst, when that is off, everything else is affected. Unfortunately the majority of divers can’t really stop kicking, they’d sink, adding air to their BCD would be correct action, but they will eventually kick again to get moving and that will make them rise, adjusting the trim then, would be the correct action, but instead they think the problem is too much air in the BCD, so they let a little out, now they don’t rise anymore, and they’re not sinking either, as long as they keep moving, and they all do, to various degrees of intensity. Long time, experienced divers do this more subtly, but it’s there, think experienced recreational instructors for exemple, looks like they have a hold of it, but go behind one and hold their feet, I guarantee you’d see them eventually sink.

Last thought on the long babbling, just keep in mind as you’re perfecting the buoyancy/trim/propulsion, your lungs obviously plays a part in this also, it’s where you fine tune the buoyancy, what needs to be kept in mind is that the breathing rate changes throughout the dive, because of various reasons, so the buoyancy in the BCD needs to be adjusted for that, then adjusted back to when breathing changes again, maintain a horizontal trim AT ALL TIMES, as that eliminates buoyancy changes due to propulsion, thus giving you wrong feedback about your buoyancy, every now and then, stop moving at all, this will give you great feedback about your buoyancy.

PS: Maybe you’re just a roadie, in which case you’re helpless

 

[Zef]

PS: Maybe you’re just a triathlete, in which case you’re helpless

FIFYA


-Z

 

[nolatom]

You're already heart-lung fit, so I would echo those who've mentioned yoga, which helped me "appreciate the breathing process" and reduce my air consumption a bit, and just more dives.
And more swimming, whether in the pool or open-water.
As you become more relaxed underwater, you'll make your air last longer.

 

[MichaelMc]

To check in on how quiet your body is or to practice it, clasp your hands in front of you and hold your fins together behind you. You can still make small trim adjustments by shifting arms/legs sideways or head/tail ward, but it will highlight how much you were sculling. Hold that pose and see if, to where, and how fast you roll. If you can stay horizontal that way, your air use should drop and frog and helicopter kicks will move you effortlessly about.

Mountain bike suspension seems a useful analogy to weight distribution. If you can, you would pick your front and rear suspension to make the planned ride type easier. Checking in at being motionless is a way to see if you did that for your dive. You can make do with a less optimal setup, or the setup can make things easier.

Seeing if you can hover with zero sculling is a useful trim check recreationally. For technical diving, eliminating sculling isn’t practical if you're always shifting mass by adding/removing stage bottles. Checking in helps me be aware of and helps calm my unconscious extraneous movements.

Another check in is to remove your fins, though it does change your mass distribution and extending or withdrawing your legs is less useful. Try moving about finless for part of your dive, keeping the fins in your belt or hands. It's a good check on trim and skills, and can be fun. I have dives or ascents when I'm not quiet and I fight buoyancy or trim. But when my weight distribution is dialed, my diving and legs are quiet and I can swim with no fins fairly calmly.

Checking in by holding your limbs together motionless, and making corrective predive ballast shifts, helps in getting to calmer recreational diving. If your centers of mass and buoyancy are more than a little out of line for horizontal trim, you can make up for it with sculling to a point, but you'll use energy. If they're inline horizontally but the center of mass is above/behind the center of buoyancy, say from negative steel tanks and lots of lead behind you, you'll be unstable and use energy, though less. If the mass is slightly belly ward of the buoyancy, you'll be stable with a gentle belly down 'righting' moment. If the mass is very belly ward of the buoyancy, say from aluminum tanks and a weight belt with all the weight in the front, you'll be annoyingly belly heavy and rolling to the side will be hard to maintain.

To learn to dive quiet, start with a weight distribution that puts you gently stable in horizontal trim, so that your fins can afford to be quiet. If your mass distribution gives you a little bit of belly down corrective force back toward flat horizontal trim, your limbs no longer have to do anything to keep you there, beyond hanging out in frog kick position at some generally appropriate extension. Now they can afford to be quiet. They can learn that all they need to do is make small changes to move or rotate you, and then go quiet again. Without a stable horizontal weight distribution your fins always need to be working, to either prevent you from turtling or to get part of your body back up to horizontal.

Once you've learned quiet limbs with a stable weight distribution, you could learn to smoothly handle a bit of instability from a center of mass above the buoyancy situation, if a different gear configuration, such as negative steels or doubles, required that.


Thomasz "Michur" Michura with no fins, feet together, checking gauges. I don't imagine he wastes energy when hovering or moving. Depending on the tanks and their pressure, he may have a bit of belly-down back-up righting force helping keep him stable and horizontal. He does seem to oscillate toward horizontal.

Thelonghose.com: hanging finless "you will notice if weight needs to be shifted". Here the tank is steel, but with some large weights forward on the belt.

 

[TMHeimer]

I had not heard of the "bicycle" kick until I observed an OW student doing it. Is that what you revert to? I would guess the suggestions of doing a frog kick would help. For the standard forward crawl kick, the obvious thing is to make your legs absolutely straight and stiff as a board at first and use your thigh muscles for power. When I really want to motor somewhere fast this is what I do. It may do the trick for you. Normally, I think my knees may be a little bent when just moseying around.

 

[Ryan Neely]

I've been training for a cross-country cycling tour for years (it'll never happen; I can't get my wife to get on a bike). Anyway, to point is, I ride four days a week. As a new diver, I've not experienced a change in finning styles but that may have to do with what swimming training I've had. For one reason or another I'm capable of "reprogramming" my brain from one activity to another.

As for the breathing, what others have said about being new and needing experience is probably the case. Aside from the cycling, I spend a lot of time lifting weights and participating in high-intensity interval training, so I know my cardiovascular is primed, yet I still suck down more air than I'd like. One of my biggest problems is that, with all my land-based training, I find myself filling my lungs to capacity before emptying them as far as they'll go. (Talk about a buoyancy issue. Yo-yo city.)

I found that this course helped. It walks you through some breathing exercises as well as some guided meditation you can incorporate into your yoga practice. It's still a work in progress for me, but I can already see an improvement.

 

[falcon125]

Relax. Move as little as possible to get the dive done. Listen to your breathing.
Really Listen. It will make your moves make sense.

 

[LanceRiley]

Im a mountainbiker (slow hard climbs) as well as a triathlete..swim bike and run... I can understand what you're feeling right now or going through... but I don't see your background as a disadvantage but more of an advantage. since you're a cyclist... let's talk cycling then...

I can maintain a cadence of 92-95. Im sure as someone who races... it's very easy to do 100-110. yes I do that sometimes for fun. But as a cyclist... I assume you also monitor Heart rate aside from cadence.

First of all ... it would be best to see your gear. Neoprene Suit? Tropical or cold diving? Gears? backplate? I asked because... once you mastered your buoyancy. there is no real reason to kick that fast. flutter kick? or frog kick? try imagining climbs with a bike. Do you always do High Cadence on climbs? I doubt that... there are times you do hard climbs. cadence 60-65 at grade 18 percent.. try doing frogkicks. slow but forceful kicks.

the advantage of a cyclist is his heart rate. I stopped diving because I was honestly getting fat. all the eating after dive was giving me bad health. took a hiatus for 3-4 years ... trimmed down to an athletic build. I think my post is here somewhere asking how do I remove my weights. and everybody was saying that it's impossible. with a cyclist/triathlete body. I don't dive with weights in tropical water with an aluminum backplate. I can outdive all of my buddies.. sometimes as long as 70 minutes in a 70ft dive square profile ascending every few minutes.

your heart is your advantage. what's your resting heart rate?

 

[caydiver]

Try humming some brainless tune. Worked for me to change my breathing pattern. My buddy hated it at the beginning but when he discovered we had more bottom time appreciated the effort. There is a DM out there somewhere who deserves a case on me!!!