Crossover benefits to scuba

[kmarks]

Thank you for the responses. Pretty well what I expected and I will investigate a free diving course.

Not sure if you are serious here or not. If not I would amend that rule to say "never hold your breath when ascending". I hold all the time to listen, take a photo, or maybe just to enjoy the natural pause of where a breath ends/begins.

Ten Rules For Safe Scuba Diving Rule #1 - Never hold your breath.
The Six Rules Of Scuba Diving – Bucket List Diver Rule #1 - Breathe continuously while on scuba. Never hold your breath.
The 6 Rules of Scuba - Cave Diver Harry Rule #1 - Breathe continuously, never hold your breath.
10 Golden Rules For Scuba Diving | Dive With Seaman Rule #6 - Always Perform Continuous Breathing (but then states that the golden rule of scuba diving is NEVER HOLD YOUR BREATH)

It's pretty much the consensus: Never hold your breath! If you are trying to take a picture or be silent, it might help, but any time you shut your airway, you are putting yourself at risk because you may ascend without meaning to and, especially at shallow depth, a small ascent can be catastrophic if you are holding your breath, so it is heavily stressed in training that you NEVER HOLD YOUR BREATH.

 

[Akimbo]

It's pretty much the consensus: Never hold your breath!

I disagree. "Never hold your breath" is incomplete and dumbed down.

 

[Aviyes]

I disagree. "Never hold your breath" is incomplete and dumbed down.

Agreed. Joys of lowest common denominator rules for the truly ignorant "street stupid".

 

[kelemvor]

I guess this is what I was kind of asking without knowing how to ask it.

So I can certainly see how you would not want to be taking breathes under pressure and holding them for minutes on end with the potential of decreasing your depth. I guess holding your breath at the natural exhale pause of a breathing cycle would be optimum to guard against over expansion.

Actually there have been a number of threads on the topic. I think the general consensus is that modifying your breathing in an attempt to use less gas reduces your body's ability to eliminate the CO2 it produces. This can cause headaches (common) and other more serious problems.

There may be good reasons to learn to freedive, but modifying your breathing pattern on scuba isn't one of them. If your dives are gas limited you should get a bigger tank and/or improve your physical fitness and/or improve your weighting, trim, buoyancy control etc.

Just look at the tech divers doing multiple hour dives at very deep depths. They certainly aren't doing it by modifying their breathing. They just calculate how much gas they need for a given dive and bring enough to do the dive.

Here's a thread on the topic from 2002: https://www.scubaboard.com/community/threads/skip-breathing.12477

Here's a writeup about CO2 poisoning in scuba: Scuba Diving: Carbon Dioxide Poisoning Symptoms

 

[northernone]

Being at home in the water and strong mask/finning skills are very useful.

The issue with breathing for freediving it's a breath up followed by a single breath hold. Upon surfacing you then again breath heavily to recover. In scuba diving this sort of breathing is not helpful for extending bottom time. I don't have "unlimited air" - no air - unlimited air again when I'm scuba diving. I have a fixed amount of air which I sip constantly and fully.

On scuba I will breath hold regularly up to 2 minutes on maybe 50% of my photography dives. Having a background in freediving allows me the mental control to force breathing patterns when in recovery after so it doesn't burn my tank.

Another thing freediving is useful for is CESA (which isn't something one wants to ever need) training. Being underwater while not having an immediate airsource, it is comforting to know you can ascent to your next breath back on the surface.

Two dangers I have encountered from extensive freediving:

I've messed to my co2 detector (can't prove it) My need to breath doesn't work predictably and breathing is conscious often. I can fairly comfortably on purpose black out (on land) from lack of oxygen before the voice "breath you fool" gets loud enough.

As of January I'm perfectly comfortable sustaining a workload on 10% oxygen couch diving. (Had 10/70 trimix to burn and I did crunches and pushups for 15 minutes without much discomfort... Besides for my dislike of exercise.) That seems unusual and may have a risk associated to it when it comes to oxtox? (Haven't found research yet.)


Short version: Freediving breathing is unsuitable and unhelpful for diving.

Cameron

 

[Bob DBF]

I disagree. "Never hold your breath" is incomplete and dumbed down.

Training by catchphrase rather than understanding the principles involved. It runs rampant today, and not just in SCUBA.


Bob

 

[scrane]

I can't say that I breathe the same on scuba as I do above water, but I've been doing it a long time. To modify your natural breathing patterns under recommendation of anonymous internet friends seems risky.
New divers are instructed not to hold their breath because they may lack the situational awareness that comes with experience. It is better to err on the side of caution.

 

[Saniflush]

Thank you for the replies. All good food for thought.

 

[aquacat8]

Freediving can be very dangerous for scuba. The problem is it is so much fun to dive without lugging around all that gear it can really cut into your scuba vacations;-)

 

[scrane]

I freedove for three years before I got into scuba. Freediving is a lot of fun, but is heavily dependent on health, physical condition, and commitment. Very few scuba people seem to want to make the effort.