Ok, so I only have 20 odd sea dives and countless freshwater swimming pool sessions but I am very sure that I'm comfortable in the water. Buoyancy and trim's fine. I'm in the bottom feeding and gliding category. I know where every piece of equipment is since they're all mine and I problem solve underwater instead of thinking about surfacing when equipment get tangled.
Now the problem is I'd like to be able to get better bottom times because at 20 metres (about 60'), I only get about an hour of gas before I hit the magical 500 PSI mark and need to surface.
I noticed that I breathe pretty often when diving but it's not due to discomfort, unease or any overexertion. Will apnea help?
The apnea part wont help the bottom time on scuba, as static apnea training is more about cheating your CO 2 mechanism for needing to breathe..althouth the lower heart rate part of apnea training would help...
Freediving it self would be very important for your goals, as it would teach you to swim flat horizontal when going from A to B, and to have ideal weighting, and to have OPTIMAL PROPULSION ( most scuba divers have poor or mediocre propulsion skills at best---get good skills in this, and your ability to stretch an tank out will amaze everyone.
Get good freediving fins also, they will drastically enhance efficiency in the water for scuba ( or breath hold).
Make sure your weighting is perfect....just enough to be neutral with an empty tank...and when underwater, be sure you are swimming at dead neutral buoyancy ( not negative like most new divers).
Learn how to slow your heart rate down--bio feed back with a heart rate monitor could help a great deal--learn how to relax, and how to slow your heart--when you do, your breathing will have slowed way down.
When your scuba dive begins, the first thing you should do when you reach the bottom, is to spend 30 seconds to a minute on slowing everything way down, totally relaxing, and then try to maintain this state for the entire dive--it could double the bottom time many new divers experience.