I'm challenged with: Deep Yoga-Style 'Diaphragm' breathing vs Buoyancy Control.

[lowviz]

@scubafanatic, research Tom Mount. Pretty sure he started the breathing 'thing' in scuba. I've played with his method and dropped it, but recently found a (nominal) advantage to using more modern techniques.

Total oxygen uptake with two maximal breathing techniques and the tidal volume breathing technique: a physiologic study of preoxygenation. - PubMed - NCBI I like to splash loaded.

Just put ncbi in front of your Google breathing searches and you will get much more believable studies.

 

[jfe]

I've been down your road and found that you start concentrating on the diaphragm breathing so mush the rest blows out the window and before long this and that screw up and you get int other issues loosing your breathing rythm and before long your breathing quicker wasting air and and and.
Now, what I did find usefull was sitting at my desk at work, practicing diaphragm breathing, getting into a rythm on the boat before I get into the water or on the way to the dive site driving and just by doing that I manage a good breathing rythm at depth.
As for your buoyancy, I hardly touch the bottom and easily "float" inches above the seabed and even during safety and deco stops move no more than half a meter up or down and similar to what northernone said you can control it with small finstrokes.

 

[Damselfish]

I agree you're overthinking this. Relax! As someone said, relaxing and being efficient in movement matters. Being efficient is much more than streamlining, it's avoiding unnecessary movement. (And while you don't want to look like a Christmas tree, I think you quickly get to the point of diminishing returns where it doesn't matter that much, unless maybe you are racing someplace or against a current.) I have pretty low air consumption, and often get comments to the effect that I barely look like I'm moving, when I am.

A slower breathing pattern may also help with your air consumption, but 2 breaths a minute seems going much too far. Besides messing with your bouyancy more, you do have to worry about CO2 retention and the reality of having enough air under exertion. I think you should breath just the same underwater as above. But, many people seem to breath fairly quickly. If you're going to work on your breathing pattern, I suggest working on it above water. (There are apps for that. Really. One I have on my phone is Relax Lite.) If your normal breathing becomes slower by habit, it will probably help your air consumption underwater, without you thinking about it all the time and doing weird things. Again, I have very low air consumption, and I'm pretty sure lots of years of yoga has something to do with it.

 

[herman]

Don't worry about breathing but rather your diving technique. Get rid of unnecessary equipment, streamline as much as possible, get your weighting and trim correct and I would bet you need to SLOW DOWN. I see so many divers go zipping past me for no reason. The objective is to look at things, not see how much ground you can cover.
How often do you touch your BC? If it's more than once or twice through the dive (other than at the surface), you weighting is off. This is assuming you are not in a dry suit or wearing a lot of neoprene.
I am about your size, a AL 80 at 35-40 feet last me 90+ minutes with plenty of reserve.

 

[Norwegian Cave Diver]

Bouyancy Trim Propulsion - the holy trinity of scuba diving. Each one effects the other. You can't have deep breaths and be neutrally buoyant. You say you are 175 lbs. From that I would expect/assume that your RMV/SAC rates to be average vs being a great big person with a very large lung capacity that would require a higher than average RMV/SAC rate. Your problem is likely Trim. Are you diving horizontal? You might think you are but perhaps you are diving head up. This creates a problem. Imagine you are diving slightly head up. You are moving forward and you adjust your buoyancy with your BCD/Wing to be neutrely buoyant, all seems good. But really you are naturally buoyant because you have water pushing against your chest partially effecting your buoyancy. But when you slow down or stop you are now negative, because you don't have the water pushing against your chest - so you either add air/gas to adjust your bouyancy or you change your position in the water to be even more head up and increase your kicking to hold your position in the water. Either one increases your air/gas consumption. If you are in Trim and Neutrally Buoyant then you should be able to stop swimming and hold your position in the water with out making any adjustments to your rig or your lungs, or feel the need to kick to hold your self in trim. Trim also represents your gear. Do you have items hanging down? These create drag, increase the opportuninty to damage your gear, damage your surroundings. Relax. Try to breath normal. Get horizontal. Frog kick. Go slow. Arms in front. Look on Youtube for cave divers swimming. Look at how little effort is made to move forward. When I frog kick about 1/3 of my forward movement comes from the kick and about 2/3 comes from coasting. That means I am resting for 2/3 of every kick.

 

[scubafanatic]

Bouyancy Trim Propulsion - the holy trinity of scuba diving. Each one effects the other. You can't have deep breaths and be neutrally buoyant. You say you are 175 lbs. From that I would expect/assume that your RMV/SAC rates to be average vs being a great big person with a very large lung capacity that would require a higher than average RMV/SAC rate. Your problem is likely Trim. Are you diving horizontal? You might think you are but perhaps you are diving head up. This creates a problem. Imagine you are diving slightly head up. You are moving forward and you adjust your buoyancy with your BCD/Wing to be neutrely buoyant, all seems good. But really you are naturally buoyant because you have water pushing against your chest partially effecting your buoyancy. But when you slow down or stop you are now negative, because you don't have the water pushing against your chest - so you either add air/gas to adjust your bouyancy or you change your position in the water to be even more head up and increase your kicking to hold your position in the water. Either one increases your air/gas consumption. If you are in Trim and Neutrally Buoyant then you should be able to stop swimming and hold your position in the water with out making any adjustments to your rig or your lungs, or feel the need to kick to hold your self in trim. Trim also represents your gear. Do you have items hanging down? These create drag, increase the opportuninty to damage your gear, damage your surroundings. Relax. Try to breath normal. Get horizontal. Frog kick. Go slow. Arms in front. Look on Youtube for cave divers swimming. Look at how little effort is made to move forward. When I frog kick about 1/3 of my forward movement comes from the kick and about 2/3 comes from coasting. That means I am resting for 2/3 of every kick.

I'm very horizontal in the water, using a Diverite harness/40 lbs Oxycheq 'Extreme' singles wing, (and crotch strap) and do have everything neatly clipped off/stowed so I'm not the dangly Christmas tree diver. I'm pretty dialed in on weighting as I reference my 'trips historical weighting spreadsheet', and did confirm things in the pool a couple of days ago. (new full 5 mm wetsuit/AL 80) and 16 lbs lead seemed pretty good (in fresh water anyway as I may need a touch more in the ocean but I'll likely try 16 lbs ocean at first). I went down to 170 psi and wasn't floating up uncontrollably so 16 lbs seems a good fit. I keep my harness pretty snug so that I'm 'at one' with the BC/tank with no wiggle/slop. I do the arms in front and no hand's paddling allowed. I'll admit I'm not a frog kicker but a flutter kicker.

 

[scubafanatic]

Don't worry about breathing but rather your diving technique. Get rid of unnecessary equipment, streamline as much as possible, get your weighting and trim correct and I would bet you need to SLOW DOWN. I see so many divers go zipping past me for no reason. The objective is to look at things, not see how much ground you can cover.
How often do you touch your BC? If it's more than once or twice through the dive (other than at the surface), you weighting is off. This is assuming you are not in a dry suit or wearing a lot of neoprene.
I am about your size, a AL 80 at 35-40 feet last me 90+ minutes with plenty of reserve.

I'm not a speed swimmer, unless I'm in a group setting and the DM is forcing the group to speed to keep up. I will have a fair amount of neoprene @ new 5 mm full suit. For reference, a few years ago (Sea of Cortez/Don Jose liveaboard) my dive buddy and I did an almost 90 min dive in a shallow 35-40 ft reef. It was the very last dive of the trip and the boat encouraged us to max it out if we wanted, so we set out to go as long as we could, close to 90 minutes. We slightly pissed the boat off as we we the last 2 divers out and I don't think they expected to be under quite that long, but hey, they invited us to do that, so it's their fault. That being said, I was 10 years or so younger back then as well. We were both out of air at that point, near the 90 min mark.

 

[Norwegian Cave Diver]

Ok good. Im not diving the same rig as you. But first impression is two things... Is your strap so tight that it effects your breathing and 16 lbs of lead too much? Imagine if you were 4 lbs heavy on your lead... at the surface you need additional air/gas to hold you above the water line. Then at 33 FSW you would need twice as much air/gas and 66FSW 3 x and 99 FSW 4 x. Imagine how much air/gas that would account for.

 

[scubafanatic]

I agree you're overthinking this. Relax! As someone said, relaxing and being efficient in movement matters. Being efficient is much more than streamlining, it's avoiding unnecessary movement. (And while you don't want to look like a Christmas tree, I think you quickly get to the point of diminishing returns where it doesn't matter that much, unless maybe you are racing someplace or against a current.) I have pretty low air consumption, and often get comments to the effect that I barely look like I'm moving, when I am.

A slower breathing pattern may also help with your air consumption, but 2 breaths a minute seems going much too far. Besides messing with your bouyancy more, you do have to worry about CO2 retention and the reality of having enough air under exertion. I think you should breath just the same underwater as above. But, many people seem to breath fairly quickly. If you're going to work on your breathing pattern, I suggest working on it above water. (There are apps for that. Really. One I have on my phone is Relax Lite.) If your normal breathing becomes slower by habit, it will probably help your air consumption underwater, without you thinking about it all the time and doing weird things. Again, I have very low air consumption, and I'm pretty sure lots of years of yoga has something to do with it.

Thankfully I think I avoid the Christmas tree look, with everything stowed/clipped off neatly. Real world 2 breaths/min is likely unrealistic unless we're kneeling on the bottom chillin' out, but it was an interesting reference point for what is possible. I was partially successful in the pool making my breathing pattern automatic, doing the 4-5 mini-inhale sips over 10 seconds I can pretty much do that without thinking, and have done that on prior dive trips....but the maximum exhaling thing is the new part that is not automatic, at least to the extent I was doing it in the pool. I'll be on the lookout for the CO2 buildup/headache issue too.

 

[scubafanatic]

I've been down your road and found that you start concentrating on the diaphragm breathing so mush the rest blows out the window and before long this and that screw up and you get int other issues loosing your breathing rythm and before long your breathing quicker wasting air and and and.
Now, what I did find usefull was sitting at my desk at work, practicing diaphragm breathing, getting into a rythm on the boat before I get into the water or on the way to the dive site driving and just by doing that I manage a good breathing rythm at depth.
As for your buoyancy, I hardly touch the bottom and easily "float" inches above the seabed and even during safety and deco stops move no more than half a meter up or down and similar to what northernone said you can control it with small finstrokes.

Where possible, when I first enter the water, I'll try to relax and use snorkel air while all the divers assemble on the surface, to get my zen moment started, versus just plunging to the bottom (assuming it isn't one of those required negative entry due to big current situations). My buoyancy control is pretty good, it just became more of a challenge doing super deep exhales, while in very shallow 12' max depth pool, while wearing a new full 5mm wetsuit. Agreed I can't let breathing focus to cause me to lose focus on all the other aspects of diving (like trying out my new computers )