Student Trouble With Nose Breathing

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Fit/body type: Very athletic late 40s/early 50s. Strenuous exercise every day is part of the job.

I like the snorkeling ideas, especially with goggles. The at home shower mask with water in it may be a good practice too...

FWIW many (most?) swimmers doing laps in goggles and a (center-mounted) snorkel use a nose clip. Take a look at finswimming videos on youtube, they all use mask-type goggles that cover the nose. Because even people very well conditioned to control their nose breathing in the water find it difficult when breathing gets heavy. If your student's breathing hard...
 
For all the issues I had, this is not one of them. Haven’t people ever had a stuffed up nose? I’m just confused how people cannot know how to breathe through their mouth.
Yeah, I agree. But for some reason, airway problems seems to be the most common big problem for student divers. I like all the ideas presented here and have read them often before. Particularly the idea of a lot of snorkeling. But that too won't help with no mask breathing. I can ask the obvious question--can the student take normal or even big breaths through the mouth on land while closing off the nose passage completely (without nose pinching, etc.)? My guess would be yes, but I'll bet there are some who can't do this, or at least have to really work at it. I had a student once who was a "mouth" breather (so she said). She had trouble clearing the mask because while blowing through the nose she was also blowing some out the mouth, so not much water was blown out of the mask. I started with telling her she has a big advantage over someone who is a "nose" breather.
One idea I always had is to breath in through the nose and out the mouth, then vice versa--switch it up, do it fast, slow. I am lucky as I consider myself to be a "both" breather, and think I've noticed that when normally breathing on land.

It's a difficult problem that may mean trying all of the suggestions in this thread. It's maybe harder for some of us to solve fo a student when we don't know why it's a problem...……..
 
Long ish post, TL;DR at the bottom.

Hello SB, I am a divemaster assisting an instructor with a PADI Open Water course. In this particular class, there is a parent/teenager duo that I have been working closely with. The reason for this is the parent has been having trouble with nose breathing and consequently dealing with water in their mask.

We are on week three of their five week program and the student has been unable to stay down in the deep end longer than a minute or two and they are now getting frustrated because their difficulties are holding up their child's learning. They also have an international trip scheduled soon that they wanted to be certified for.

Due to this student's difficulties I have been working with them almost exclusively, walking them through in my best words how to focus on just breathing through the mouth while in the shallow end and just sitting and relaxing underwater to get the technique down. The Student does kind of alright while in the shallow end, but still complains of difficulty getting a full deep breath because they can't breathe through their nose. Once in the deep end they can only last about a minute underwater until they surface because of lack of deep breaths.

Last week I got the Student pretty comfortable and through many of the skills, the only one we had trouble with on the skills that can be done in shallow water was the 1 minute no mask breathing. Since last week, the student didn't practice at all (instructor recommended breathing at home with mask on focusing on not using nose) and this week they had regressed to hardly even being able to stay under in shallow water. They are now more frustrated than ever because they though they could just jump right back in this week and be at the same mental place as last week and that was not the case, further holding them and their kid up from finishing the class.

Anyway, my question to you SB dive professionals is what strategies do you recommend for students that have trouble with nose breathing I could try with this student? Any help is appreciated!

Ditch the mask entirely and sit in the pool breathing off the reg. I've never had a student that couldn't get past the problem.
 
Swim laps with a snorkel and swim goggles and they will soon learn to mouth breath.
 
Hi Conaire,

A lot of the information provided above is great particularly getting the student to practice breathing without a mask.

One thing I would do is determine whether or not the student even has the ability to close off the nasopharynx. One way of doing this is by instructing the student to breath only through their mouth, after they have inhaled have them place and seal their palm on their open mouth and exhale, this should result in the cheeks puffing and no gas being exhaled through the nose. If they fail this they may not be capable of correctly directing airflow during breathing.

However, this may be more than a nose breathing issue based on the following exert from your post:
"complains of difficulty getting a full deep breath because they can't breathe through their nose. Once in the deep end they can only last about a minute underwater until they surface because of lack of deep breaths."

This statement leads me to believe that the student maybe shallow breathing. Get them to focus on taking nice long exhalations and not focus on their inhalations. You'll most likely find they'll no longer complain of difficulty drawing breath and that inhalation through the nose will most likely also disappear.
 
For all the issues I had, this is not one of them. Haven’t people ever had a stuffed up nose? I’m just confused how people cannot know how to breathe through their mouth.

My first time in the pool, I couldn’t figure out what was going on with my mask. I thought I was breathing out of my mouth. Nope. It was the weirdest thing. I had to really think about it.
 
My first time in the pool, I couldn’t figure out what was going on with my mask. I thought I was breathing out of my mouth. Nope. It was the weirdest thing. I had to really think about it.
Since you can't breathe through the nose with a mask on you're saying you weren't breathing at all (but thought you were breathing from your mouth)?
 
Since you can't breathe through the nose with a mask on you're saying you weren't breathing at all (but thought you were breathing from your mouth)?

Let my restate that. By “breathing out” I meant exhale. I was inhaling from the regulator and exhaling through my nose when I thought I was exhaling through my mouth.
 
Last week I got the Student pretty comfortable and through many of the skills, the only one we had trouble with on the skills that can be done in shallow water was the 1 minute no mask breathing. Since last week, the student didn't practice at all (instructor recommended breathing at home with mask on focusing on not using nose) and this week they had regressed to hardly even being able to stay under in shallow water. They are now more frustrated than ever because they though they could just jump right back in this week and be at the same mental place as last week and that was not the case, further holding them and their kid up from finishing the class.

From the original post, I understand that the student is a parent with a kid. I also read that you more or less have focused exclusively on them.

Would there be a point of separating them? Separate them, and offer one or two separate training sessions? It might be more effective even if both of them are struggling with the same problem?
 
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