Underwater 25 Meter?

Inkjunky that sounds rough. In Army ROTC all we had to do was: 1) swim 25 yards in boots and BDUs. 2) step off a high dive holding a rubber duck (rubberized M-16) at arms length while blindfolded. 3) tread water with rubber duck for 30-60 seconds or something trivial like that. What are you going to be wearing for this 25 meters underwater? It'd be rough in boots and BDUs! But in a suit and with a dive or push off the wall, it should be okay.

Underwater 25m wearing BDUs??? That's going to be a bit harder than with a speedo. Well it could be worse, like you say you don't have to wear boots! I would do underwater breaststroke. Try to work a dolphin kick in there too, in a way that feels natural to you. That makes underwater 25s easier for me at least. What I do is pull, followed by breaststroke kick with an immediate dolphin kick merged at the end in one motion. It's kind of hard to describe. But if that complicates or confuses in for you, just stick with breaststroke pull + kick. All that aside, the most important thing is to streamline on the push-off or dive, streamline after every stroke, streamline as much as possible. I would practice with BDUs if you haven't been doing so already. Here's a video you could check out www.youtube.com/watch The basic idea here is she's streamlining as much as possible to preserve the momentum from her dive. She pulls and does a dolphin kick in one motion and you can see how she accelerates. Then she does a breaststroke kick and surfaces. You don't need to worry about the rules of *** stroke starts because you're going the whole length underwater. But just look at how far she gets with her dive, one pull + dolphin kick, and one breaststroke kick. And one more thing. You are probably not in the habit of tying the blousing bands on your BDU trousers (I never did) because you probably always fold the slack out of them and tuck them into your boots. However for this swim it might be a good idea to tie them to keep your trouser legs from flopping around as much, since you won't have boots on.

If you are loaded down with gear you should not have trouble staying under. OTOH you might have a little trouble surfacing. :D Skip

"lung and cv efficiency can be greatly improved (VO2 max) through all forms of cv exercises..See www.brianmac.co.uk/vo2max.htm" Cardiovascular efficiency can be improved, not lung CAPACITY. Even V02 is only increased about 15% from what you are born with. In other words, if you measure your lung capacity before and after exercises, swimming or whateve you do to increase it, there will be no change over the years. If you measure your V02 before and after you might have an increase of 15% over the years...

"lung and cv efficiency can be greatly improved (VO2 max) through all forms of cv exercises..See www.brianmac.co.uk/vo2max.htm" Cardiovascular efficiency can be improved, not lung CAPACITY. Even V02 is only increased about 15% from what you are born with. In other words, if you measure your lung capacity before and after exercises, swimming or whateve you do to increase it, there will be no change over the years. If you measure your V02 before and after you might have an increase of 15% over the years... I guess I have no reason to doubt that, but I feel like I have significantly greater lung capacity than your average non-swimmer (for example, we did a lung capacity test back in my high school biology class and I by far had the greatest lung capacity). I always attributed that to all the swimming I did. But if I was born with it, then I really lucked into the right sport!

The lung thing - use the lung capacity you have. So many do not use their complete lung capcity. Lots of lung capacity is never used. The secret is to use all that is availaible. As I said in my first post release a little air as you swim under water. If you are loaded down with gear you should not have trouble staying under.

Be sure and swim from the deep end to the shallow end.

Now this is interesting. I thought you could somehow 'expand' your lung capacity through training. From personal experience, i have found it is not so much expanding lungs as it is building up pain tolerance threshold.

I really think that along with building lungs capacity you NEED a good stroke. If they drop your in the middle of the sea, with gear on, you need strength- mental and physical, good strong lungs and a good stroke to get you though the water, one can not work without the other. Because your wearing BDU ( which I'm assuming is full pant length) they naturally slow you down. Flutter kicking may not work well because of the pant length, I don't know the science behind it - I'm just thinking flutter kicking may not work well maybe it's because the cloth going all the way down the leg is so loose it just has nothing to work with....nothing is cutting threw the water.... it just laying swishing around like it's in the washing machine. Dolphin kick with a breaststroke pull could work.. because you legs are doing the cutting threw the water "so to speak" Even thought the cloth is there it could work better with your legs - with the up and down motion at the same time. The cloth is not going up and down at different times like with a flutter kick. Remember dolphin kick is a 2 kick process, one big kick followed by one small the small kick is done quickly after the one big kick. A lot of fist time dolphin kicker will do the "big" kick, then slowly follow the another "big" kick. This slows you down, it's KICK,kick, KICK, kick in a rhythmic fashion. www.youtube.com/watch See how she does a big kick followed by a small kick. Learn how to get the most out of your breaststroke pull, www.youtube.com/watch Breaststroke kick could also work - but only if have a good breaststroke kick, breaststroke kick - too me - takes more time to learn how to do properly to get your kick to propel you down the pool. Hope this helps.

wow im over wealmed with the amount of knowladge and help. To answer a couple questions, I usually start with the flutter kicks and i really dont know what it is i do but i start doing *** strocks and kicks really fast. and i notice i feel like im getting no where. and ill be doing this in full BDU (Camuflouge Utilities) or just Cammies. No boots. What technic do you guys recommend. I used to be real good at the under water swims. I would suggest that you skip the flutter and do breaststroke pullout with your arms. The next thing would be a real strong kick. Not a regular *** stroke kick - but with your entire body at about a 45degree angel your kick would be a scissor. However, make sure that after the first initial pullout the rest of your pulls and kicks go as follows: Your hands only come up to the shoulders as you draw up your legs for another kick. Then you do another kick and snap the arms down to you thighs all at the same time. It is an explosive move and then you streamline and glide for as much as possible. You don't want to kill your streamline and speed by recovering you hands all the way over your head. The second half of the pull has the power anyway. I also would let a little puff of air out on each kick and pullout. The exhale part is just like you would do with any other form of exercise when you are exerting. Every once in a while our swim coach would have an underwater swim contest. The farthest I was able to swim was 2 and 3/4 laps in a 25 yard pool. Of course I thougt my head was going to explode - but I was so competative that I went last and had to surpass all the guys on the team. Just a few easy deep breaths before you dive in is all you need. Keep relaxed and you should be fine.