Underwater 25 Meter?

Just to add my :2cents: to the very good advice you've already received. If you try too hard or try to go too fast (to get it over with sooner) you will run out of breath (in a manner of speaking) faster. Experiment and you will find a good medium speed that won't kill you. Don't exhale until you feel that you've reached your limit, then exhale a little bit. You'll find that you can keep going for a few more meters, then exhale a bit more then swim a bit more. Aim for an efficient catch (i.e., hold the water solidly and pull yourself up to your catch and then glide as efficiently as you can; minimum resistance or drag.) Here's something you might want to try. Try doing the 25m freestyle without breathing (not underwater). If you sprint all out, you probably won't make the length but if you go at around 60 to 75% power, you'll probably do it on your first go. Good luck.

I think there are a few key points to good underwater swimming - most already made in this thread. 1. you must be efficient in your stroke. A poor stroke is wasteful of energy (and therefore oxygen). Notice in the record video how much streamlined gliding they do. 2. you must be relaxed. If you are panicky you will not be smooth and efficient. 3. underwater breaststroke is probably the very best stroke for most. Notice that the record breakers all swam underwater breaststroke. I saw many dolphin kicks in between strokes and a few odd flutter kicks mixed in. Other strokes may be faster - such as pure dolphin kick - but speed isn't the issue. You want to cover as much distance with the least amount of energy. If you can hold your breath for almost 2 minutes sitting still without suffering you should be able to go for 30 seconds or so underwater.

hi all! read this tread and wanted to say, that i have a same problem- trouble swimming underwater for 25 meters. I tried with fins, and only making scissor moves with feet and hands by the sides, i was like a racing boat and even 30 metes wasnt very hard to do (could have done more, but did not want to explore my limits). I also viewed those record videos, guy swimming for about 166 meters and so on, tried basically same moves, but i just dont have the flow! tried to slither through water like a dolphin, but it doesent really work, if i stare at the bottom of the pool, i dont see much movement at all and i usually grasp for breath about 5 or more meters from the end. tried taking deep beaths and smaller ones, really difference is marginal. about mu lung capacity in general, i tried last night, and with very deep breath i managed to get the numbers 1 minute 58 seconds on the clock. And i could have done more, but again. didnt really want to go for the very limit. any advice? thnx in advance.

How long did it take you to swim the distance in freestyle? I ask to get some idea of your swimming speed - and perhaps guess your swimming efficiency. My guess is that you are inefficient underwater. I haven't tried this recently, but I will guess that I could cover the distance (25M) underwater in 4-6 complete strokes (breaststroke). One stroke = 1 pull+1 kick. Hyperventilating is a bad idea. You should take some slow deep breaths before you try. Take one big breath before you start. Then while swimming slowly exhale during the swim.

"try to fit some air into the stomach too, by extra small breaths?" hate to point out the obvious, but the only advantage of getting air into your stomach is at the burping contest.

Just got back from climbing Mt. Elbert in Colorado. I had a pulse oximeter with me, and at one point my oxygen saturation percentage was down to 72 percent. I was breathing deeply, and quite tired, but I didn't feel out of breath per se. At sea level, with the same oximeter, normal oxygen saturation is somewhere in the 96-100 percent range when you're not exerting yourself. I tried to see how low I could get it, back close to sea level, just by holding my breath while sitting on my livingroom couch. My reading started at 98 percent, I held my breath for about 90 seconds, till I thought I was going to explode with the urge to breathe--and all the while my oxygen saturation level just went down to 93 percent. That's 21 points higher than its nadir on Mt. Elbert at around 14,000 feet. Anyhow, Billy Fanstone has provided superb info in this thread. It's the build up of CO2, not the plummeting of blood oxygen, that causes that panicky feeling in your diaphragm where you feel you have to take a gasp of air. I don't know if a build-up of CO2 is harmful physiologically speaking--maybe our Brazilian poster can elucidate on this--but I do know that you can get by with an awful lot less oxygen in your blood than you will lose in a 25 meter swim, even if this takes you 30-40 seconds or more to finish. When we do breath control sets in practice, I always caution my fellow swimmers to surface if they start to see what appears to be a swarm of little black dots in their visual fields. No real scientific validation for such advice, but it just seems to me a reasonable step to take. To paraphrase the former president Bush, to continue swimming underwater when the world is slowly going dark "just wouldn't be prudent."

Alright, im new to this site, Im not a usual swimmer but i recently got in the pool and feel in love. I quickly made friends at the local pool on-base. Im a United States Marine with hopes and dreams in Becoming a Reconnaissaince Marine. In other words Marines with Gills. They are like the SEAL's from the Navy and Pararescue from the Air Force. The guys at the pool quickly tought me how to swim "the right way" cross-over and *** stroke as well as the Side-stroke and other technics. i go to the pool everyday. My biggest problem is dealing with the underwater 25 meter swim. To become a Recon Marine i have to accomplish the following.... 1) 500 meter swim with out touching the floor in under 17min. 2) 30 min. tread 3) Deep end Rifle retreaval and then treading water for 5 sec. 4) 5 min. water float by using trousers as floating devise 5) 25 Meter underwater swim (my problem) I have no problem with any of the others but the 25 meter kills me only because i feel like my lungs are going to explode. is there any tips of any kind out there that can prepare me for my "indoc" or evaluation to see if im sea worthy and serve as a Recon Marine. Thanks for hearing me out. :banana: Out of the five things you listed, number 3 bothers me the most; how heavy is that rifle? With ammo? As far as the underwater 25 meter swim, it will come with practice; your lungs will get used to it. Have a great pushoff, use your arms fully extended to grab as much water as possible, have a great frog kick and finish the kick, and let a little air out as you go. I'd have to say that in about a week or so, you can accomplish this underwater swim; as you train for it, your lungs will not scream at your brain that you need air. It's a process! But very doable! donna

i thought so myself, that if i dont panic and all i can make it to the wal, but no, something must be wrong with my stroke or i dont know...i thought about hyperventilating, because 25 meters it so small distance that i would never ever faint ( and i can manage to do 20 meters with no oxygen), but i would like to try it "clean". Should i take just a big breath or try to fit some air into the stomach too, by extra small breaths?:) btw i start from the water, pushing off the wall, not from outside. I tryed swimming freestyle, on the surface, staring the bottom of the pool, barely, but managed to do even 30 meters ( with very slow turn) of very fast swimming with no oxygen involved.

Interesting. I heard those tents are allowed for now but discouraged because their use is not considered to be sporting. Also, I thought that U.S. spacecraft were also pressurized to 1/3 atmosphere, but with a higher oxygen concentration than 20/80, to make the same oxygen partial pressure as sea level.

The tent would be for sleeping, costs about 10,000. Like sleeping in Tahoe and going down to San Francisco to practice. Some swimmers (learning from runners) are doing some training in mountains, usually around 2 to 2.500 meters altitude. I believe some Brazilians went to the Sierra Nevada in Spain. American camps could be easy enough in Colorado, for instance. I did not look the pressure thing up now on the google, might later, but as I remember, the russians dominated the solid fuel technology, the landing on hard surface technology and the bringing the onboard pressure to one third one atmosphere (abou 300 milibars) to make the partial pressure okay. The americans use inert gases (nitrogen and others) plus oxygen to somewhere around 20 to 30% oxygen, which is ideal. The mixture to dive deep is with helium, so as not to have the "bends", caused by Nitrogen, but I don't know much about deep scuba diving. Anesthesia and ICU respirators turn out around 30 to 40% which you might enrich or make poor according to necessity. What I need to find out is how to make my motorcycle's mixture poorer...billy fanstone