Obnoxious breathing

I can recall a few years ago reading a story in Navy Times or a Navy Safetygram about a Dive School student who killed himself "practising" his breath holding. (Perhaps those of you who live in Coronado can back me up on this one?) Apperantly, this young lad decided he needed to be able to stay underwater longer without the aid of oxygen, and being a highly motived sailor, he thought he would work on it extra. Went to the training tank at the Naval Amphibious Base, and "worked" on his breath holding by hyperventilating just before going underwater. As several participants have pointed out, the urge to breath is not caused by lack of oxygen in the blood stream, but an excess of carbon dioxide. By hyperventilating, he drove the CO2 level down artificially, and set up conditions where he could pass out from lack of oxygen before his CO2 urge to breath would motivate him to surface. The final factor in the equation was that he appeared to have some trouble staying submerged with his lungs chock full of air. So, when he went under, he hooked his fingers around a water intake plate at the bottom of the pool. Probably some of you can fill in the rest of the story. He passed out before he felt the need to breath, and his fingers locked on the grate. By the time the lifeguards noticed that, gee, he's been under a long time even for a SEAL wannabe, discovered him unconscious, managed to get his fingers off the grate, and started CPR, he was already gone. Do I think you will kill yourself, even with HIGHpoxic sets? Clearly not! But, as Emmett and others so sagely pointed out, doing low breath sets for the wrong reasons or using the wrong technique is at best useless, and at worst counterproductive. And, most important, do NOT hyperventilate before doing these sets! Matt

Speaking of "HIGHpoxic" or my preference "High Toxic", a swimmer on our club, his son is a USS swimmer. Last week he attempted a 75 underwater. I understand he's done it before. Well, luckilly for him, the lifeguard realized something was wrong when he stopped moving at 60 yds.:o Just goes to show, you can trick your brain into thinking you have enough O2, but you can't trick nature. You gotta be careful, know your limits. Did anyone see the special on (discovery I think) about those free divers? They talked about how you can relax and meditate underwater that you never feel the urge to breathe, causing many blackouts. Something you don't want to do alone I suppose.:eek: Joe

There have been some good points made here. Years ago I had a long discussion with an Olympic Gold medal winner, who instructed me that you never swim with all your lung capacity, UNLESS you swim some lengths underwater. As an asthmatic, swimming a length underwater, resting (not hyperventilating), then swimming another length underwater, until I have 4 lengths done, makes a huge difference. It opens the tiny air sacs in the lungs, and it helps me mentally. At one Nationals, the first day I could not swim even one half length underwater. I was having a bad asthma day, coughing badly. I had a so-so one hundred ***. The next day, I did four lengths total underwater, had a great massage, stretched properly and won. And I did it by NOT breathing every stroke, which after 6 seconds underwater after the start and turn is hard to do. As a coach, I have my swimmers swim lengths underwater. But never more than one length at a time. Sometime they do it after a sprint, sometimes before a sprint. I have my swimmers do a very long warm up, doing sculling and kicking drills until I am sure they are ready to swim hard. I prefer they swim wave style (body dolphin) breaststroke during their under water lengths. Even eight year old girls have no problem swimming a great looking wave style breaststroke underwater. The pushoff underwater for all strokes have gotten faster and longer the last 15 years. A real eye opener is Natalie Coughlin, all she did was a 49.9 100 back, and a 50.1 100 fly. She went 15 meters off each turn, and gained one FULL body length on the fastest women in the world during those 15 meters! She gained that body length each and every length, so she gained eight body lengths in her incredible 1:49 200 back. She beat the 96 Olympic gold medal winner in back by 3.5 seconds in the 100 back! With swims like this, more and more swimmers WILL get faster underwater, and will do the entire 15 meters underwater. Masters can and will copy this, and will get faster. As a coach I want to be there while they train their bodies and mind to do this!! As they say, don’t do this alone.

I also used to swim with a guy who was also my fencing master. He used to be a member of a french military unit that specialized in deploying and disarming underwater demolition equipment, including free-diving to disarm metal sensing mines. At the age of 50 he could still do 75 yards underwater - and did it every time he went in a pool. He always made a point of surfacing with a big relaxed grin on his face and engaging the nearest person in conversation - no heavy breathing or apparent physical distress at all (but, then, I also watched him take a broken epee blade through his thigh during a Modern Pentathlon bout without so much as a grimace or cuss word). I DID notice that he NEVER took a shot at going 100 - probably knew his limitations.

Many years ago (early sixties), I went to a mixed-sport coaching camp in Santa Clara. The main attraction for me (comp. age-grouper from Canada), was the chance to be coached by George Haines. In our first session with the great man, he directed us to see who could stay underwater the longest. I went straight down to the bottom & grabbed the grating of the drain & hung on. I watched as ever so slowly my mates gave up & floated to the surface. I was the one! I broke the water expecting praise & instead received George's object lesson on how we shouldn't just blindly do every stupid thing an adult told us to- it could be downright dangerous...it took me a good while, but I finally took the point.