SCUBA divers?? improving how long you can hold your breath?
by scubaboy on Monday, April 18th, 2011 | 11 Comments
is it true that you can improve how long you can hold your breath by just inhaling and holding it as long as you can everyday or do you have to do special exercises
it;s bad for your respiration system for sure.hope helped
Yes. Stretch your lungs, and they’ll stretch the time you can hold in your breath in them.
take some blood. Freeze it in the freezer then let it thaw. Put it back in your body and your blood will hold more oxygen.
this will work but you don’t have to just hold your breath and sit there you must move around like you will be doing underwater to exert energy. moving uses oxygen. also, don’t take big huge breaths cause it will hurt. take good size breaths and work your way up to larger breaths. good luck
That will help yes, but also by doing frequent aerobic exercise such as running or swimming, as this increases the amount of oxygen that can be stored in your blood/muscles at one time.
the length that you can hold your breath depends on the size of your lungs. yeah sure you can practice, but you should know never to hold your breath when you scuba dive..it’s called a lung rupture..and they suck big time. that’s what the tank strapped to your back is for.
if you do like competitive swimming and things like that, you can probly hold your breath for a longer period of time..
happy scuba diving!
Scuba divers have no need for this exercise.
Keeping calm saves air in your tank. Staying above 30 feet deep saves air (one atmosphere).
we don’t go around holding our breath in the shopping malls.
I think this should work but i researched online and found this-
this will work but you don’t have to just hold your breath and sit there you must move around like you will be doing underwater to exert energy. moving uses oxygen. also, don’t take big huge breaths cause it will hurt. take good size breaths and work your way up to larger breaths. good luck
That will help a little bit but the main issues with holding your breath for longer times is: CO2 poisoning and heartrate.
You body has a pretty violent response to CO2 totally unlike CO which unfortunatelly kills many people each year. You will actually have to exhale within the first two minutes regardless because of the CO2 that builds up in the lungs. Once you exhale you can still not breath in and if conditioned can go up to seven minutes total without a breath. So NO you really can’t increase the amount of time you can hold your breath, but you CAN increase the amount of time you go without breathing(inhaling).
The second issue is just how fast your body consumes oxygen. This is a function of heartrate and temperature. I’ll leave temperature alone because you can’t control or count on that, it’s always better to dive using whatever is necessary to stabilize your heat exchange (hince the saying you’re not dead until you’re Warm & Dead. People who extend the amount of time without breathing have incredible control over there body. Magicians can hold their breaths for long periods of time because they’re not usually moving around or swimming; what’s impressive are the Seals & Free divers that slow their metabilism while doing strenious activity. To control this i’d practice meditation to see if you can do it with no exhurtion and above water and then expand your experimentation. Read up on how the Seals train for this skill.
You can extend through just regular practice, as your question asks, how long you can go without breathing but to get beyond two minutes you’ll have to learn other skills.
A trick that some people use but does not help everybody is to induce hyperventalation right before you hold your breath. By doing this quick breathing you end up with less CO2 in your lungs and more O2 for your body to absorb up front. With taking these quick breaths you use less of the O2 in each breath as compared to full breaths so when you decide to not breath out then your lungs are full of a slightly higher concentration of O2 for your dive (or what ever).
SCUBA divers don’t try to hold their breaths as when you finally exhale your body will use up more O2 to get back to even then if you had breathed regurlurly (unless the’ve run out of air and then they’re most likely screwed regardless).
sean
Wiki says it best;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apnea
Also, check out what world class free divers are doing;
http://www.aida-international.org/
Women’s world record free dive, no limits (NLT) is held by Tanya Streeter. I met her and her husband in Austin. She brought the Nat Geo tape of her dives to a party at a local dive shop. She played the tape for us, with the sound off. I saw the tape later, on tv. Her narration was much more informative. Very impressive gal! At the time, hers was the mens and womens world record of 160m (525ft) deep, one breath!
The men’s world record is now held by Herbert Nitsch, 214m (702ft)!
But, breath hold records;
Mens – 10 min 12 sec held by Tom Sietas
Womens – 8 min 0 sec held by Natalia Molchanova
Lots of good (and interesting) info on this website.
Answer to your question; Yes, there are strategies and excersizes to help develop breath holding capacities. For scuba, not so helpful (or wise), but for the sister sport of free diving…
Scuba divers DON’T hold their breath. It’s pretty well the number one rule you’ll learn and it’s hammered into you from day one. It’s potentially lethal, as the air in your lungs expands as you come up.
You probably mean free diver, not scuba diver. Big difference. A free diver doesn’t take compressed breathing gas with him. A scuba diver does.
Excercises for a free diver? Anything that’s cardio vascular, a good diet and a good mental state. Pretty well anything that will help your blood carry oxygen more efficiently, your muscles work with less fuel and a calm state of mind to keep the heart rate down. Ohh, and hyperventilating? Don’t. It can actually cause what’s known as shallow water black out in a free diver. Here’s a decent explanation on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow_water_blackout
There’s also a few tips on how to start a free dive safely.