Very strange pb
Ok, back in action. We had a nice, relaxed dynamic competition yesterday. I did 94m DYN and 58m DNF, humble results, but still both personal bests so I'm not complaining.
Anyway, I went to the pool very relaxed and feeling good to do some easy statics. Warmup was kind of hard and I couldn't concentrate. My stomach problems are still continuing, so I even had to go "empty" in the middle of warmups, which totally messed up the routine. Anyway, I was reaching 4:30 with relative ease after heavy warmup, so I asked a buddy to time me. I ventilated about 6-7 deep breaths and packed 20 times. I noticed right away, that I've propably never been so relaxed...My whole body was moving with the waves, completely limp. But the contractions started already a little after 4 minutes and I thought that this was going to suck. Better yet, I heard a friends voice asking "does he have his key?" and immediately realized I had left my locker key in the shower. I got agitated and almost came up, but then decided to go on. From almost 5 minutes on, I wanted to quit, contractions were already very frequent. But then I just sort of let go. I opened my epiglottis so, that with each contraction, my cheecks would bulge. So in a sense I used my cheeks as a "breathing bag". I have no idea how many contractions there we're, but it was alot. But it just didn't feel that bad, so I kept going 15 secs at the time. At 6:30 I thought that enough is enough and came up very clean at 6:31.
I think I'm onto something here. Some observations:
-I was able to concentrate very well against all odds (bad warmup, stomach problems, the key thing, early contractions)
-I was able to relax better that ever
-I was able to fight contractions propably longer than ever and with less hyperventilation
-I didn't really as much fight contractions as "roll with them". Very strange feeling.
-My wet pb is finally catching up with the dry, which is very cool.
I'll try to write the routine as accurately as I can remember:
1:20 FRC
2:00 FRC
3:00 (pack stretching, with full packing)
4:00 (pack stretching)
2:00 FRC
Bathroom break :)
1:00 Empty
4:30 with full packing
6:31 (7x10:0:10, 1st contraction ~4:15)
Oh, almost forgot. The breathups were really slow, propably slower than 10:0:10, that's just an estimate. And I did alternate 3-5 sec holds on full and empty parts of the cycle. The last 2 breaths were quicker.
I followed with a 10 km jog. I've been off jogging for a couple of weeks because of being sick and preparing for the competition, but now it's on again. However, I will be shifting focus to gym training (which I've been neglecting for over 2 months now). It's just getting too damn cold to jog out there :)
posted by jome @ 1:37 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
From O'Boy
Hi,
Seems that you really are on the right course. Congratulations. Static is such a mysterious discipline. Right now I am somewhat lost in all the physiology, psychology, joga and Deeperblue informations. I'm trying to find and analyze all the signs and changes my static is producing but it's so difficult.
I decided to sort of play with hyperventilation to find out where are my limits. I had one BO and two Sambas, all in competition after some mistakes.
Yesterday, I tryied your 10 x 5-0-5 breath-up. I felt no hyperventilation signs (lightheadness, fingers,...) but 1st contraction came later (3'10"). I was surprised, because I was expecting contractions to be really strong and tough, but on the contrary they were much easier. Next time I will push it to the samba. I think that I just have to come through this hyperventilation/samba experiments to find out my limits. Then, one can shift these limits further with other techniques.
Just my thoughts. I don't recommend trying hyperventilation/samba.
Hey, good to hear from you.
Hyperventilation is such a controversial subject. Where is the line that separates normal "breathup" from hyperventilation? What people usually mean when they say "don't hyperventilate" in courses or clinics is "don't hyperventilate too much and unsupervised". Basically any kind of controlled breathing is hyperventilation.
I think what they should say is this: Go ahead and hyperventilate on dry land or very well supervised and see how it works. You will see that while it makes part of the apnea easier, it doesn't really make the time longer. But don't do it while alone or in the water, especially not when diving deep. Just don't! You can experiment with it in the safety of your home, but not in water.
I too have been trying to analyze and documents what's going on and what's working etc. Reading sources like DeeperBlue for new ideas and experimenting, encouraged by the results of others.
The only really consistent things I've learned so far are:
-Practise makes better
-Experimenting and changing the way you do things usually brings progress.
All the science babble, yogic techniques and dietary voes seem to pale in comparison. This is not to say all that stuff was in vain, it has all been the source of motivation and new ideas that has kept me going. It just seems that I can find no consistency: some days eating this will help, on others it will not. But all in all, with each passing week of practice, my times get longer, easier and more consistent...
I should add something.
I've always had kind of a poor co2 tolerance in the sense, that I've been unable to push myself to blackout or even samba willingly until very recently (never had a BO in static and only once in dynamic). Even with hyperventilation.
It should be clear to anyone, that if you're already reaching bo/samba without it, hyperventilation will not help, it'll just make reaching bo easier.
I agree with everything you've said. I believe that every kind of breath-up is hyperventilation. 10x5-0-5 could be called excessive hyperventilation. I had one Hypocapnic BO and one samba miles shy of my PB after competing in cold water with no wetsuit(Strange static in deeperblue). After 110m dynamic in competition in Czech republic my hand moved slightly when I was reaching for the gogles and that was samba for the judge(Martin Stepanek). No complaining. That's(was) my dynamic limit. Yet I have to find my limit in dry static too and with hyperventilation that should be easier.
By the way I've studied some physiology materials on apnea. I've found that hyperventilation has certain advantages. Increased start SvO2, increased alveolar PO2 and thus PaO2. We all know disadvantages but there's surely some right proportion of hyperventilation which should work best.
Yes, that has been one goal of all my trials. To find the "optimum hyperventilation" for me.
Earlier, I had to do something like 15*5:0:5 (which I would call very excessive) to reach 6 minutes. Then it seemed that 10x was the optimum.
Now it seems a little less, maybe 7-8 and slower, 10:0:10 or so is good. My guess would be that this get's less and less as the my co2 tolerance increases. But still, some is needed to get a good static...
Obviously there are both benefits and costs in hyperventilation. With too much, the cost becomes higher than the benefit. Were I a scientist, it would propably be possible to plot these on a graph and see that there's a definite point where the graphs intersect, that being the optimum...
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