Freediving is an incredibly intriguing sport and I really hope to learn a lot more about it. We hit the open water in a kayak on Sunday, but Saturday was spent in the pool practicing safety techniques and out of the pool covering theory, which I will share a sample of below.
There is a timeline consisting of many events before drowning actually occurs. It looks something like this:
Commence breathhold-------low oxygen causes muscle convulsions-------blackout-------terminal gasp and drowning.
At the start of the breathhold when you are pumped full of oxygen, obviously there are no problems. As the carbon dioxide levels rise, the urge to breathe rises with it. Imagine the urge to breathe as a red devil sitting in front of you. At the start he is sitting quietly, then as time goes on he stands up and starts whispering "time to breathe now" in your ear. Slowly he gets more and more agitated until he starts jumping on your lap, yanking on your ears, yelling, beating you over the head with a tin pan and trying to pull you out of your seat. Your task if you want any chance at all of staying a long time underwater is to do your best to zen out and ignore him completely. You can do this for a very long time if you have good mental discipline. But it can be extremely difficult and takes MUCHO practice to get good at. I can manage 3:30 on the surface but I haven't ever managed more than 2:30 underwater.
It is possible to withstand the urge to breathe long enough (for example by using calm meditation techniques) that the oxygen level in the blood drops too low to support proper brain function. The result is "the Samba" a kind of spasming which occurs when motor control is lost. Then follows total blackout. Blackout is the body's response to low oxygen. It shuts down all non-essential survival processes (including consciousness) and goes into a kind of hibernation in which it can survive for four to six minutes. Surprisingly, no damage occurs at all during blackout, it is a normal bodily process, and you will revive as soon as your face is exposed to the air.
The terminal gasp is the final panic button, when the body is critically low on oxygen and there is absolutely no time left, you will unconsciously suck in a huge lungful of whatever is around you. If you are underwater, this will lead to drowning and is fatal.
So even with no training at all you probably could survive at least 8 minutes underwater before suffering permanent damage. This is very reassuring. The number one rule is
ALWAYS DIVE WITH A BUDDY
People always recover from a blackout, but ONLY IF they are exposed to air again. You cannot do this yourself if you are passed out. But a buddy has a good few minutes of time to swim down, grab you, and pull you up. Google shallow water blackout for more info on this.
On to theory. Millions of years of evolution have provided the human body with a surprising number of adaptions that allow it to survive for a long time underwater.
- Your brain will not allow you to breathe in while your face or mouth is wet. You will probably suffer diaphragm contractions, where your lungs jerk trying to suck in air that isn't available. I had a few of these on my way down to 20m. But I found my body to be extremely adverse to actually inhaling water. Even in blackout you will not inhale water until the terminal gasp, so you don't have to worry about that.
- At twenty metres the pressure is three atmospheres. That means your lungs are compressed to one third of their normal size. I felt this squeeze, and I have to say it didn't bother me at all. It feels pretty natural actually. Champion freedivers have reached more than 200m or 21 atmospheres of pressure and come up unharmed. At this depth your lungs are smaller than oranges. Nobody knows what the actual limit is but it's probably pretty deep.
- When your face hits cold water, the mammalian diving reflex kicks in. This is an ancient reflex present in all mammals, stemming from our seagoing ancestors. It gives you a variety of advantages, including lowered heart rate and constriction of the outermost capillaries, resulting in decreased blood flow to the muscles and more oxygen for the vital organs.
To get the most out of your dive, I learned three techniques that are absolutely essential.
Firstly, proper breathe-up technique.
This is how you prepare your body for a dive. I have been doing this wrong for years, I used to hyperventilate excessively which does the opposite of what you want. Firstly, it plummets the carbon dioxide levels in your lungs. High carbon dioxide levels are not harmful for short periods, but are the major factor in controlling your urge to breathe. Pushing these too low will remove the alarm bell that tells you when to surface, this is EXTREMELY dangerous and can lead to blackout. The other downside is that heavy, fast breathing primes the body for physical activity. It gets your brain excited and pumps the heart rate. Great for sprinting but absolutely terrible for diving.
NEVER HYPERVENTILATE.
NEVER HYPERVENTILATE.
The way you should do it, is slow, relaxed diaphragmatic breathing (ie from the stomach) for a couple of minutes. Then one maximum inhalation right before submerging. With your final inhalation, it helps to relax completely, tilt your head up to open your airway, and lift your shoulders. Try to feel yourself expanding. Do not strain to push more air into your lungs, this will tense your muscles and burn oxygen.
Secondly, ear equalisation.
This is the achilles heel of freedivers. We descend so fast that we must equalise the pressure in our ears very frequently to compensate for the pressure. If you don't do this you will experience a lot of pain, and if you continue descending your eardrums will rupture. Most people need to equalise by holding their nose and blowing, or using their tongue as a piston to force air through the Eustachian tubes into the ears. Apparently some people have the rare ability to open their Eustachian tubes at will. Chances are, if you can move your ears, you can do this. It's a great advantage in freediving because it frees your hands up and makes you more streamlined. Actually I can do this (and move my ears too) but while I was diving I was so busy thinking about everything else I needed to hold my nose at the same time to make sure. With a little practice I'm certain I could do this hands free and equalization will no longer be a problem for me.
Thirdly, RELAX.
This is probably the most important part, and maybe the hardest. Every single tense muscle burns oxygen. Every thought burns oxygen. Every movement burns oxygen. A zen master would make a fantastic freediver because he can control his body and his thoughts.
Try relaxing when you know you have twenty metres of water above your head and the little devil is ringing alarm bells in your ear telling you to breathe. It's not that easy. But panicking underwater is not going to help AT ALL. If you allow yourself to become agitated, or thinking there is any kind of threat, your body responds by pumping heart rate and tensing ready for action. This sucks oxygen like a vacuum cleaner.
You must train yourself with the mental discipline required to look away from the panicked thoughts and be totally calm. Do everything slowly. The biggest reason the master freedivers can reach such depths and you can't is not lung capacity or even swimming technique. It is mental control. It is the ability to focus on happy thoughts, be calm and peaceful under a situation that would make most people immediately panic and start flailing.
This is the aspect I like most about freediving. It is essentially meditation, but with a purpose. It encourages elite levels of self-control and focus. I'd really like to explore more this aspect of the sport.
The ocean is the most relaxing place in the world if you are relaxed as well. The feeling of sitting underwater with no real need to breathe, feeling the ocean holding you in it's warm embrace, watching the fish and the endless deep blue... It's peaceful and beautiful. I can't describe it to you, you would have to do it to experience it.
It's also highly addictive. I will be back for more. Chau from fifteen metres down!
