dry training and hyperventelation

[SpearoPimp]

i have asked this question before in another thread but didnt really get an answer. someone who knows what they r talking about said that for training to be most effective you should push your apneas to 100% of its limit. so heres the question... would it be benificial/safe to hyperventilate during dry training so that you can push your holds a little farther than you normally would and therefore make the training more effective? or would it not even make a diff in how beneficial the training is?

[naiad]

A thread discussing the risks of dry training...
http://forums.deeperblue.net/forum15/thread52899.html

Lucia

[jome]

Personally I think training effect vise the most beneficial is not hyperventilating for several reasons. The biggest being that you can reach much lower O2 saturations without it before passing out (bohr effect etc) and it would make sense that it also thus rewards the most training response and adaptation. It's also mentally more demanding, thus effectively teaching that aspect of apnea as well.

Dry training is great for experimenting with the amount of hyperventilating that offers the most benefit. If you don't know you "optimum breathup", I would keep a diary of attempts and try different kind of ventilation strategies in between absolutely no breathup and mild hyperventilation (personally I regard 10x5:0:10 maximum, after that I start to get clear symptoms of ventilating too much. Optimum for me seem around 5x5:0:10). It's relatively safe to make such experiments, but I would still encourage using common sense and not attempting huge leaps or extreme hyperventilation. And it never hurts to at least have someone aware that you're doing breath holds...

[naiad]

Originally Posted by jome

Dry training is great for experimenting with the amount of hyperventilating that offers the most benefit.

I do that. In dry training I do all sorts of things that I wouldn't dare do in the pool!

This allows me to find out what works and what doesn't.

Lucia

[jome]

I thought I'd clarify a bit what I meant.

The original question assumed that he needs to push "100%" and as he's unable to reach that without hyperventialtion, it would be good. In essence, I read this as you want to push as close to samba every time as possible.

But I think who ever wrote that you need to push close to your limit to get training benefit didn't mean exactly that. It is (in my belief) the stage of hypoxia which triggers the adaptation.

If you hyperventilate much, yes, you can push your self to samba every time. However, you might be having sambas at SaO2 of 90%.

If you don't, you might not be even close to samba, but your SaO2 is in the 80's, or even lower.

So even if you didn't make it "to the end", you still got a better training stimulus.

It must be understood that extreme hyperventilation does not only delay the breathing reflex and make it possible to push over your limit. That's not the only reason it's dangerous. It also significantly lowers your limit.

Especially in training, times are not important, the kind of stimulus you get is. Doing non-hyperventilation statics both increases your co2 tolerance immensly, builds mental strength and the will to resist and gives the best hypoxic training. All in one package.

Just my opinnion, I'm sure there are different ones...

Then on "record days" you can experiment with the kind of strategies I and Naiad mentioned and see what works and what does not.

[naiad]

I guess it depends how often. Sometimes I do go close to the limit, but not often. I only occasionally do max statics, whether dry or in the pool.

I push myself a lot with CO2 and O2 tables and pool training, but hardly ever to the point of samba. If it does happen I try to do something different next time. I don't think it's good to get close to samba often.

It is true that extreme hyperventilation significantly lowers the limit - my static and dynamic PBs, both dry and in the pool, have all been done with less hyperventilation than I usually do.

Lucia

[matrixed82]

As Jome mentioned, it seems that you would get a better training stimulus by training without hyperventilation but I also think it can be beneficial to do some training with hyperventilation.

The reason being that you would want to simulate your maximum breath holds as much as possible, and if those are usually done with hyperventilation you will be more familiar with the way your body responds in that case, keep in mind that I am not that experienced. Maybe I see it this way because I have not experimented that much with hyperventilation and the first time I tried purge breaths this summer I had a near blackout. Fortunately I had experienced buddies who removed my mask and shortly after I start breathing again.

Since then I have been doing 2 to 3 minutes of deep breaths (2 sec. inhale, 12-14 sec. exhale) and a few purge breaths before the hold and I am much more comfortable that I was at first. By the way, I'm not sure that is considered hyperventilating so what I mentioned might be off topic.


anyways, just my 2 cents.
Daniel