Magician-illusionist Harry Houdini's famous for his ability to hold their breath for three minutes. But today, experienced divers can hold their breath for ten, fifteen or even twenty minutes. Divers do it, and how to train to hold his breath for a long time?
My best result for breath-hold does not impress in a static position, I think it is about 5.5 minutes. Mark Healey, surfer
It seems that such a result is simply unrealistic, and Heli just being modest. Someone might say that to hold his breath for such term is simply impossible, but it is not for people who have "static apnea."
This is a sports discipline in which the diver holds his breath and "freezes" the water without moving for as long as possible. So, for those divers five and a half minutes - really small achievement.
In 2001, the famous freediver Martin Stepanek held his breath for eight minutes six seconds. His record lasted three years, until June 2004, when the freediver Tom Sietas raised the bar to 41 seconds with a best time under water 8:47.
This record was broken eight times (five of them by Tom Sietasom), but the most impressive time now belongs to the French freediver Stephane Mifsud. In 2009, Dr Mifsud held under water 11 minutes 35 seconds.
What is static apnea
Static apnea - it is the only discipline in freediving, as measured by time, but it is a pure manifestation of the sport, its foundation. Prolonged breath-holding is important for all the other disciplines of freediving, both in the pool and in open water.
In freedivers are different disciplines, such as "dynamic with fins" or not when the diver should be as far as possible to swim under water, or "without restrictions "- the most difficult discipline in which the diver descends from the trolley as deep as you can, and then using the ball pops up back.
But she and the other disciplines are based on the apnea - the ability to hold out as long as possible without air.
Changes in the body
Oxygen that you breathe in, enters the bloodstream and transported to different tissues of the body, which is transformed into energy. At the end of this process produced CO2, which flows back into the lungs and excreted with exhalation.
When you hold your breath, oxygen and turns into a of CO2, but he had nowhere to go. It circulates through your veins, blood and feeding oxidizing signals the body that it is time to breathe. At first it burning lungs, and then - strong and painful spasms of the diaphragm.
Freedivers spend years training to pump the delay of breath, and in the process of gradually changing their physiology. freedivers blood oxidizes more slowly than the blood of ordinary people, who all his life reflexively inhale and exhale.
Activation of the sympathetic nervous system causes them to constrict peripheral blood vessels shortly after they stopped breathing. Blood rich in oxygen is stored in the body and is redirected from the extremities to the most important organs, primarily the heart and brain.
Some freedivers also practice meditation to calm his heart. They slow down the natural rhythms and oxygen is slowly converted into carbon dioxide.
Meditation has a calming effect on the mind, too, because the main difficulty in breath-hold is just in the mind. You should know that your body can exist in oxygen, which is already there and has successfully ignore the body's need to breathe.
It takes years of training, but there are other, faster ways to breath.
"Buccal pumping" and hyperventilation
There is a way that divers are called personal "gas storage" or "buccal pumping". Its long ago came up with the fishermen-divers. The method includes the most deep breathing, with the oral and pharyngeal muscles to increase the air supply.
Man completely fills the lungs with air, and then use the muscles of the pharynx is blocking access to the air does not come out. Then he types the air in the mouth, closing the mouth and pushes through the additional air into the lungs cheek muscles. By repeating this breathing 50 times, the diver can increase the supply of light to three liters.
In 2003, we conducted a study on the measurement of lung capacity among divers, and got the following results: "buccal pumping" increases the amount of light from 9.28 to 11.02 liters.
Lung capacity may vary depending on the person. Approximate amount of light women is four liters, the men - six, but may be more. For example, known diver Herbert Nitsch had lung volume 14 liters.
There is another way - hyperventilation, Which is often used by divers. This method allows to rid the body of carbon dioxide and to fill the body with oxygen. The most extreme version of this technique involves breathing only oxygen for 30 minutes before immersion.
The air contains only 21% oxygen, so that if breathe atmospheric air before immersion of oxygen in the body will be less than if pure oxygen is inhaled.
It is this technique allowed the magician David Blaine to break the world record for holding one's breath in 2008, held out without air 17 minutes and 4 seconds. With the help of her own Stig Severinesen broke the record in 2012 with a time of 22 minutes.
Unlike "static apnea," which is not allowed to breathe pure oxygen before the dive, Guinness World Records is not so severe, so the record of 22 minutes is now considered the first in the world.
apnea Dangers
But all these techniques and training in their own dangerous. The long delay of breath and oxygen starvation of the body can be bad for health, and hyperventilation can cause loss of consciousness and other risks. As for the method of buccal pumping, from this can happen lung rupture.
And for this reason freedivers do not need to practice alone, only under supervision. Even when they are in shallow water because there is no difference, how deep you are, if you lost consciousness.
So if you have decided to train to hold your breath, do not do it alone, if that can happen a little.
(via)