RealSurf Surfers' Forum

twiw I think breath-holding and rolling with a serious wipeout in big surf are kinda two different things. Maybe the second involves the first, but not to a massive extent. I do know that spending 20 or 30 seconds underwater in big surf gets easier the more times you do it; once you realise you're gonna come up again at some point, you can relax a bit and focus on doing it with a bit of ease and without getting hit by your board or whatever. In any case, there's not really time to meditate or get yourself into some quiet zone, not that I know what sorta tricks those strange long distance non-breathers get up to, but if they take more than about five seconds to be put into practice and if they involve dulling your awareness of your surroundings, they wouldn't help in a wipeout.

A wipeout is a loss of control; it triggers fear on quite a few levels. But expose yourself to it enough and it does go away. Buzzy Trent had the best advice I ever heard concerning how to cope with a wipeout: "Just lie down there and enjoy it," he said. Once you can do that, you'll note the breath-holding is rarely a worry.

WHen free diving works for me it's like that, surprising first time to look around and go, ooh it's @lright

definitely seems to be a lot of psychology involved and I agree with NC about the comfort zone thing. I reckon the panic sets in and the breath gets short quicker when you're under somewhere unfamiliar... that whole fear of the unknown. Out bodysurfing my local I have swam under two waves plenty of times... you just empty your lungs, sit on the bottom and watch them roll over. On a nice glassy, warm sunny day it's fun... BUT... at 10foot would be a very different story. paradoxically, I think familiarity might be as big a killer as fear in the case of free divers, who just get so comfortable and attuned to holding their breath they get carried away... and just... die.

Don't forget these freak divers start out at like, 5degrees c and finish at like, 30 summink. So in effect, to replicate, or match their achievement, you need to get utterly thrashed at Shippies and end up at Bingin. That's a fecking hell of a hold down.

Surely what it really comes down to is physiological processes.
The involuntary physiological reactions going on in your body, will be influenced by being calm ect. But unfortunately you can't control inate behaviour.

Relaxing and not clawing for the surface as soon as you go down is a big part of it. The lie down and enjoy it bit. As soon as you start trying to scratch for the surface you're recruiting some of your major muscle groups in your shoulders, legs and glutes and burning oxygen and producing carbon dioxide much quicker and dramatically reducing the time you can stay down.

There are two aspects to breath holding training though and it definitely can help. The major sensation of running out of air actually isn't. You start overloading on carbon dioxide long before you run out of oxygen. The CO2 levels is what predominantly triggers the need to breath and can be trained for to some degree to get your body used to the CO2 build up. Doesn't help much though if you can't relax.

Do what that kid in the Tim Winton book does:

Open your mouth just a little bit and breathe in the bubbles (without the water).

My training regime:

I feed my wife lots of capsicum, unbeknownst to her. I'm talking chopping it into fine pieces with a doctors scalpel and dousing everything she eats with it.

Soon thereafter, she starts farting up a storm, and my breath holding training commences.

Its not uncommon to hit 3 minutes in the Braithwaite house.

Try it, big wave warriors, and report back with your progress.

'tis uncommon to hit 3 minutes within the Braithwaite house
Try it, big wave warriors, report back with your nous

breath holds are gay anyway
exhalation is for MEN