How To Improve Your CO2 Tolerance (And Actually Delay Contractions) 

Basics of how brain works. Across your entire life your brain adapts to many different levels of things in your body. Those minimums are most of the time far higher than your body can withstand. By pushing yourself just before the contractions and all the adverse effects, you tell your brain that "Everything works fine, this is a safe level" and slowly adapt it to the new minimum. Pushing yourself further, onto the pain region, you will only strengthen the association between pain and high CO2 levels. This rule extends to much more than just CO2 level tolerance. Addictions, seizures, how far you can stretch and everything that is based on your brain's behavior.

Hey.. In short, yeah that could work but my "concern" would be how short the exhale holds would end up, after 1st contraction on full lungs for a few rounds you'll just almost immediately get them after your exhale. You'd be better off doing this on just 1 volume, full to 1st, 1 breath, full to 1st, etc.. Ive actually been seeing good results from a slightly different version of this (I call it 2-part holds) Breathe up, RV to 1st co traction, 1x inhale, full to first.. rest / breathe up for 2:00 and repeat 3-5x total. The benefits here is you get 2x 1st contraction exposure per hold, the no contraction time(s) are maintained or increase through the exercise, you get to practice focusing for the (total: RV + Full) time, and as your RV times improve you might even get a little bit of hypoxia exposure as well..

If I (or anyone) said we know the "exact mechanism" we would be making stuff up, so I'm not going to pretend to have a specific answer.. However, what we do know (from sports science research) is that the body / mind adapt best to "threshold level" stimulus for what ever we are doing (flexibility, strength, endurance, hypoxic tolerance (mountaineering is another example) etc.. I assume also CO2 tolerance).. What I think happens (why this delayed the urge to breathe) is that we do 2 things.. Physically: the body becomes a little better a regulating acidity (since we are providing a MANAGABLE dose of acidity) Mentally, we become more relaxed during the initial CO2 symptoms (since they are mentally Manageable), VS reinforcing the expectation of upcoming contractions.. Neurally: your CNS learns that it's "normal" to go a long time without contractions Vs doing hard tables: your CNS learns that it's "acceptable" for contractions to start early

@@trainfreediving2772 that makes sense. I thought since for example when doing bodybuilding you lift to failure which stimulate muscle growth. Similiarly i thought going maximum would be best. But your logic makes sense. And since you saw improvements in your clients and sp forth i guess there is science behind it. Thanks for the reply

@@Kyoutube121 hypertrophy training is one of the only examples of where going to "failure" is the actual best way to improve.. it's the exception to the rule.

Sorry I took so long to reply... Yes, that's quite normal for divers who; Are beginners, train more often dry than wet, or who aren't training dry in an equivalent way to wet. To elaborate: - For beginners, being underwater is a stress (on top) of breath-holding. This means it will be difficult to fully relax while doing 2 relatively new things; holding breath & being underwater on breath-hold. - For divers who train dry more often.. The principle of specificity states that you will get the best at what you practice.. If you hold dry more than wet, you will get better at dry holds vs wet holds.. - For 'equivalent training'. With STA if you train dry with no-mask, and do pool with mask or noseclip. It will be easier with no mask. For apnea walks.. You really need to walk very fast (about 2 full steps per second) to even come close to CO2 production rates underwater.. If you walk normal-speed, you can probably walk for 150-200% as long (time wise) VS swimming. Hope that helps explain it a bit.

@@trainfreediving2772 Thank you for the reply. I think I would fit in your second point as I my dry is equivalent to wet just like in your third point. I can only get 1 (if I'm lucky I get to do 2) session per week in the pool, so I spend more time doing dry, and would also replace with dry if the pool session is cancelled, especially now with the pandemic going on. Thanks again.

I believe a common cause for this is that people get cold in the water, and being cold increases metabolism. The increase will start long before the diver noticed it. Try a thicker suit and see what happens.

No, but FRC and RV (by VC do you mean fill exhale?) To threshold would be a great O2 training.. I will eventually make a video on this.. But once your CO2 tolerance is good enough, you can do exhale holds to first contraction and become quite hypoxic this way..

Training once per day it too much for most people. I typically have myself and my athletes train 3 or 4 days per week, and they tend to see the fastest progress that way. In static that could be 6-12 total breath holds depending on the workout, but having full days off from breath holding is important

​@@trainfreediving2772 Would you say there are physiological adaptations or is it purely mental? I know that some people have conditions which make them build up too much co2 and the body adapts by keeping bicarbonate in the system. Could this adaptations be replicated with breath-holds?

@@JohnDoe-id5ih I'm pretty confident that there are physiological adaptations... If it was only psychological the progress would stop pretty quickly, but most people I work with make improvements on this for months / years.. this isn't just "relaxation" (psychological).

"can they be".. Yes. "Should they be"... Thay depends on what you were doing before and your own genetics / response to training. I often see people plateaued because they are training too often. I would reccomend maximum 3 or 4 breath holding days per week (for 99.9% of people) more than that will likely slow down your progress..

Cool I appreciate the response

If you're speaking about the Audio, I don't know / it's fine for me when I play it? If your talking about the trianing volume (number of holds), this is only a "conceptual" video just to show the idea of what to achieve. Realistically, training volume needs to match the individual.. For example the "holds to 1st contractkon" method; the volume will be very differen between a person who's getting 1;30Sta Vs 4:30Sta.. a 200m diver might use 10x25 with 3-5 breaths between , where a 100m diver might only need 6x25 with 3-5 breaths to achieve the same training results.. Make sense? // if it was just the Audio, there's a little extra info haha..

@@trainfreediving2772 it was about the audio but, the extra was more than welcomed thanks