As I wrote about in my article entitled “How Breath-Holding, Blood-Doping, Shark-Chasing, Free-Diving & Ketosis Can Activate Your Body’s Most Primal Reflex.”, after reading the fascinating book "Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves" I hired (two years ago) a guy named Ted Harty, from Immersion Freediving in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to certify me in freediving so that I could learn how to spearfish.
At over six feet tall and 230 solid pounds, Ted is a big, bold, loud, extroverted character. He looks like a boxer, and not like a guy who you’d expect to be diving at incredibly efficient oxygen capacity to depths deeper than most human beings have ever ventured. But it was Ted who was about to open my eyes to a whole new world of freediving, and who I spent nearly every waking hour of ninety-six hours of my life learning every possible closely-guarded breath-holding and deep-diving tactic.
Ted began his underwater career in 2005, as a scuba instructor in the Florida Keys. Over the years, Ted became a Scuba Schools International Instructor and a Professional Association of Diving Instructors Staff Instructor. But whenever Ted was on the boat and did not have students to take care of, he’d jump in with mask, fins and snorkel and play around on the reef, sans scuba equipment.
As Ted highlights in this fascinating, quick video about his life: “Sometimes I’d have just five minutes to swim around without all of my scuba gear. I loved it. I could swim down to the sand at Sombrero Reef and hang out for a bit at 20 feet. I wanted more. I wanted to learn how to stay down longer and how to dive deeper.”
So, in January of 2008, Ted took his first Performance Freediving International (PFI) course. “I couldn’t believe how little I knew about freediving at the time. As a scuba instructor I knew more about diving physiology than the average Joe, but quickly realized I knew nothing about freediving. At the start of the course I had a 2:15 breath-hold, but after just four days of training I did a five-minute hold! I couldn’t believe it was possible.”
Next, Ted signed up for instructor-level courses at Performance Freediving. He was soon offered a job teaching with Performance Freediving, when he moved to Fort Lauderdale. Then, in 2009 Ted went to PFI’s annual competition. At the time, he was about a 80- to 90-foot freediver and weighed 230 pounds.
He wasn’t in good shape at all, but after three weeks of training under the tutelage of world-reknowned freedivers Kirk Krack and Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, he did a 54 meter (177 -feet) freedive. “I was blown away by what I was capable of.” Ted spent a year working with Kirk and Mandy, while traveling around the country teaching the Intermediate Freediver program.
Then, in 2010, a much more fit Ted went back to PFI’s annual competition. That year his new personal best was 213 feet, and currently he’s managed to up that to an impressive 279 feet.
In June 2012, Ted was selected as the Team Captain for the US Freediving Team at the Freediving World Championships, and in 2013 he attained PFI Advanced Instructor and PFI Instructor Trainer, becoming the first and only PFI independent instructor to receive this rating.
Oh yeah, and Ted also holds the record for hypoxic underwater swimming in the pool, having done 7 full lengths (175 meters) without a single breath.
But most impressive? Ted has anemia. This means his blood can’t deliver oxgyen as efficiently to his muscles and brain as most of the world’s population. This means he has a blood hematocrit level of 34, easily 1/3 less than most athletes. This is a condition that would leave most folks huffing and puffing for air after climbing a flight of stairs.
Obviously, anemia hasn’t stopped Ted. In our last podcast, which you can listen to here, Ted and I covered:
-Why being cold and cold water can actually inhibit your ability to hold your breath…
-How to use static apnea tables to enhance your ability to tolerate high levels of CO2 and low levels of O2…
-Why training your mammalian dive reflex is so useful, even if you have zero desire to do long breathholds or freediving competition…
-Why you should avoid hyperventilation and “blowing off CO2” prior to a breath hold…
-The difference between Ted's breathing techniques and Wim Hof's breathing techniques…
-And much more...
Today Ted is back, and we take a deep dive (pun intended) into: -What happens to the body during free diving...8:30
- Similar effects as yoga
- Alter how you breathe
- Interact with marine life
- Stress release
-What is the "mammalian dive reflex" and why we would want to activate it...11:56
- Genetically coded in every human on the planet
- Dolphins, seals, whales possess the mammalian dive reflex
- We all have it, but at different levels depending on experience
- Several components:
- Bradycardia; Body lowers demand for oxygen
- Fingers, toes constrict
- Pee reflex - peripheral extremities constrict
- We don't have conclusive data on how free diving affects HRV and the vagus nerve
- The connection between the spleen and breath holding/free diving
- Another component of the mammalian dive reflex
- Simply holding one's breath on dry land compresses the spleen
- Legal blood doping
- In elite athletes, holding breath compresses spleen; an ordinary person, not so much
- In free diving, your body become more accustomed to these changes
- Large amounts of blood circulate through the spleen; compressing it leads to large release of red blood cells
- Breath holds in the sauna activate the spleen; not the same effects as diving
-Other benefits of free diving...24:07
- Overall well-being
- How can drowning and suffocating be relaxing? A: You don't feel that way
- People swear by its efficacy
- Comparable to training to lose weight
- Any studies on how much calories are lost during free diving
- It's absolutely exhausting
- Generating body heat
- Study: 1,100 calories burned per hour
- Breath work wouldn't translate to burning calories
- Glycogen sparing effect
- Ketones increase ability to hold breath
-Other ways we're able to increase breath hold time...29:40
- Take a bigger breath
- Diaphragm, chest, shoulders, neck
- Flexibility of rib cage determines the size of your breath
- "Sipping"
-What an apnea table is, and the difference between Co2 and O2 apnea...36:30
- Table: series of breath holds
- How you can breathe up for
- How long you can breathe for
- Learn to tolerate low levels of oxygen; CO2 levels rising
- Carbon dioxide table: breathe up for 2 minutes; hold breath for 2 minutes...
- Wonka table
- You want higher Co2 levels
- Hyper ventilating discards Co2 faster than anything
- Sit on couch, hold breath
- You'll feel contraction, start stopwatch; deal with discomfort for 15 seconds
- Take one breath
- Go to the bathroom before doing this!
- Would you do a table while exercising?
- No, but you can incorporate breath exercises into your training
- Risk of blacking out; do on seated equipment
- Book: The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown
- Book: The Power of Your Breath by Anders Olsson
-What kind of breath work one would do in between dives to maintain maximum breath hold time...49:00
- Remember diaphragmatic breathing
- Only thing you should feel moving is your stomach moving out and in
- We're all chest breathers
- Control, be conscious of your breathing vs. not thinking about it
-Why the valsalva breathing technique is not optimal for free diving...52:52
- Pinch and blow: equalize your ears
- Can use valsalva scuba diving
- Frenzel technique
- Pinch your nose.
- Fill your mouth up with a little bit of air.
- Close the epiglottis.
- Move the soft palate to the neutral position.
- Use the tongue as a piston and push air towards the back of your throat.
- Valsalva is optimal for scuba diving as you dive head first; air rises
- Frenzel is optimal for free diving because you dive head first; opposite of scuba diving
-A demonstration of the Frenzel breathing technique...58:00 -Similarities and differences between Ted's breathing technique and Wim Hof's...1:02:15
- Hof's methods are good for cold therapy, not necessarily breath holding
- Hyperventilation increases risk for blackout
- Drastically lowers Co2 levels
- Carbon dioxide levels trigger urge to breathe
- Physically reduces amount of oxygen available to your body
- Bore effect:
- When we hold our breath, our blood becomes more acidic; changes ph levels
- Hyperventilating increases strength of the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen
- If strength of bond too high, oxygen molecule can't be used as fuel
- Hyperventilating initially increases ability to hold breath, but there's the risk of blackout
-Exercise and stretching regimens specific to free divers...1:13:00
- Paradox: Free divers train a lot, which leads to high metabolism, which you don't want as a free diver
- There is no set regimen on how to craft the "perfect free diver"
- Problem seeking to solve is very complicated
- Similar to training cyclists would undergo
- Diaphragmatic stretching is critical -
-Some of the courses Ted teaches online...1:26:00
-And Much More... Resources from this episode:
-Click here to see all of Ted's courses, including how to equalize, how to take a 20-30% bigger breath, how to freedive safely, and much more!
-Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves
-The OURA ring - Save $50 with code: GREENFIELDOURA
-The WHOOP wristband
-Spleen volume and blood flow response to repeated breath-hold apneas.
-CO2 and O2 apnea tables
-The Wonka table
-The Oxygen Advantage book by Patrick McKeown
-The Power Of Breath
-My podcast with Laird Hamilton about underwater workouts
-FreeDivingSafety.com
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Do you have questions, thoughts or feedback for Ted or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply!
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