Breath holding

Hi, I was reading the forum and noticed that you guys can get down to some pretty deep depths. How do you guys hold your breath so long, and have you got any tips for me to hold my breath longer?

It’s a few things!
Mainly it’s about practise and physiological preparation.
The main risk is the pass out stage you will have at your own level where this can happen. If you do pass out, you will quite possibly die!
Once you are use to sensing when it is coming upon you, it gets safer as time goes on.
I push myself so that I get what's called a second wind and I can then go deeper.
It’s very much about age as well due to adverse affects on your arteries and how they react to allow oxygen saturation for your muscles, the older you are the narrower your arteries, usually.
When you go to free dive you need to drink a lot of water, not soft drink or tea or coffee, they will not hydrate you and once you start to dehydrate and initially, you will not feel it until it is a large problem, from the start of dehydration your blood will thicken and oxygen is harder to move around your body.
Fish and us share and issue in saltwater, the salt is always trying enter us and them, so their pores and ours expel fluids to keep the salt out, with ours salt goes out as well, this action dehydrates us both and with salt lose we get cramps.
Another thing is to eat and apply salt to those foods before getting in, or your muscles will begin to cramp and it’s all over then.
Practise in a public pool and get the life guard to watch you or a friend and push it hard so that you find your limit and understand your body and its reactions to these stress conditions, while under supervision of strong swimmer.
When I was in my 20s and when I was as young as 14, well over thirty years ago, I could free dive to 70 plus feet now I am lucky to get to 50 feet!

Thanks for the info

I was also wondering, Do you guys use weight belts?

Yep sure do but this is generally to counteract the buoyancy of a wetsuit, the thicker the wetsuit the more weight you will need. You should be slightly buoyant at the surface of the water. There are plenty of books (such as homodelphinus, breatheology and the manual of freediving: underwater on a single breath) and videos on youtube discussing freediving/breath holding techniques but you must be aware of the risks of shallow water blackout and dive with a buddy. I personally find the more regularly you dive your body adapts to diving deeper due to what is know as the dive reflex. I've never really pushed my limits or practiced techniques but when I was free diving often I've managed to reach depths up to 20m, these days if I happen to get out I'm struggling to collect at 10m.

Basically its all about staying calm, dropping your heart rate and limiting yourself to slow methodical movements that reduce oxygen consumption.

How much weight would you reckon I would need? I have a 3mm wetsuit. I am having some difficulties locating any good info for free diving only, because it's all mainly about scuba, and weighing down their tanks etc. Is there some kind of table for amount of weights per suit thickness and body weight?

For a full length wet suit, “steamer”, zip down the back, which you should be using for so many reasons!!!!
For each 1 mill of wet suit thickness, you put on one standard weight and one extra above that when you are more experienced.
I use 3 weights for 2 mill and 4 for three mill, but for the inexperienced, that is potentially dangerous!
If you pass out, you will sink!
Always no matter what keep the buckle at the front of your weight belt so it can be let go quickly if need be. That has saved my life at least once over the years.
Then fatter you are, in a fashion, the more you may float, sort of, but over all in water you become semi weightless.

thanks once again