How do free divers hold their breath for so long?
If you can only hold for 1:30 now, don’t expect to be able to hold for 10 minutes on your next go. Like all things, free diving takes lots of practice. Humans have a thing called the adaption response. Like people in nepal who live at high altitude but don’t suffer any shortness of breath or sickness, why? Because they are constantly exposed to it and their body “adapts” to the situation. So with divers, they put their body into these situations and the body then learns to handle the situation better. The physiology behind the response though is interesting. The heart rate drops dramatically and thus, doesn’t need as much oxygen, then the blood vessels thin out and all the reserves of blood go directly to the vital organs. The most interesting one is when the blood shifts and blood plasma fills up in the lung and reduces it’s volume so that the lungs don’t shrink and crush each other.
