Why you won't feel the blackout coming -

Blackout

Why you won’t feel it coming.

Article by Ted Harty

Hello fellow freedivers!

Today, I’ll be addressing the #1 false belief that leads to so many freedivers not placing enough emphasis on safety. My name is Ted Harty, I’m the founder of Immersion Freediving and Freedive University. I’m a PFI Instructor Trainer, and I started teaching freediving for PFI in 2009. I was lucky enough to start my journey with PFI back when Kirk Krack, the founder of PFI, was teaching all the courses!

I learned so much by teaching directly with him when I was starting out as an Instructor. My goal is to do more to stop the needless fatalities from shallow water blackout than any other person on the planet. The vehicle for doing this is my free safety course FreedivingSafety.com. Speaking of safety, buckle in and let’s get started!

The biggest problem in freediving is unsafe freediving.

These unsafe freedivers, spearfishermen, underwater fitness folks don’t follow recommended safe freediving practices. This is why when they have a blackout, a preventable fatality occurs. Not all freedivers are cavalier about safety procedures, but in my opinion, the ones that are, are so because of this very specific false belief.

Let me explain. Every person who has ever held their breath, even the slightest amount, knows the following.

When on dry land or statics in the pool, the longer you hold your breath, the stronger your urge to breathe gets.

Now you’re probably thinking, “Ok Ted, this is not news; everyone knows the longer you hold your breath, the more difficult it gets.”

Yes, I understand, but please bear with me. If you were to hold your breath on the couch until you blacked out, which I don’t recommend you do, let’s look at what happened.

As long as you were not hyperventilating your head off, aka Wim Hof breathing, there is no way you would come around from the blackout and think, “Wow, that was surprising, I felt fine the whole time and then I blacked out out of nowhere.”

You would have had contractions that started mild and got more and more difficult as time went on, and you would be having a massive urge to breathe. Your body would be doing all it could to give you signals trying to convince you to stop holding your breath.

Most freedivers mistakenly assume this same thing would happen the same way when coming up from a dive in the ocean, but they would be dead wrong.

When coming up from a dive in the ocean, you can go from feeling completely fine to a blackout very quickly.

Here is a video of a spearo coming up from a dive and blacking out underwater near the surface. This video is from Ren and Ashley of Evolve Freediving, both PFI Instructors. Ren stopped filming and rescued him once he blacked out; the diver was fine.

Did you see the part when the spearo asked for help? Of course not! He didn’t ask for help because he didn’t know anything was wrong, which was what he told Ren and Ashley; he didn’t feel that anything was wrong the entire dive.

Notice how he goes from looking fine to slowing down a bit and then blacking out in mere seconds. The reason this happens is beyond the scope of this article, but you will learn more about this in your PFI Intermediate class.

The short answer is it’s because of the rapidly dropping partial pressure of oxygen as we get near the surface. That’s why you can go from feeling fine to a blackout in seconds when coming up from an ocean dive. The problem is people have experience with a slow and steady increase in signal from dry land breath holds and mistakenly ASSUME the same thing will happen when diving in the ocean.

But they would be wrong. In my opinion, this false belief leads many freedivers and spearos saying things like “I’m not worried about having a blackout because I don’t push myself, I know my limits, I’m in tune with my body.”

Hopefully, you can see why people mistakenly believe this, and hopefully, you know better now!

In Summary

When holding your breath on the couch, or in the pool, you will generally feel a slow and steady increase in the urge to breathe. When coming up from a dive in the ocean, you will not feel this slow and steady increase in the urge to breathe; it is possible to go from feeling fine to a blackout very quickly.

This occurs because of the rapid drop in partial pressure of oxygen near the surface. This is why it’s critical to always dive with a trained buddy.

You want to do the following on every dive:

– Dive one up, one down.
– Be close enough to grab your buddy when they surface.
– Watch your buddy for no less than 30 seconds after they surface.

This way if your buddy has a problem you will be there and can take care of it.

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If you enjoyed this article, there are 3 ways you can continue learning from me.

#1 – I create DAILY freediving advice videos on ALL the social networks @ImmersionFD.

As of April 3rd, 2024 I’ve created videos for 365 days in a row!
Here are my links my 3 most popular channels.
Immersion Freediving on -> Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

#2 – I recently launched Freedive University, your one-stop spot for all of the online resources I’ve created, including my articles and guides, training program, and even my newsletter. You can see it here at Freedive University.

#3 – If you have already taken a freediving class and want me to guide you on a training plan you can do from home, check out Freediving Training Secrets.