Technique
Waiting to Inhale: Breath-Holding Drills for Kayakers
by Roger Schumann
Illustration by Kevan Atteberry
Whatever your skill level, the following drills can help you learn to be more relaxed and
comfortable, and ultimately more successful, when you find yourself upside-down in the drink.
Upside-down in the chilly water, I crank my blade up
to the surface, sweep it out to the side and hip snap
to drive my upper body through the surface. Then I
raise my head, stall and plunge back underwater-but not before filling my lungs with a big gulp of
fresh air. Again I crank my blade to the surface,
sweep, hip snap, raise my head, gulp air and-splash back seaward. It is my third failed roll and a
carbon copy of the first two ragged attempts. I
continue the process a fourth and a fifth time. I‟m
running out of breath as well as feeling the onset of
an ice-cream headache. On my sixth attempt, I
pause, focus and slow everything down: I sweep
cleanly and hip snap, and this time I keep my head
down, ear pasted to shoulder, and rise up easily,
modeling the best “instructor‟s demonstration
technique” I can muster. “So that‟s what the „cass-aroll‟ drill looks like.” I gush, with all the enthusiasm
of Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence. “Now you try
it!” My class of four floats around me in their kayaks,
alternately nodding their heads in understanding
and shaking them in disbelief: You want us to do
what?! I can see I‟ve piqued their interest, but no one is quite convinced to pick up a paintbrush
just yet.
The cass-a-roll drill, along with the other breath-holding exercises presented here, was designed
to help students learn to relax after capsizing, whether they‟re going to try a roll, as in this drill, or
simply wet exit. Its purpose is to increase your tolerance for missing your roll, especially in a
“combat roll” situation, when you‟ve accidentally tipped over in rough seas. It‟s a great confidence
booster, and it really helps you learn to overcome the panic that often sets in after an unexpected
capsize.
As I‟ve discovered from years of teaching, most paddlers tend to bail out after only a roll attempt
or two. In small part, this is due to running out of air, but mostly it‟s psychological: people simply
panic. A missed roll washes away confidence. So the cass-a-roll drill is designed to help build
confidence by practicing missing rolls on purpose, as many times as possible, before finally
rolling up. If you usually wet exit after only one or two tries, you can train yourself fairly quickly to
push it to three or four. Once you get up to four, it‟s not that hard to build up to six or eight, or
even more.
After a bit more cajoling, I soon have everyone in class cass-a-rolling and practicing other
confidence-building drills. Whatever your skill level--whether you‟re just learning to roll, your roll is
basically bombproof or you‟re a non-roller just hoping to become more comfortable after a
capsize--the following drills can help you learn to be more relaxed and comfortable, and ultimately
more successful, when you find yourself upside-down in the drink.
These drills are partly about training yourself to take deeper, bigger breaths and partly about
teaching yourself to relax so you don‟t burn that breath of air so quickly. I‟ve modified several of
them from practice drills used by competitive free divers, those freaks of nature who, through
dedicated practice of breath-control techniques, are able to remain underwater for several
minutes at a time (some of them diving to depths of 100 to 200 feet or more) with only a mask.
My own meager training last year enabled me to double my breath-hold time after only a week of
practicing the on-land drills, then nearly double that again until I began to plateau a week or so
later. I was easily able to enjoy one- to two-minute bottom times and could push it to three
minutes with some effort. I routinely dived to 30 or 40 feet and eventually reached a maximum
depth of over 60 feet. I quickly saw the relevance for kayakers to train to relax and hang out
underwater.
Deep “Orca” Breaths: The Key to Success
The ability to take a quick, deep breath is a cornerstone skill to all the breath-hold drills presented
here. While you sit reading this article, with each breath you are likely exchanging in the
neighborhood of a mere 15 percent of total lung volume that‟s typical of most humans. That‟s less
than a liter of your four-to-five-liter average capacity. Compared to the 90 percent exchange
common among most marine mammals, it‟s easy to see that we Homo sapiens are gross
underachievers in this arena. Learning to boost that percentage closer to that of our fin-footed
mammalian cousins, however--what I call orca breathing--is fairly simple and can quickly reap
huge results.
If you‟ve ever heard orca whales breathe, you have a sense of how much air they move in and
out of their lungs. There is this sudden huge whoosh of exhalation, followed immediately by a
giant, equally sudden but less obvious in-rush of breath. Then they dive. The whole air exchange-again some 90 percent of their total volume--takes barely a second. Not bad for an animal with
lungs about the size of your cockpit! With just a little practice, the benefits of orca breathing can
be yours.
Start slowly at first, by practicing to increase your exchange of air. If you’ve done any
yoga breathing, you’re probably already familiar with this. (Most competitive free divers,
by the way, are proponents of meditation and deep-breathing techniques.) The main
difference is learning to do it quickly. First, take a couple of slow deep breaths. See how much
air you can exhale, as if you were trying to blow out all 969 candles on Methuselah‟s birthday
cake. You might try bending over and even pressing on your stomach to squeeze out as many
cc‟s (cubic centimeters) as you can of that final liter in your lungs. Then breathe in slowly--the
trick is to fill your lungs from the bottom up--by pushing your belly out first, then filling your chest,
then finally doing what free divers refer to as “packing” your upper chest and neck area.
When you have taken as big a breath as you can, raise your chin and extend your neck, and try
“sipping” in a few more cc‟s of oxygen through pursed lips, as if sipping up the last few drops of a
milkshake through a straw. Take as many sips as you can, until you can‟t fit any more air into
your lungs. Then hold for a few seconds and focus on what it feels like to have your lungs so full
of air. Repeat this exercise several times until you have a good sense of what a deep lungful of
air feels like. But be careful--taking more than three deep breaths in succession can cause you to
hyperventilate and pass out, which would be especially dangerous in the water. While practicing,
remember to take a few normal breaths between each deep breath.
Now it‟s time for orca breathing. Unfortunately, in the context of rolling, we don‟t have time for a
full, slow, yoga breath.
So imagine rolling up enough to get your head above water but missing your roll and quickly
taking a big gulp of air in the second or two that you have before plunging back underwater. Think
about trying to exhale on your way up, and take a big gulp as you stall, so that you don‟t breathe
in water on your way down. Start slower at first, maybe taking two seconds or so on both the
exhale and the inhale. Eventually practice speeding it up to one second or so total. At the end of
the “in” breath, hold for a few seconds, then try packing and sipping to see how much more air
you can get in. With practice, you‟ll soon find yourself consistently able to gulp from 60 to 90
percent of your lung volume, so that you have little space left for sipping in much more air. Now
it‟s time to move on to the next step
Static Apnea Drills
Static apnea is a fancy term for holding your breath while static, that is, sitting quietly relaxed on
the sofa (or floating facedown in a pool of water as the competitive free divers do--the world
record, by the way, is just over eight minutes!). Since kayakers don‟t have the luxury of several
minutes of deep breathing and meditation between rolls, the modification I practice involves
single-breath holds, using orca breathing. Blow out and gasp in, doing a quick orca breath, and
hold for five seconds. Repeat this orca breath and five-second hold five times (be careful to stop if
you get dizzy; however, hyperventilation should not be a problem because you are holding your
breath for several seconds each time and not taking more than one deep breath at a time). The
next step is to try a series of five 10-second holds. Most beginners, I‟ve found, can do this fairly
comfortably with only a little practice.
The next step is pyramid practice. This does not involve traveling to Egypt, but simply refers to
increasing the length of breath holds to a peak, then reversing back down. For example, using
one orca breath between each breath hold, hold for five seconds on the first breath, 10 seconds
the next breath, 15 seconds the next, then back down to 10 seconds, then five and stop. When
this becomes too easy, try double pyramids--hold twice at five seconds, twice at 10, twice at 15,
then back down, twice each at 10 and five--and even triple pyramids. The point of pyramids is to
build confidence by training to reach a peak well beyond the time you need for a roll. Then, as
you descend back into the five- or 10-second breath-hold range, still well within the time limit for a
typical roll, it‟ll seem easy.
But don‟t wait until mastering triple pyramids before moving on to the next drills. Just spend five
minutes or so to do four to eight pyramids. Start easy and build up to whatever level presents a
comfortable challenge: if you attempt a double pyramid and can‟t hold your breath twice at 15
seconds, just do one.
You may be tempted to build up into the 20-second range or beyond, and such training certainly
has value. But such times are well beyond the context of typical rolling times, and the longer you
hold your breath, the more health risks are involved. While the shorter times I propose should be
fairly safe, realize that serious free divers who routinely practice holding their breath for several
minutes at a time occasionally develop heart arrhythmia. So as with any new exercise program,
check with your physician first. And if you are serious about learning how to hold your breath for
minutes at a time, consider taking a course taught by free-diving professionals. Instead of going
for longer breath holds with static apnea, the next step in my progression is to get up off the
couch and take the single-breath holds on the road.
Dynamic Apnea Drills
Dynamic apnea refers to holding your breath while exercising, and it‟s much more relevant to
kayakers. After all, you won‟t be sitting on the sofa all “Zenned” out when you capsize. Walking
pyramids is a dry-land, free-diver drill that is particularly effective for paddlers. Start walking at an
easy pace. Now, instead of holding your breath for five seconds, take an orca breath and hold
your breath for five steps. Take another orca breath and hold for 10 steps, breathe, hold for 15
steps and so on. Practice the same single, double and triple pyramid drills you used while sitting
on the couch.
Stop if you start feeling dizzy so you don‟t fall and hurt yourself. Until you‟re familiar with how your
body responds to the exercises, you may want to practice on a lawn or other soft surface. While it
isn‟t that common to get dizzy and fall, it is a possibility. Once you are comfortable with the
walking drills, it‟s time to take to the water.
It‟s a good idea to practice paddling pyramids with a partner, particularly one who knows the
Hand of God rescue (SK, June „00). While the likelihood of your passing out while practicing is
slim, if you did manage to hyperventilate and pass out upside-down, you‟ll want someone around
who can quickly right your boat with you in it. Paddling pyramids are performed using the same
progression as walking pyramids, only you count strokes instead of steps. A more advanced
version of this drill for those with solid rolling skills is to actually roll at the end of each stroke
count. That is, take an orca breath, paddle five strokes, roll; orca breath, 10 strokes, roll; orca
breath, etc. When you can do triple paddling pyramids to 15 strokes with rolls in between, you are
well on your way to becoming master of breath control, a near amphibious aqua-man or woman!