Long Hold Downs

[tomcat360]

Nuts....

[essex sucks]

Had a few bad ones myself but hay it happens all part of the fun

[Snoodle]

I was in bali a while ago surfing small Uluwatu, trying to get some of my first barrels. It was overhead and a quarter, got into one for a second but I cut too far up the face when I dropped back to the curl and my rail snagged, then my fins cut and I got fired backwards to the bottom of the wave, bounced a couple times then got sucked all the way up and over the falls. halfway down the falls I got my board to the chin, black and stars around my vision, then tumbled and rolled for ages with my leash somehow wrapped around my leg high up. Laddered up the leash, got the board, still underwater and popped up just in time for a sniff of air before the next one hammered me down again. Somehow got out of there with only a rip in my boardshorts and three little scrapes on my ass from the coral but had a chin-sized hole smashed right through my board's rail about 3/4" deep. Paddled out with blood on my neck and face and as i got to the lineup again to find my bro and tell him I was leaving I saw him get worked also, then come up with broken board. Had fibreglass in my chin without realizing it, healed over, for a few months before it got gross and infected and I ripped it out. Had all my fingernails though... HBC that sounds Effing Terrible.

[parrysurf]

Good clip....at the end Michel describes/see his long hold down!!






http://surfermag.com/av/flash/pipe-red-bull08/

[TReMoR]

So, any ways you can get better at holding your breath?
i hate those instances where i come up just as it feels like i will inhale water .. freaks me out..
also hitting your head on the ground also freaks me out.. unconcious in the water is not a very good state to be in .

[dunno]

For me its knowing full well that i can hold my breath underwater for 2 minutes+ so panicking over a 30sec takedown was silly

Yeah but dude can you hold your breath for 2 minutes plus after paddling? I got smashed just this weekend after paddling out-got the back when a monster appeared outa no where, misjudged my duck dive and got flick backwards into the spin cycle. Would have only been under for 7 seconds but my lungs were screaming for air after the hard paddle out...

30 seconds would be insane, would certainly leave my shaking like a leaf....

[Young blood]

So, any ways you can get better at holding your breath?
i hate those instances where i come up just as it feels like i will inhale water .. freaks me out..
also hitting your head on the ground also freaks me out.. unconcious in the water is not a very good state to be in .

I think so... i mean when i started diving i was preety bad at holding my breath...even though i was 4 haha.... well yeah people do training for holding thier breath and people who dive more and do that heavy rock training ( holding a huge rock on the floor of the ocean and running for as far as you can) tend to be able to hold thier breath longer

But with all this wiping out i mean people do usually freak out before they should be just to feeling like the lack of air in thier body but when im down like 40 feet diving with a snorkel and mask your and you feel like your out of oxygen you start coming up and you have so much more oxygen than you think....but when your on a wave...your body isnt 100% ready for a dive ...especially when you breath out and then wipe out.

being in a clean up set i tend to grab the rail saver on the leash ( just where your fingers cant get crushed by the board ) and dive down as deep as possible with the board while holding onto the rail saver ... i tend not to move very far and im allready holding onto the board the waves just glides over and it looks preety lol ..these are just my thoughts and actions ^.^

[esonscar]

21 seconds 'till I stopped counting was my worst one :–
Big (for me) wave duck dive, to - over the falls in the lip, to - landing on my back on the reef, to - the lip squeezing me between the reef and my board, to - empty of all breath, to - being tossed around in the white darkness, to - covering gagging for air nose and mouth with hand, to - blacking out (?), to - seeing daylight and gasping a mouthful of froth, to - getting hit by a second biggie, to - paddling across a lagoon to the shore.

Shook me a bit that one – I did go straight back into another break though.

Had a good session there too.

[sinistapenguin]

I've been held down for a long time, a lot of times. I can hold my breath for 2m 47 secs in the pool but it all goes out of the window when I get ditched!

My only advice is............ DON'T SWIM! You only end up going in the wrong direction

[isaluteyou]

I've been held down for a long time, a lot of times. I can hold my breath for 2m 47 secs in the pool but it all goes out of the window when I get ditched!

Ya getting all the air knocked out of you isnt helpfull either. I couldnt imagine being dragged underwater like those guys charging mavs and other spots talk about mental toughness

[Sar]

advice for any new ones who havnt experienced a hold down yet:

Dont expel air before/just as you land in the water. I know it sounds obvious but I learnt to breathe out through my nose as I hit the water when I was learning to swim to stop water entering my nose. This move is not good when surfing as I learnt to my detriment/panic.

[paulyoffshore]

I couldn't agree more with SAR. I figured out early on after a few wipeouts that I was expelling lots of air upon contact with (from the force of the impact) and as I was going under the water (trying not to get water up my nose). You may not get water up your nose, but guess what? You've just expelled the oxygen reserves that decide the difference between a routine, albeit slightly unpleasant 5-8 second hold down and a panicked, oxygen deprived flailing session. I'm still working on trying to keep my lungs as full as possible when going for a wave and while riding it. I'll even somtimes, in my car or at home, just mess around and take a super quick breath in and see how much air I can inhale in a tiny fraction of a second. Just getting SOME air in, even a little if you can hold it, will last you longer than you might think. I try to be conscious and ready to take a super quick breath the split second before i'm wiping out and then try even harder to hold that breath when I BITE it and go under. It's tougher that one might think to break the ingrained habit of expelling air through the nose/mouth upon impact and when going under.
my $.02