European journal of applied physiology
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Eur. J. Appl. Physiol. · May 2006
Influence of lung volume, glossopharyngeal inhalation and P(ET) O2 and P(ET) CO2 on apnea performance in trained breath-hold divers.
Breath-hold divers train and compete in maximal apnea performance. Glossopharyngeal inhalation (GI) is commonly used to increase lung volume above vital capacity (VC) prior to apnea. We investigated the hypothesis that this practice would increase apnea performance and relaxed airway pressure. ⋯ Likewise, dynamic apnea time was higher at VC + GI (97+/-27 s) than at VC (78+/-14 s, P<0.05) and 85% VC (71+/-17 s, P<0.05). P (ET) O(2) values reached 3.5+/-0.6 kPa at the end of dry static apnea bouts and this was not different from dynamic apnea when taking hydrostatic pressure at swimming depth into account (3.7+/-0.6 kPa, P=0.48). In conclusion, GI increases lung volume, relaxed airway pressure and apnea performance in well-trained breath-hold divers.