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Old 01-19-2020, 05:30 AM   #31
Sea_Bass
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

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Originally Posted by Marcus View Post
What if you don't have any excess fat to fuel you? Logically, I would think that fat stores would be a more ideal fuel than food in your belly that still has to be processed into what the body desires/needs. Also, your body has to work to process it fast enough for the body's demand. Then again, if you have no fat, what is going to fuel one's self? Muscle? Likely a very poor energy source.
Well said. From my original post:
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Originally Posted by Sea_Bass View Post
...
The body (and consequently the mind) behave very different when burning food stores vs. fat stores. Performance, efficiency, muscle use, muscle repair, senses, intuition, and intelligence are all enhanced when burning fat stores as opposed to food stores ... up to a point. If you have no food stores and run out of fat stores to burn the body will cannibalize itself until you die.
...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Behslayer View Post
"Breaking down fat for energy requires relatively more oxygen than carbohydrate"
What is this crap quote? Yes it takes more oxygen to break apart fat for energy, but you get more and better quality energy. Once broken down, the energy is easier to burn and burns more efficiently - using less oxygen. Further, breaking down carbohydrate takes less oxygen but demands more oxygen to utilize that broken down energy for performance.

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Originally Posted by Behslayer View Post
"Eliminate carbohydrate drink use. It sounds counterintuitive and goes against most conventional advice, but where fat burning rather than performance is the priority, carbohydrate drinks, which raise insulin and reduce fat oxidation, should be avoided. Studies have shown that although consuming carbohydrate drinks before endurance exercise boosts performance, the subsequent rise in blood sugar and insulin reduces the proportion of energy derived by burning fat."
This is crappy science writing, but supports my points. Raising insulin activates the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest), reducing adrenaline production and human growth hormone and deactivating the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight). Studies done by gatorade have shown that drinking gatorade boosts performance. How? Why? What is the mechanism of action? Crappy science writing.

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"It must also be noted that training after an overnight fast may reduce your exercise capacity and may therefore only be suitable for low- to moderate- intensity exercise sessions."
Pathetic science quote, random statement that doesn't say why or how to justify the claim.

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Originally Posted by Behslayer View Post
SeaBass, I'm not sure you are correct. It seems there are too many variables. Each person is different, and while many studies have been done on running and cycling, Freedive Spearfishing is in many ways it's own beast.. you know the old saying, "Nothing burns more calories than Freedive Spearfsihing and Fast Axe Chopping" From what I understand about Fat Stores burning vs. Carbohydrate burning, Fat Stores burning, aside from being particular to the individual, temperature, etc. is most effected by Intensity of Workout.
Fat store burning is a trait of all humans not particular individuals. It is most effected by when you eat (how often) and what you eat (and not eat), intensity of workout is a minor factor. You can workout till steam comes out your ears but if you just drank a sports drink then your body will burn that first before ever touching your fat stores. And it will perform less because of that crappy fuel. Look into the sympathetic nervous system. Look into the chemicals produced and suppressed and their effects on the body. Think about the body's design and what it is meant to do. You are supposed to rest after eating, and fight for your next meal.

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Originally Posted by Behslayer View Post
While it may be effective for someone who is a training endurance athlete who maintains a steady medium or slightly higher rate of their output for intensity lengthy time intervals, it doesn't seem to be nearly as effective for example as Carbohydrate burning for higher level of intensity workouts/training or spikes in intensity. Also, Fat Stores burning is most effective in a High Oxygen state. I think this is where the problem is.. Freedive spearfishing is not an Aerobic exercise. It is not like running or swimming, or land hunting.. where you can maintain @ 60-70% of your max output and breathe regularly and flood your system with O2.. which is where Fat stores burning works best. It is a completely different reaction. I think you might be leading people down a path you don't really understand here. Show me a study of Fat Burning Stores vs. Carbohydrate Burning specific to Freediving and we can compare apples to apples.. but from what I read everything points to Fat Burning Stores not being the right match to Freedive Spearfishing. My thoughts are specifically that relying on Fat Burning Stores for Freedive Spearfishing may increase the chances of SWB in deeper diving in normal humans.
Your missing the point, fat is a better fuel to burn for performance in every metric. Yes it takes more oxygen upfront to burn that energy, but you get exponentially more energy and of a much higher quality. And then your body demands less oxygen afterwards to do more better. Your body produces hormones and chemicals that are better suited to performance. Your body suppresses hormones and chemicals that are better suited for resting and digesting. Your body gets better at everything it needs for hunting, including efficient energy-utilization. Don't you know that digestion significantly increases oxygen consumption (and consequently oxygen demand). Digestion increases blood flow to the stomach. Entering into the digestive state uses and requires far more oxygen then in the fight-or-flight state, and wastes that energy on processes of digestion instead of performance. Keep spiking your blood sugar, and you will raise your oxygen demands and consumption on processes that do not benefit hunting and performance.

I think you have a lot to learn about human physiology and biology. I think you are going down the wrong path. I think you are looking at compartmentalized studies about individual parts but missing the whole picture. You are not citing sources for your quotes, but it isn't necessary. You can find a scientific study to back-up everything I say, look them up. There are just as many studies to refute what I say. Most studies use crappy science writing that never explains the "why" or "how" or mechanism of action. They don't look at the big picture. The small picture is that burning fat takes more oxygen. The big picture is that overall the body uses less oxygen for performance and performs better when burning fat because it is getting a better energy at a higher quality state and using it efficiently for processes of performance.
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Old 01-19-2020, 12:52 PM   #32
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

Hmmm...this IS a very interesting discussion. Beh and Seabass have put up great retorts. Seabass seems to have a better argument although he could use some of Beh's tact at delivering it.
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Old 01-19-2020, 02:08 PM   #33
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

To Fuel himself on Olympic days of competition, the greatest swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps started off each day eating the same race-day breakfast of eggs, oatmeal and four energy shakes.

I could go on and on and on... but I'm headed out the door to go diving. Just downed 4 Sweet Rolls.
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Old 01-19-2020, 02:15 PM   #34
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?


That is some impressive freediving, Beh.
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Old 01-20-2020, 06:09 AM   #35
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

I agree with you Marcus, tact I have not. Sorry to the audience and to Beh for arguing like a dick. I can't counter specific examples of exceptional and unique individuals, but I can give insight into how the general human body should work. What I say is backed by chemicals, molecules, hormones, regulation, suppression, and body system functions.

The body uses fuel for energy to perform work. The body can use different fuels. The body can perform different kinds of work. Some fuels are better than others for certain kinds of work. Food stores as fuel for energy perform best at the works of resting and digesting. Fat stores as a fuel for energy perform best at the works of fighting, running, thinking, growing muscle, repairing muscle, energy efficiency, senses improvement, intelligence ... almost everything except resting and digesting. This is so because of the nature of the fuel and hormonal responses to fuel burn with downstream chemical production/suppression of molecules that influence different kinds of work taken together as body systems.

Resting and digesting are very high on oxygen demands and burn easy fuel inefficiently. Fighting and flighting are very low on oxygen demands and burn complex fuel efficiently. This happens as bodily systems in the sympathetic and parasympathetic system. This is how the body was designed to work, and it makes sense without complex science. After you eat you rest and digest your meal. Once that easy fuel is used up, then you gotta go hunt or gather more fuel. While trying to get that next easy fuel/meal, if you are out of easy fuel, you burn the emergency super-fuel your body stored for situations like this. Super-fuel is different than easy fuel. Super-fuel is best used for performance in everything except resting and digesting, but especially energy efficiency.

You can find parts of the parasympathetic system response that appear to offer advantages to freediving such as less upfront oxygen to burn foodstores because it is easy cheap fuel. There may be other parts but taken as a whole system, the oxygen load from resting and digesting combined with the deregulation of every hormone, chemical, and molecule that increases performance and efficiency offers significant disadvantages to freediving as opposed to burning fat stores.

If I was in your fins Beh, I would start by practicing burning fat stores while doing normal things (not extreme freediving) for a period of time to see if your body can adjust to burning fat efficiently. Then I would do some serious planning. Plan to burn fat stores when you need it the most. You can still eat certain foods that will keep you burning fat stores if you need that mental edge or think you are running out of fat stores because of your physique (low body fat).

I'm a skinny dude and if I was shore-diving and extreme freediving all day I would probably start my day still burning food stores and shift into fat stores after a few hours in the water. So if I was hunting from 7am to 3pm then I would finish my last meal at 9pm the night before. That gives me around 2 hours of hunting before I really start hunting on the super fuel. After 4 hours if I feel like I'm running out of super-fuel I would eat a little food that is mostly fat with a little protein and fibrous veggie. Your guac-in-a-box is a perfect example of food that will keep you burning super-fuel. Your sports drink is the opposite that will immediately shut down super-fuel burn and put you in lazy rest and digest mode.
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Old 01-20-2020, 02:39 PM   #36
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

Hello. My diving is not very impressive at all compared to my friends. Some are shooting fish at 180'. Others have a 4 minute breath hold at 100', and can swim to 250' without fins and no weight.. That is how it is here.

SeaBass, I do understand what you are talking about. If I'm doing 'yardwork' which around here involves digging endless 40# lava stones out of the ground I don't need to eat breakfast. It's hot, not eating allows me not to feel the heat as much, and as long as I have a few gallons of water I can go all day. If I get lightheaded, no worries.. I'm on land. But.. I think it's the Anaerobic side of Freedive Spearfishing that is different. It came to my attention, that maybe you are Scuba Spearfishing?

If we want to get to the Science of it, there are good examples. Top Athletes, such as Olympians, professional MMA fighters, Weight Lifters, etc.. employ doctors and scientists who have dedicated their life's work to compiling all of the thought streams, data, science, and developing diet plans for their athletes. TeamUSA.org for example is the US Olympic Team site where they discuss Diet. As Mr Rene suggested that "he never heard of an Olympic Athlete eating 12 hours before an event and his coach would keep strict rules to his diet" I was surprised to see that some Olympic Athletes actually eat Huge amounts of Calories just hours before they compete and huge amounts of calories just hours before all training. High Output Aerobic Athletes such as Swimmers, Cross Country Skiers, and especially more Anaerobic Athletes such as Weight Lifters will eat a huge amount of Carbs. However, it was interesting to note that other Olympic Athletes, specifically those who wish to remain very light on their feet, such as Figure Skaters will eat much less before competition.

So what does a Professional MMA fighter eat on Fight Day? Do they fast for 12+ hours before a fight? Nope.. Quite the opposite. You can all look that up yourselves.

I would compare Freediving closer to Weight Lifting than Figure Skating or Archery. While a 2-3 minute drop down to 100' might lack the intensity per second of a 500# Power Lift, the total anaerobic energy expenditure may be close to the same.

I'm sure there are much more qualified people than myself or Seabass to answer the question at hand.

"Does Fasting before Freedive Spearfishing have a negative or positive effect on performance and safety?" in short, should a Freedive Spearfisherman eat before diving?
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Old 01-20-2020, 03:40 PM   #37
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

People are not like peas in a pod and some have a different metabolism to others, hence there is no one size fits all answer here. As energy is expended in diving and heat is continually being lost to the water the body needs energy reserves to carry out its work, plus pumping your way back up as your oxygen levels get ever lower needs your "engine" to work reliably or you will have had it.
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Old 01-21-2020, 05:01 AM   #38
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

I scuba spearfish and freedive spearfish. I long time ago I used to only freedive spearfish and do pool-training/practice in springs/etc. Nowadays, I'm interested in catching dinner and coming home safely more than the method I do it. But my favorite kind of hunting is freediving in shallow clear water.

I have listed my reasons why burning fat stores is superior to burning food stores for performance and safety, even with regards to freediving. These reasons are backed by normal human biology (molecules, chemicals, hormones, body systems, energy utilization, energy composition). It is a meta-synthesis of compartmentalized and occulted science. There are always exceptions to the rule, but this is how things are supposed to work. Do what you like and feels right. I'll stick to biological science backed by reproducible results, organic chemistry, and mechanism of action. It doesn't matter what you do and how much you copy a Michael Phelps, you will never swim like him.
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Old 01-21-2020, 07:49 PM   #39
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

[I AM TALKING FREEDIVING, NOT SCUBA]
Short answer:
In cold water (say California in winter), for a hard day of spearing, I like a pretty big breakfast, like 3 eggs, 4 slices of bacon, ideally some ham/steak, and maybe a little starch like a pancake or some oatmeal and fruit, half a pot of coffee with no sugar but lots of cream. The carbohydrates are kind of optional, protein and coffee are mandatory. I also like to have a pretty good lunch or dinner with some carbohydrates the night before. This is important for long days, or consecutive hard days, in which case I make myself eat a big dinner even if I am not very hungry.

In warmer water, for a hard day of spearing, the amount of calories goes down a lot, to about 1/3 of that if somewhere as warm as say Bahamas, and I do better with way more fruit and less fat/protein. Hawaii is about 1/2 of a winter California breakfast, maybe one or two eggs, half an avocado, and some banana and mango or whatever is around that's fruit.

For depth competition--this is always warm water and just 4 or 5 drops for entire day, with first warm-up drop to 40M then a final big dive to the physical limit of consciousness, then 10 minutes of warm down surface swim--I have nothing but half a cup of black coffee if diving before 11:00am, and if diving in the afternoon I have an egg, piece of fruit, and my coffee in the morning.

Throughout the day in ALL circumstances I have a shaker of whey protein with some vitamins (Muscle Milk). For competition I don't drink it unless there are unforseen delays, in which case I'll drink some a few hours before I actually dive, and for hunting I drink it for lunch. If I'm ballin' I had time to make a smoothie in the morning that's Muscle Milk, some no sugar peanut butter, frozen banana and berries. That's lunch. For competition if there were no delays I drink it immediately after diving and eat a big meal ASAP.

Long answer:
Eating a big meal before diving can and does provide heat calories, which for California is a huge consideration, and it may keep you from FEELING hungry, but the carbohydrate energy in your food takes time to be converted to glycogen and stored in the muscles where it can be used. If you are middling active and do the equivalent of jogging for 45 minutes a day it may take up to 24 hours for you to fully replenish glycogen stores in the muscles, largely because the body can only absorb so much within a given time period--a huge bowl of Cheesecake Factory pasta is enough carbs to fuel you but that energy trickles back into your muscles over the course of many, many hours. Incidentally, protein is best for 'heat', with fat and carbohydrates being second and roughly equal. Also, remember, the amount of glycogen in your muscles has very little to with whether you 'feel' hungry.

Your level of FREEDIVING fitness--how often you do it, how you have trained, how many years and how consistently you have been freediving will have an enormous effect on your nutritional needs when freediving. Like any other physical activity the body becomes conditioned to the activity and like all living organisms will adapt and strive to meet physical demands in the most efficient way possible. If you freedive for a living, finning vertical miles in a session is just another day in the office, while another individual who may be spectacularly 'fit' doing the same activity will need a great deal more food energy and water to do the same thing, if they can even finish the day. Like a lot of 'top' athletes most world class divers eat pretty much whatever the f they want (sweets, paleo, standard American, strict vegan, you name it) except immediately before and after a dive/day they consider difficult.

A human in ketosis (with no carbohydrate/glycogen stores in the muscles who is burning exclusively fat for energy) uses about 5% more O2 but produces about 30% less CO2 than they would if they were burning glycogen (ie were fully rested and had eaten a large pizza the night before diving). A human in ketosis has a higher baseline adrenaline level and may have a higher resting HR as well. A human in ketosis has pretty great endurance but horrendous stamina when it comes to repeat maximum efforts (highly anaerobic activity). This is usually considered to be sprints or near max lifts, but for freediving it would be particularly deep or very, very long dives for that specific diver, both which can become highly anaerobic, or additionally in the case of spearing anything where you need to open throttle underwater to horse a fish on your shooting line. You do not see a lot of professional power athletes like fighters (outside of cutting weight) and ball players who do not eat any carbohydrate, but if you look at marathoners and ultra-marathoners a lot of them love the very low carb ketogenic thing. This is backed up in sports science studies and my own experience training on a line while in and out of ketosis some years ago, doing repeat 40M dives in 6mm wetsuit, looking for that competitive edge.

This is not entirely relevant to the kind of diving that's required to turn over rocks for bugs and fish, but at the last CMAS outdoor world championships (for depth) a couple guys were diving pretty deep in ketosis, but both of them have admitted some issues with equalization that are generally accepted to be related to CO2 build-up during descent phase. Results were mixed on their actual performances but they had more comfortable descents as we might expect. None of the top divers (currently setting world records for depth) were doing this or expressed intention of doing so. At that level, for those divers, CO2 is not limiting factor. It's pretty much always O2 burn and so using an extra 5% over the course of a 3 or 4 minute freedive to 300' - 400' feet just isn't worth it to gain a little comfort during descent.

I can't speak for everyone but in testing I did some years ago, I could be stuff myself on sweets and pizza for a couple days before a long day of spearing (defined as a few miles of surface swimming plus another mile or more of vertical diving in 58F water), and by not even the halfway point I would have burned through all my carbohydrate stores and been in full ketosis. At the time I was in spectacular general fitness and it would take me at least a couple days of 2 - 3 hour workouts in the fight gym to get through that amount of muscle glycogen.

So, what provides fuel for diving, and let's say spearfishing, even relatively hard spearing, like the stuff where your legs are failing and cramping to the point where you can't swim anymore? Either fat or carbohydrate work pretty well in my experience if it is what your body is accustomed to, but all the food in the world before diving won't do the trick because the activity depletes amino acids (building blocks of protein). Of course you know your body builds muscle out of amino acid but they have a host of other functions as well, and your body does not store excess, although it can synthesize certain ones from the food you eat. However your body can't synthesize them fast enough to sustain certain types of exercise. So, to sustain a hard day of spearing, keep the leg cramps at bay and to be ready to charge hard again tomorrow, what you eat before diving is less important that what you eat WHILE diving. Hence the whey protein.
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Old 01-22-2020, 05:14 PM   #40
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

Wow, great response. Sounds like the best way to go for going out for a 4-5 hour dive and making a bunch of Deep Drops, swimming against currents, doing all the stuff that we normally do Freedive Spearfishing, and even more so, Shorediving, is to eat before diving, bring some water, and maybe some kind of food.

Cold Water can zap you quicker. Deep Drops, which for me means 100', but for others is much more or less, can zap you quicker. Not everyone's idea of going Spearfishing involves pushing to the physical limits. But if that is what your idea of Spearfishing entails, then it seems like you will perform better, and also be safer if you have some food stores to start off with. For me I could care less about the science, performance, or the catch.. the real reason I'm in this discussion is for the safety side of things. Not everyone's idea of Spearfishing involves dodging SWB as one of the main goals of the session..

Lance, you know a lot about the Energy expenditures we are incurring. I know it's different for different people, water temps, etc. But for someone here in Hawaii, in 76 degree water in a good fitting 3mm, with good Carbon Blades, etc.. shorediving for 5 hours and making 20 drops to 100'. What do you think the Caloric consumption might be?
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Old 01-22-2020, 08:41 PM   #41
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

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Originally Posted by Behslayer View Post
Wow, great response. Sounds like the best way to go for going out for a 4-5 hour dive and making a bunch of Deep Drops, swimming against currents, doing all the stuff that we normally do Freedive Spearfishing, and even more so, Shorediving, is to eat before diving, bring some water, and maybe some kind of food.

Cold Water can zap you quicker. Deep Drops, which for me means 100', but for others is much more or less, can zap you quicker. Not everyone's idea of going Spearfishing involves pushing to the physical limits. But if that is what your idea of Spearfishing entails, then it seems like you will perform better, and also be safer if you have some food stores to start off with. For me I could care less about the science, performance, or the catch.. the real reason I'm in this discussion is for the safety side of things. Not everyone's idea of Spearfishing involves dodging SWB as one of the main goals of the session..

Lance, you know a lot about the Energy expenditures we are incurring. I know it's different for different people, water temps, etc. But for someone here in Hawaii, in 76 degree water in a good fitting 3mm, with good Carbon Blades, etc.. shorediving for 5 hours and making 20 drops to 100'. What do you think the Caloric consumption might be?
As for as actual number of calories burned, I have no idea. I have tracked my own nutrition, read, and studied up on it my entire life since adolescence but never counted calories in the food I ate, it just has never been relevant, always been more useful to gauge needs based on fatigue, weight, energy, and proportions of fat/protein/carbohydrate.

Two things do stand out though--yep, 1) cold water and currents will zap you fast. I haven't been able to test this fully but for instance when carefullly monitoring HR, I can lay on my back and breathe in Honaunau Bay on a good day and my pulse will easily drop to my morning resting HR. In California, laying my back, holding a buoy and breathing on a good day my HR never goes below about 115% of my morning resting. Maybe it's that Kona ocean is gentler, but I think it also has to do with our colder water, even though I'm in a correspondingly thicker wetsuit. And currents we have all experienced, when breathing up in a current, your comfortable time and depth will be significantly reduced; energy expenditure can easily double for the same spot on a still day. I don't know how scientific it was but I think Terry Maas calculated calorie burn for spearing in cold water in a current and it was extraordinary. I could calculate something pretty good based on heart activity but my dive heart monitor needs a rebuild first.

Marathon swimming is interesting to look at in this regard, re calories and cold water... Sanctioned marathon swimmers are NOT allowed to wear any neoprene whatsoever, so you have endurance athlete surface swimming in cold water in a speedo for minimum 6 - 12 hours at a time. They start rested and carb loaded, eat minimum 200 or 300 hundred calories per hour (slurp down liquid food every 15 or 20 minutes), and still finish having lost 10% of their pre-race body weight. Notably much of this weight is in fact water because your body needs a lot of water to pack carbohydrate energy into your muscles; why body builders, fighters, models, and purveyors of junk diets have known for years that anyone who eats a Standard American Diet can drop 5% - 10% of their body weight in two or three days if they stop eating carbohydrate; you pee or sweat it out as your body uses up glycogen stored in the muscles, and gain it back just as fast.

2) Calories and glycogen are not equal. Fat, carbohydrate, and protein all provide calories but if you are making 100' drops, your body is churning through glycogen, which is provided by carbohydrates and stored largely in the skeletal muscles, and replenished rather slowly. Anaerobic/hypoxic intervals combined with active rest (the very definition of hard spearing in a current) burn glycogen FAST, probably faster than any other activity you could sustain for more than 45 minutes per day unless you have mutant genes (some endurance athletes do have natural mutations which limit max power output but also limit muscle fatigue). It's a whole 'nother long chapter but cold water vs warm water also affects mammalian dive response in human divers which will further affect rate of glycogen burn, since increased dive response will always shift the body towards a more anaerobic metabolism and increased glycogen burn, although to be fair if you dive exclusively in warm water, mammalian dive response will be more easily triggered by warmer water.

Over the course of the of hard spearing day, it is almost impossible for you to maintain glycogen levels unless you eat a donut literally every 20 minutes. This is not a huge problem because your body also burns a certain amount of fat and protein all the time to supplement energy needs. It's also worth noting that a trained athlete or anyone who severely restricts carbohydrate intake (ketogenic, intermittent fasting, or an athlete on a 'zone' or paleo type diet) will burn a higher percentage of fat for energy than your average couch potato and their body will try to conserve muscle glycogen as much as possible, saving it only for truly anaerobic tasks such as the ascent phase of your deep drops--think anything where you experience leg burn or hit the surface out of breath. I say 'trained athlete' but also if you do mild to medium intensity physical activity nonstop all day on a regular basis as part of your job you also probably fall into that category of someone who's body is pretty well tuned to burn fat and save glycogen, assuming you go several hours between meals.

From a SAFETY standpoint this is where the disconnect between calories and glycogen gets interesting for freedivers/spearos. When the glycogen is used up, and there's no available carbohydrate or protein left to digest, the body shifts into a fat burning mode, using slowly digested fats from your last meal and (lastly) fat stored in the body. This is usually called 'ketosis' or 'ketogenic metabolism'. If a person isn't adapted to this then they crash (that person who says that they can't function on 'low blood sugar'). Of course diehard spearo soldiers on, and may actually be feeling pretty great--stomach is empty so breathholds are more comfortable, natural CO2 buffering is working great because you've been doing breathholds all day, endorphins are coursing through the body again because you've been exercising all day, hormonal shifts occur that make you feel alert and sharp possibly accompanied by mild increase in resting HR.

And... neat bonus for freedivers/spearo is that when in ketosis, your body produces less CO2, so of course breathholds get even easier since CO2 build-up triggers initial urge to breathe and much of the stress of a breathhold. Good, right? Well, maybe not... 99.999% of the time as a spearo YOU SHOULD NOT be diving anywhere near your true breathhold limit (this being defined as the point at which you samba/black-out) for a whole host of reasons, safety being only one of them, but all those above mentioned factors mean that you can be getting closer to that Dangerous Edge than you realize.

Ketogenic metabolism also requires a little more O2 than normal which certainly doesn't help a freediver. These shifts in CO2/O2 and resting HR are not mentioned in most literature about athletes or otherwise because when you can breathe air, the shifts are completely irrelevant to anyone healthy enough to walk up a flight of stairs.

If you want to nerd out with this stuff you can do statics with a pulse oximeter--needs to be a whole lot of them--when in and out of ketosis and at various levels of training, fatigue, and rest.... For further reading, this article doesn't get very deep into ketogenic metabolism but it is very thorough on glycogen use and replenishment in athletes. A lot of the studies cited in the article I've read before but it is a great compilation and summary: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6019055/

Bringing food and water out isn't very necessary for us in California when shorediving because we swim in a lot of big circles and usually have to traverse kelp which makes it tough to tow or drag anything. Total mileage can be high, but distance from entry isn't that great so you can just go in, warm-up, eat, and head back out. Most of my Hawaii experience is line diving stuff, but when I have gone out with local guys who are the real thing on a shore dive to hunt, they cover a lot of geographical distance and bring floats. If I'm already gonna be towing a float I might take some food (I like shakes, easy to slurp down fast in the water and waterproof), but in California I'd rather start the day with dense food in my belly (high fat).
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Old 06-08-2020, 11:36 PM   #42
RogerDodger
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Re: What do you eat before spearfishing to keep energy level up?

If we are traveling a long way by boat I typically fuel up on Crunchy Almond Butter from Trader Joes. If we are shore diving early in the AM then nothing.
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