Stan Holford
Stan belongs to: The Diving Centre Ltd
Stan became fascinated with diving from an early age from reading stories about the frogmen. He started The Diving Centre Ltd in 1959.
Stan was interviewed by Carl Greenwood on 7 November 2005. The interview took place at the Interviewee's living room and lasted 1 hour, 27 minutes and 45 seconds.
Training people to breathe properly
"From an early year, from an early age, from being a chronic asthmatic as a kid"
From an early year, from an early age, from being a chronic asthmatic as a kid, I had, I had with the help of a course which I sent away for in America, which I mentioned, Charles Atlas, and his theory was you taught your body from within, and I thought, “God, that’s terrific,” so I started teaching my lungs. I thought if the lungs are perfect- I’ve watched runners, I’ve watched boxers, I mean I was an avid, aficionado of boxing, they breathed out all the time. So I used to train my lungs, I used to blow a balloon up a hundred times twice a day to its maximum and let it out, and in my own mind, whether I was doing good or bad, I was expanding and contracting my lungs all the time, as opposed to somebody lifting weights with their arms.
I mean, I like to think it stood me in good stead and when it came to teaching, I realised, when you look at an athlete, an athlete, has only got two arms, two legs, a heart, lungs- he’s built exactly the same as you but he can do things you can’t do because he’s got stamina- he can breathe properly. So I, I started teaching people, actually, to breathe. And that, in a nutshell, is what we teach up to today, with an aqualung, just how to breathe. Because people have a tendency to hold their breath and they just don’t realise that when they’re just sitting, they’re breathing. They wouldn’t stay alive unless they did breathe and yet they’re not conscious of it. But if you put them in water, and told them you were going to put their head underneath, the first thing they did was take a deep breathe and go [inhales] and then hold their breathe. And that’s wrong because air is comprised of one fifth oxygen and four fifths nitrogen, approximately anyway, there is a little bit of other gases there, but when you breathe in, the lungs extract oxygen, and what you breathe out is bloody rubbish.
Stan has 19 memories in the memorynet:
Stan's memories with a Clothing theme:
Early wetsuitsStan's other memories:
Diving in Malta
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