| I used to do the 36/80 thing, then decided to give 50/100 a go and personally I felt a lot better (more alert, less knackered) after the 50/100 deco, but I'm not a deco-racer and so use a very conservative ascent profile. I used the same s/w for planning everything, and ran the same settings in terms of conservatism for each gas combination.
Also you may want to look at the newer deco models (RGBM and VPM-B) - they appear to have a very good safety record in terms of bends 'inside the table'. The general concept of these is (roughly) that the deep stops actually benefit you by collapsing the tiny bubbles before they get significant, so by the time you hit the shallow stops you're a whole lot cleaner than the old models indicate, meaning you have less shallow stops to do.
The 'real' DIR teams have a lot of very useful stuff to say on deco - they have consistently pushed the boundaries of the established models and have got away with it. A quiet word with someone who actually walks the walk may well prove fruitful for you.
When you start your ascent there are a million and one 'safe' ascent profiles that you could use - some fast, some slow, some conservative, some agressive. What suits you depends on your own fitness, attitude to risk, equipment choices, buddy, what you had for breakfast etc. If there's a certain profile that you do regularly then have a play with different options - keep the bottom time & total in-water time around the same and play with different gasses and ascent profiles. IF you feel noticable better after any particular combination, then IF you want to be a bit quicker try tweaking the settings back a bit to see if you feel any different. Do all of this really gently and slowly - feeling 'different' should be a subtle thing, not staggering around howling from the pain in your elbows!  |