How to Hold your Breath Longer Static Breath Hold

Hey freediving family, I'm back home in Australia. The world championships was super fun, very intense at times, but super fun. Today, we're gonna talk in greater depth about how to hold your breath longer and in particular, static breath hold, which is just holding your breath while you lay still. This is a fairly complex topic because the human body adapts to specifically what we train it to do. I feel like I have to repeat that. The human body adapts specifically to what you train it to do. Working on and improving your static breath hold time will not necessarily translate over into deeper dives or longer dives or even more comfortable dives necessarily. Just like diving deeper will not automatically give you a long static breath hold. I always get asked, how long can you hold your breath? And my answer is always, I haven't done a maximum static breath hold in five years because I specialize in diving deep and static breath hold just won't help me. Or maybe it's because I don't like static breath hold. I just say that. But in saying that, static breath hold is so important for your development as a freediver. And it's something that every freediver, except myself, should be practicing. What's the most important thing in freediving? Relaxation. What's the most important factor for increasing your breath hold and learning how to hold your breath longer? Relaxation. And what is the most important skill, and it is a skill, I promise you, for learning how to dive deeper or being able to dive deeper? Relaxation. While static breath hold doesn't adapt your body for depth, it does get you accustomed to the experience and the sensations of longer breath holds. High carbon dioxide, contractions, that strong urge to breathe, and hypoxia. And the more familiar that you are with all of these aspects of breath holds, the more you're gonna be able to relax when it comes to your actual dives. Because static breath hold, and increasing the time that you can comfortably hold your breath, and I do mean comfortably hold your breath, is one of the foundations for freediving training. So how do we start? So lay down in your bed, on your couch, on your floor somewhere, as long as you're comfortable. I'm gonna do this without my shirt on so you can see the way I'm breathing, you can see my chest, and you can see what's going on in my body during these breath holds. Just so you know, this is where a freediver stores their power. There's a reason why seals and whales are covered in blubber. I'm gonna assume this is something that you've never done before, and I'm gonna start from the absolute beginning. In a moment, I'll talk about different kinds of CO2 tables, but for now, we're gonna just start with three introductory breath holds, nice and gentle. One of the most important things for improving your static breath hold is the experience. We have to keep the experience, no, I do it with this finger, nice, what finger do I, nice and gentle. Keep the experience nice and gentle and learn which finger you do the thing with. For yoga stuff, I don't do the yoga. We're gonna start by breathing for around two minutes. Don't worry about timing your breath ups, just try to relax as much as possible and just start whenever you're ready. If you haven't seen my video for how to breathe for freediving and breath holds, and I suggest you either do that now or you do it after this video. I'll include a link in the description below. On this first breath hold, I want you to start breathing again whenever you want. Don't force yourself to continue or hold on for a long time. This is meant to be a super relaxing, gentle beginning. So just breathe whenever you want. I'm gonna be timing my breath holds with my phone. Huh, I just realized, I also totally forgot to time that, but it doesn't matter. Just go for the experience. Now on the next one, we're gonna hold our breath until we feel the urge to breathe. We experience the urge to breathe and contractions of our respiratory muscles when we have a high amount of carbon dioxide in our body. It happens when we hold our breath, and I actually explained this in a much greater amount of detail in a previous video that I've made on how to hold your breath longer. So I suppose I may as well include the link to that video as well in the description. So let's hold our breath until we get the first urge to breathe, or the first contractions of our respiratory muscles. You may also experience or feel this kind of like a tugging in the throat or a pulling in the throat. That's the contractions going on in your respiratory muscles as well. Once again, don't push yourselves. Try to imagine this as if it were an exploratory experience. We're just seeing what it feels like to hold our breath until we get the urge to breathe. Now for this last breath hold, we're gonna hold our breath, relax as much as we can, and we're going to wait until we experience the urge to breathe and the contractions, and then we're going to see how long we can continue on in a completely relaxed manner while we're experiencing the urge to breathe and contractions. This must be relaxed. As soon as you're not 100% comfortable, you just start to breathe again. Also keep in mind that everyone experiences the urge to breathe at a variety of intensities. Some people, they get the contractions and they barely feel anything. Some people, they get the contractions and it's like some panic button gets signaled in their mind and they need to breathe, right? So we all get this at different intensities and different levels. Some people's bodies want them to survive more than other people's. For this last one, I'm just gonna make the contractions come on early. This way, I don't have to go through a long breath hold. You don't have to sit there watching me for a long time. I just want you to see the contractions and what's going on in my body when I'm holding my breath. So contractions, involuntary muscle contractions of the respiratory muscles. You may have noticed that with consecutive breath holds, you are able to hold your breath longer and with more ease. And you went for a longer period of time before the contractions began. This is your mammalian dive reflex engaging. Your body has a breath hold mode. It just usually takes a few breath holds to warm it up. This is why your first few dives usually feel pretty bad because you have to engage the mammalian dive reflex. Soon, we're gonna talk about CO2 tables or carbon dioxide tables. And you'll notice that when you do those, your dive reflex really engages because we're gonna do about eight breath holds in a row. Oh, please do me a favor and can you comment your breath hold times for that exercise, breath hold one, two, and three? Comment that down below so that people can, in this video, when they watch it, scroll down and get like a reference for what people are doing and what's possible in general. That would just be a good, like a benchmark for everyone. You know, I always try to reply to every comment, but I travel so much and so sometimes it's really hard to do it. So I would love it if some of our more experienced divers would reply back to some of the questions in the comments. Knowledge sharing Okay, what we're after with all this static breath hold training is to experience longer breath holds and in particular, to learn how to relax and just let go when you are having contractions and the urge to breathe, to learn to accept it. This is why when it comes to doing any static breath hold exercise, the number one rule is, if you are not comfortable, you don't continue. You stop. There is no point laying on the floor, just like suffering and having contractions. I've done it, guys. I did it for many years and it got me nothing. I'm gonna talk about two types of CO2 tables now. For anyone that isn't familiar, a CO2 table or a carbon dioxide table is a sequence of breath holds in which there is a limited or structured recovery in between each breath hold. The idea is that over the sequence of these breath holds, your body will accumulate more and more CO2 and therefore your body will build a tolerance to it, which will then mean that you can hold your breath for longer periods of time in the future without getting the urge to breathe and without getting the contractions and you'll be even more comfortable. The first is called a descending recovery table. This is a really good CO2 table to begin with. We're gonna do eight breath holds. You take the time that you did on that third breath hold in the first exercise that we did and then you cut it in half. So if hypothetically your longest breath hold time in that exercise was two minutes at the end, then your breath holding time for this table is gonna be one minute and you're gonna hold your breath for one minute in each of these eight breath holds. So we begin with a one minute 30 recovery time and then a one minute breath hold and then after every breath hold, we take away 10 seconds from the recovery time. So the first one will be one minute 30, hold your breath for one minute. The second one will be then breathe for one minute 20, hold your breath for one minute. Breathe for one 10, hold for one minute. Breathe for one minute, hold for one minute. Breathe for 50 seconds, hold for one minute. Breathe for 40 seconds, hold for one minute. Breathe for 30, hold for one minute. Breathe for 30, hold for one minute. We try not to go under the 30 second mark. I actually do talk a bit about that in a previous video that I've made about how to hold your breath longer, but I won't go into it right now because that's a conversation for another time. But don't go below that 30 second mark just for now. Now if you can complete that exercise easily, simply increase the breath hold time. Always keep the recovery period the same, but just increase the breath hold time by 10 or 15 seconds. Just keep it comfortable, right? You always want to succeed. You always want to do the table with ease. You never want to have this horrible experience of you laying down, holding your breath, struggling just to get through this exercise that you've set for yourself, okay? Be gentle with yourself. Go easy on yourself. Personally, I never do any of this breath hold training alone. If you're doing this in water, then you must have done a free diving course, and you must know how to do this safely. And also, your dive buddy must be trained as well. That was my serious face. But if you're just doing this on land, in bed, on the couch, on the floor, it is safe to do it on your own. The worst thing that's going to happen is that you'll black out, and in a few seconds, you'll wake up, and you'll be very, very confused as to why your timer has continued on for so long. For those who are doing this on your own, there are apps you can get for your phone or your computer that will actually time or map out tables for you. I'll include some links to those in the description below. You're very welcome to ask me which app is the best, and I will tell you that I have no idea. I've never used one before, because I always train with a buddy. For whatever reason, people are able to stand my company. The other CO2 table we're going to talk about today is also a sequence of eight breath holds. Why always eight breath holds? Because that is what the free diving gods demand. Just so you do know, there are really two ways to appease the gods of free diving. You can either sacrifice gear into the ocean. You can lose your snorkels, your fins, everything like that. If you really want to please the free diving gods, you lose your dive computer. Or you can bring up sand from the bottom of the ocean, wherever the bottom of the ocean is where you're diving, and put it on top of your free diving float. That's another way to appease the gods of free diving. But that's it. They're very harsh and cruel gods. So once again, we're going to use that time that we got on our third breath hold of the very first exercise that we did, and we're going to take 75% of that time. So, for example, if you held your breath for two minutes, then we're going to do breath holds of 1 minute 30. So for this table, your recovery time will always be one minute, and your breath hold time will also always be the same, which will be about 75% of your maximum breath hold time. So in this case, 1 minute 30. So eight breath holds, you'll always be breathing for one minute, and you'll always be holding your breath for 1 minute 30. If, for example, you held your breath for four minutes, right? I'm just choosing the numbers that are easy to do maths with. If you held your breath for four minutes, then your breath hold time will be three minutes. So it'll be breathe for one minute, hold for three minutes. Breathe for one minute, hold for three minutes, right? For eight breath holds. And just like in the last table, if you can complete it easily, then just increase the breath holding time. Don't stuff around with the recovery and the resting periods. Keep that always at one minute, but just increase the breath holding time. So if you did the first one at 1 minute 30, try it at 1 minute 40, or 1 minute 45 if you're feeling very, very good. Now, I know that contractions, when you're having the urge to breathe, don't feel good. So what's the best way to deal with them? Guys, I quickly have to ask you to hit the like button on this video if you've watched it this far. I hate being that guy on YouTube, like begging for likes, but it's just the done thing. It sucks. But the number of likes on my videos seriously helps me out, and I've got to play this YouTube game. It's a mad world we live in. If you need me, I'll be underwater. So contractions don't feel great, but I promise you that just with practice and more and more exposure to having them, they will stop feeling so bad. They're just going to, on their own, start feeling more comfortable. And there will come a time when you start to have contractions, but you won't experience any of that panic or that strange, strong desire to breathe. It simply won't be there. Those responses become more and more dull the more that you train them. Eventually, your brain realizes that no matter what it does, you are not going to start breathing again. You are, in fact, a fool, and it will just stop giving you the panic button. And this is just another reason why you need to just take your time. Do it with ease. Allow your body to get to that point when it's ready. Don't make this a stressful experience. The other thing with contractions is that you need to keep your stomach and your chest completely relaxed when you're experiencing them. Once they're there, there is nothing you can do to make them stop. Unless you start breathing again. So just relax and accept them. Keep your whole body relaxed and just let them roll through. Keeping your mind focused on your body in general throughout all of your static breath holds is a really great thing to do anyway. Thank you for watching, freediving family. Now get out there and start improving your static breath hold. Don't forget to share this video around. Make sure that your dive buddies see it. And as always, I'll be answering all the questions in the comments. To check out some previous tutorials that I've made, click or tap right here. Or to see any of the previous freediving adventures that I've been on, click or tap right here. I'll see you in the water somewhere. I'm Adam Stern. I hold my breath and dive really deep.