Increase Breath Hold for Freediving

The human body is an amazing miracle of nature. It can be trained to maximise its ability in so many different aspects and to do many different ends, and freediving is no exception. There are various things we can do to improve our freediving ability. 

Higher tolerance to CO2 levels and more effective oxygen usage will result in more relaxed, long and enjoyable freediving experiences. 

Here are three ways to train breath holding. But before we start, please remember that you should never hold your breath in the water without a trained buddy. For a safer practice, these exercises must be done on dry land, away from sharp objects and bodies of water. Dry training rather than in the water won’t take away from the exercises in any way. Never train or freedive alone. Always spot your buddy during any in-water breath holding exercise.

02 Tables

An oxygen table is a guide to breath holding and recovery times. Oxygen tables basically mean that the recovery period stays the same and the breath holding time increases gradually.

To adjust the training table to suit your current breath-holding ability, either decrease or increase the breath hold.

Instructions:

• Find a comfortable position. Lying down or sitting up with your back resting against something.
• Warm up (3 minutes): find a relaxing breath. This could be heart coherence breathing (inhale for 5 seconds, exhale for 5 seconds), it could be performing a body scan like yoga nidra to relax your breath and every part of your body, or any type of relaxation breathing or meditation you practice that aids lower your heart rate and find a calm mind.
• The table begins as you take a final breath, start the stopwatch and hold your breath for 30 seconds. Breathe out, and recover for 2 minutes.
• Hold your breath for 45 seconds. Breathe out and recover for 2 minutes.
• Hold your breath for a minute. Breathe out and recover for 2 minutes.
• During recovery time, try to breathe slowly and get into a meditative state when possible.

You can keep on adding rows to your table, increasing the hold time by 15 seconds each time. Keep track of your progress!

C02 Tables

Opposed to what we did with the oxygen tables, the carbon dioxide tables are all about keeping the breath holding time the same while decreasing the recovery time.

To adjust the training table to suit your breath-holding ability, either decrease or increase the recovery time.

Instructions:

• Find a comfortable position. Lying down or sitting up with your back resting against something.
• Warm up (3 minutes) just like we did during the O2 Table.
• The table begins as you take a final breath, start the stopwatch and hold your breath for, for example, 1 minute. Breathe out, and recover for 2 minutes.
• Hold your breath for 1 minute. Breathe out and recover for 1 minute and 45 seconds.
• Hold your breath for 1 minute. Breathe out and recover for 1 minute and 30 seconds.
• During recovery time, try to breathe slowly and get into a meditative state when possible.

Keep on subtracting from the recovery time until you reach a recovery time of just one breath (15 seconds). 

Every three successful training sessions, increase the hold time by 10 or 15 seconds.

Increase Carbon Dioxide Tolerance

Carbon dioxide tolerance is the body’s capacity to control an imbalance of its habitual levels of carbon dioxide and oxygen. The higher the tolerance one has to C02, the longer that person will be able to hold their breath, which is quite a good thing to do when you want to freedive. A higher C02 tolerance equals more time to dive.

There are many ways to increase your carbon dioxide tolerance, but if I had to choose one, this one would be it:

Instructions: 40 second breath holds with short recovery

• During three minutes, practice coherence breathing: breathe in for 5 seconds and out for 5 seconds, trying to find relaxation.
• Take a big, deep inhale, start the timer and hold your breath for 40 seconds (you can make it shorter if needed).
• When the 40 seconds are over, let go of the air. Do two recovery breaths.
• Take a big, deep inhale, start the timer and hold your breath for 40 seconds. Repeat ten times.

You can increase the breath hold time by 10 seconds every time you finish four successful training sessions to push your carbon dioxide tolerance even further.

For more exercises to increase your carbon dioxide tolerance, check out our post: 4 ways to increase your C02 Tolerance.

Increase your Lung Capacity for Freediving

One factor that will affect your breath holding time is your lung capacity. The bigger your lungs, the more oxygen will fit in them, and the bigger the potential you’ll have to hold your breath. Men usually have a greater lung capacity than women, having an average 6 litres and 5.5 litres of capacity, respectively. Having said this, there are a lot of other factors to this, the greatest one being grit.

The flexibility of the thoracic cavity and your body is another one of the most important factors for freediving. Keeping flexible can be practiced on dry land. Yoga and stretching routines before freediving are a great way to maximise your potential for freediving.To expand our lung capacity, we can perform lung stretches. There are many advantages of doing this other than increasing lung capacity. Lung stretching can make you gain flexibility, reduce the risk of getting a lung squeeze and increase your potential for freediving, just to name a few.

What is lung stretching?

Lung stretching is performing certain exercises that will help you stretch the lung and intercostal muscle tissues. Doing this will reduce the residual volume (RV) and increase the vital capacity (VC). Basically, it will give you more space to inhale more air and more oxygen.

We can perform lung stretches in two ways: inhalation stretches and passive exhale stretches. We recommend only practice inhalation stretches when under the guidance of an experienced instructor. 

Lung stretches will increase your lung capacity and the volume of air that can be inhaled (VC), making the chest, diaphragm and rib cage more flexible. It can also help you avoid a lung squeeze and allow the lung to expand more easily on inhale. Lung flexibility is the key to deeper and easier freediving.

Inhalation stretches are great for increasing the thoracic cavity and rib cage flexibility. They can lead to increased lung volume and VC.

Passive exhale stretching will decrease the RV by increasing the flexibility of the diaphragm and enabling it to rise up further. But, if not trained properly, they can cause damage to your lungs without warning.

How we can stretch our lungs

It is usually recommended to do this on an empty stomach, but not mandatory. Make sure to face this with a slow progressive approach. There is always a risk of blackout during full lung stretching on breath hold, so make sure you have no sharp edges, objects or water close by.

Never push past the limits of your ability and only make slow progressions. You shouldn’t be feeling strong contractions or pungent urges to breathe. If you have any doubts or if something feels off, contact your freediving instructor for guidance.

Lung Stretching: Side Stretches

Warm up (8 minutes):

Find a relaxed position where your back rests effortlessly; it could be lying down on your back or sitting up against something. For two minutes, isolate your breath in your stomach. For the next two minutes, breathe consciously into your intercostals. After this, isolate your breath in your chest, feeling the stomach and intercostals still; notice how only your chest rises and falls with each inhale and exhale. For the last two minutes do a full breath, feeling the air enter and stretch each of the above: stomach, intercostals and chest, all together

Full lungs stretch to the side (5 minutes):

Sit up crossed-legged in case you are lying down and take a full deep breath, filling your lungs completely. Hold your breath, take your right hand to the ground and lift your left hand overhead. Slowly walk your right hand away from your seat to the side and hold it until you can’t anymore. Breathe out and in. 

Recover from the breath hold, and when you are ready, repeat for the other side.

Sit up crossed-legged. Drop the right hand next to you. The left hand goes overhead, bend the elbow and place your hand behind your head. Inhale and exhale, feeling your intercostal muscles stretching. Try to rotate your thoracic towards the sky and walk the right hand further away when you can find the space.

Repeat for the other side.

Lung Stretching: Twists

Warm up (8 minutes):

Find a relaxed position where your back rests effortlessly; it could be lying down on your back or sitting up against something. For two minutes, isolate your breath in your stomach. For the next two minutes, breathe consciously into your intercostals. After this, isolate your breath in your chest, feeling the stomach and intercostals still; notice how only your chest rises and falls with each inhale and exhale. For the last two minutes, do a full breath, feeling the air enter and stretch each of the above: stomach, intercostals and chest, all together

Full lungs twist stretch (5 minutes):

Sit up crossed-legged in case you are lying down and take a full deep breath, filling your lungs completely. Hold your breath, take your right hand to the left knee and twist your torso to the left. Gently hold the twist until you can’t hold your breath anymore. Breathe out and in. 

Recover from the breath hold, and when you are ready, repeat for the other side.

Sit up crossed-legged. Take your right hand to the left knee and twist your torso to the left. Gently, hold the twist. Inhale and exhale here. On each inhale, try to grow a bit taller and on each exhale, try to twist a bit deeper. Feel your intercostal muscles stretching with each breath. 

Repeat for the other side.

In Short

Lung stretching increases flexibility in our lungs, rib cage and intercostal muscles to reduce RV and increase VC. This is very beneficial for freediving since we’ll be able to get more oxygen and more bottom time with our marine friends! Stretches should be performed with a lot of care and after proper warm ups: never push past your limits, please!