FILLING THE LUNGS

To max out your breath hold time you first need to do two things:

Remove as much CO2 as possible.
Add as much O2 as possible.

We do this in a couple of ways.

STEP 1: REMOVING CO2

Think of your lungs as a balloon.

As you oscillate between in, and out breaths you do so without ever clearing all of the old, CO2 rich air from the lungs each time.

For an effective breath hold time, you need to remove all that old air first, before taking you big, last final breath.

Breathe out fully, clear the lungs of CO2 before filling them to the brim with fresh O2.

STEP 2: MAXIMUM O2

Ok, now that we've removed all that old stale air, now comes the filling with fresh O2 part.

Using the balloon analogy from before, for most people, their deepest inhale would only loosely fill the balloon - with lots of room for expansion if you know how.

Getting that balloon to popping point requires a full breath, a deep breath from bottom to top, maximising every last nook and cranny of space in the lungs.

Here's how:

Expand the stomach, filling the lower region of your lungs completely. Your rib cage and chest shouldn’t move.
Expand your rib cage and breathe into the central region of your lungs.
Open your mouth wide and fill the very upper region of your lungs, the area of your collarbone and throat, you can also raise your head to try to get more air in

THE WRAP UP

Now that you know how to prep the lungs, filling them up for a lengthy breath hold attempt, we're going to jump back a step and get the preparation part dialled as well.

Correct preparation with a full set of lungs will set the foundations to smash your current times.

FILLING THE LUNGS

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GETTING STARTED

GETTING PRACTICAL

LET THE TRAINING BEGIN...

21 DAY BREATH HOLD SPRINT