How long can you hold your breath for?

Is a question I get asked A LOT. I mean, I get asked so often that I never respond because the question keeps coming. 🤣 It’s the wrong question is the problem.

I’m starting from rock bottom after covid, and 2 Years of zero training. I have the breath hold of 30 seconds. I’m not even going to try. I will just let it come back again.

When you train as much as I do, the body adapts, I used to be able to naturally hold my breath for 2 minutes at one point. But I never pushed myself. I have never had formal apnea training. I have instead found, what works for me.

What works for me is daily training. Daily meditation. Daily relaxation. Daily stretching. Daily mindfulness. And then, the reflex to catch ones breath starts to fade. I get longer and more frequent breath holds. Up to two minutes being my record on as timed by the iphone.

When I am healthy again (finally) I intend to take it to the next level and go for formal apnea training. I’m waiting 1./ until my body is ready, and I can judge that. And 2./ After my first goal is $500 a month is complete. As the training lesson starts at $450 for a weekend and I intend on filming it so you see my progress - but I need equipment and permissions to enable that. So I need to be well above my first goal before I can invest in this documented training program for you to witness.

I have never smoked. I never put nothing In my lungs. I tried vaping once but I generally don’t like the feel of anything going in my lungs. Their purpose is my passion. I invest a lot of effort to develop my body in ways that it can perform better and better on camera each time.

1% of what I do ends up in the camera. The other 99% is training, body modification training, more technique, more training, and planning for the shoot. Each shoot I do is an exploration of a technique or something I want to explore and perfect by repetition and muscle memory.

Daily training changes the way my body produces oxygenated blood. Muscles are like batteries I can charge up with oxygen. Even my spleen. Moving blood around the body at will, and changing metabolism at will all conserve oxygen levels. All of this takes daily training and an internal interoception and awareness with how to control sphincters and autonomic muscle groupings of the body.

It is not simply „how long can you hold your breath“ but how I adapt, how much effort do I put into adapting. If you ask this question, it tends to get the best response from artistic swimmers.