Holding breath for 4 minutes and 41 seconds — what it feels like
Have you ever tried to hold your breath? A bit more than a week ago, at the beginning of my advanced freediving training, I held my breath for 4 minutes and 41 seconds in a discipline of freediving called Static Apnea —this is how it works and what it feels like.
The breathe-up
After my warm-up I am floating on my back in a pool of 40 cm of water. I am wearing my wet suit, swimming goggles and a nose clip that has pinched my nose securely airtight. I have my coach Claudia right next to me guiding and supporting me throughout the whole thing. We have agreed on communication and hand signs before starting the whole thing. No encouragement until I signal — I like to be in silence.
Claudia: “2 minutes of belly breathing.”
I start breathing using only the diaphragm muscle in my belly. The inhale takes around 6 seconds being controlled by the opening size of my mouth; and the exhale another 6 by letting the air passively escape my lungs while making a hissing sound. I relax my body. The only thing that is on my mind is my breathing — surrounding noises and sounds are starting to disappear.
Claudia: “3 minutes of full breath”
I start to breathe in using 2 sections:
- Belly: sucking in air with my belly for 2–3 seconds
- Chest: and then once the belly is full, start using my chest to get the air in until maximum capacity. This is another 3 seconds.
All the airflow is still controlled by the circumference of the mouth and exhale still happens in the same way by just letting the air out passively. My body and mind is getting more relaxed by every breath that I take. The surrounding noises fall completely to the background; my body is relaxed and feels soft and fluid like a cucumber that has been forgotten in the fridge for way too long. I slowly start thinking about visualisation. My heart rate has slowed down.
Claudia: “Whenever you are ready”
I take one big breath in: first belly, then chest. then gently lift my arm across my chest which helps me to flip over with my face into the water. I am completely relaxed. Claudia places her hand on my back to better monitor what I do.
The breath-hold
0:00–2:50 Visualisation phase
I am now with my face in the water. Body relaxed — what floats, floats; what sinks, sinks. Since I am wearing my semi-dry 5mm wetsuit, I am mostly floating, only the palms of my hands touch the bottom.
I am doing something called ‘Visualising’ to keep my mind from focusing on the actual activity at hand… which is holding my breath.
No, this is not actively thinking or trying to visualise something. It is literally seeing the train of thoughts passing by on the background and observing from a distance. I just let the mind focus on whatever it wants.
I kick it off by once more observing the sounds on the background, letting my mind to pick out one — motor boat passing by in the distance. While observing the sound, I put a little Buddha smile on my face and I let my mind wander.
First, I end up building a Christmas tree with my girlfriend and dancing around it. Then, I suddenly find myself gliding through tree-tops in slow motion on a some kind of a roller-coaster surrounded by mountains.
A weird feeling in my stomach starts to interrupt my happy bubble — the contractions have arrived. Around 2 minutes 50 seconds have passed.
2:50–3:30 The contractions
Human body is a very sophisticated machine. We breathe in air that contains oxygen and in our lungs the oxygen is taken into the blood and CO2 is exhausted back in it’s place. Funny enough, there are no sensors built in to detect that one is running low on oxygen but there is a very good sensory system to detect high CO2 levels in your blood.
And when the body senses higher than normal CO2 levels, it asks you: “Yo! Are you sure you don’t want to get rid of it?” by gently contracting diaphragm.
Claudia: “Give me an OK.”
I gently lift up one of my fingers. Not to flip her off, but to give a sign that everything is under control.
At first I manage to stay in my happy place. But the contractions get gradually stronger and the bubble eventually pops. I open my eyes for a slight moment and look at some debris floating in the bottom of the pool. The key now is not to tense up the muscles — every muscle that flexes in my body, uses oxygen. And I’ve heard that oxygen is good for you, so better save it. I close my eyes again. I do a body scan now. I start from my toes and relax my muscles one-by-one until I reach the tip of my head.
My body is becoming more assertive with me now: “Hey dude! Would be nice to breathe out that CO2 that has been building up here!”. I am not trying to stop the contractions from happening, I simply observe them. I use the good old Buddha smile every time one hits me.
Claudia: “Give me a OK.”
I lift my finger.
Suddenly. All muscles in my upper body contract and cramp up at the same time — I failed to stay relaxed. It felt like someone just punched me in my stomach. My mind tells me: “F**k, I’m not sure if I can continue.”… Three and a half minutes have passed and it’s time to suffer.
3:30–4:41 The fighting (suffering)
I was born in Estonia — with all the darkness, shitty weather and a long history of being occupied and suppressed by different nations, we are born to suffer. So quite naturally this is my favourite part.
I am able to relax myself a bit as my contractions continue and are more frequent than ever, but my mind is struggling a lot. It is rather difficult to stay relaxed when someone is kicking you in the stomach.
I slowly move to my fighting position — I veeeery slowly move my right leg under my body, followed by my left one. Then my right hand; and my left one. I move slowly for 2 reasons: to distract my mind for as long as I can; and to lose as little energy as possible. I am now on all fours.
Claudia: “Give me a OK.”
I lift my finger. And after a small pause I lift my finger 3 times more desperate for some encouragement. I am struggling.
Claudia: “You are doing good. You will be very happy with the result.”
That gives me extra power to go on for a bit longer. I have a few big contractions in a row — I can’t keep my muscles from tensing up anymore…
It’s over.
The recovery
I lift myself out of the water.
Claudia: “Breathe. Recovery breath. Inhale. Keep breathing.”.
I obey. I do my recovery. I breath in 5 times and letting the air out passively.
Claudia shows me the stopwatch. It’s the longest I have ever held my breath. The dial says 4:41. I can’t stop smiling.
How to get to 6 minutes?
Quite naturally one would ask: “But how do you get to 6 minutes?”
It is actually quite easy. I am doing a few things:
- Increase the lung capacity by making my upper body and diaphragm more flexible. Upper body stretching and some exercises of breathing yoga called Pranayama work as a charm.
- Get more comfortable and relaxed. The best tool here is practice. I don’t mean doing static apnea every day; I mean freediving in general. Not only you get more used to holding your breath, you also train your dive reflex which we have inherited from our common ancestors with dolphins.
- Train myself to stay more relaxed while having my contractions. CO2 tables are a great tool here. It’s a breath-holding exercise where you typically would hold breath for 60% of your maximum and then decrease your interim breathing time as you go on. My table as an example below.*
- Increase the amount of air in my lungs by using a technique called packing. The aim is to use one’s mouth as a pump to pack more air into the lung. Also used for stretching the chest which for the reason below I am probably not doing ever again.*
* Air leakage. Next blog post?
I recon if I tried it now, I could go for way more than 5 minutes. But I had a little accident using packing for stretch in combination with CO2 table on dry land and had a little hole in my lung with some air leaking to places where it is not supposed to, including my neck muscles and underneath the skin.
Like a human bubble wrap… No biggie, “just walk it off” kind of thing, but put me out of freediving for a few months. Will write a post on why and how to avoid it soon.