Holding my Breath? For more than 15 minutes, IMPOSSIBLE?

Question

Hi i'm a good swimmer. I see some folks holding their breath and crossing the pool, the length is almost 25 yards. How can they do that? By the way, i watched a tv channel the other day, in that, there was some spanish guy, you're not gonna believe this, he went 80 meters under sea and came up With out an oxygen capsule! How is this possible?

Me? I just can hold my breath for like 40 seconds. And that's it. Is there anything i can do to expand that? Is it healthy? Any exercises? Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

Be very careful

I have spent years

freediving on the great barrier reef

i love it

I can freedive down to about 30 meters

yet

i have lost consciousness

a few times

and nearly died

don't push yourself

it could be a very expensive lesson

Answer 2

Not breathing when you do a 25 is really no big deal

They're called 'underwaters' in swim language ( or at least that's what my swim team calls them.)  Force yourself to hyperventilate a couple times, but as the person above said, don't over do it.

Don't look at the wall, and exhale a little bit everytime you see a marking on the bottom of the pool (some pools have lines marking distances).

Work on it, and you'll see improvement.

Oh, and don't try freediving as a little "oh i wonder if I can do this" activity.  Without someone who knows who they're doing supervising you, it can very easily become dangerous.

Answer 3

He must have been a freediver, you'd be best off asking someone who does that as it would be very dangerous for you to attempt these kind of things on your own. heres the website to point you in the right direction

Answer 4

I am not big into this because of what can happen so I am very careful and if there is any doubt or it hurts badly I come up. PS I NEVER do more than 1 length under water unless I have my coach watching us. So make sure that you have someone watching you if you are going to push your self. I can do 50 yards with out pushing my self too much.

Answer 5

Well, as long as you work towards your goal gradually, you will not injure yourself or harm your body.  These guys have been training their whole life.  My friends' dad was a professional diver and he could dive to extreme depths without oxygen masks either, at 60 he still is in amazing shape and has beaten cancer 3 times!  All i'm saying is that, in order to dive that deep, you need to be extremely fit, that's the most important thing.  Exercises?  Go to your local pool and swim underwater as much as possible, and you will improve over time, it's certain.  You have to be really determined though, it is a very unpleasant feeling when you are struggling for air.

Answer 6

Yes. It's possible. The world record is 15 minutes and 2 seconds.

Keep practicing going slightly longer every time. It's unhealthy to increase too much at once, like trying to hold it 5 minutes longer than usual.

Don't worry, you're a relatively good breath holder. I can hold mine for only a minute and one second.

Answer 7

Holding one's breath is simply NOT SAFE!  It is fun to see how long you can avoid breathing, but there are too many negative things that revolve around passing out that can occur.

If you must do this, be certain to be in an environment where you can pass out and not suffocate or hit your head and get an injury.  

I coach swimming and normally have my swimmers swim 25 yards without breathing.  There is no evidence that doing so improves your ability to hold your breath.  However, the swimmers learn that they can continue, under supervision, to exercise HARD despite the pain they are in.  

To aid in holding one's breath, you should understand what it is that stimulates your desire to take a breath.  That stimulus comes from the cellular waste product, carbon dioxide - co2).  When co2 gets into the blood, it mixes with the water in the blood and creates carbonic acid (h2co3) which lowers the pH of the blood.  You've got nerves called chemoreceptors that can sense the drop in pH.  The nerves "tell" the brain there is a drop in pH and the brain then sends messages to the heart muscle and the respiratory muscles to contract more frequently.  Thus your blood circulates faster to your lungs where you exhale the co2 and your blood pH returns to normal.

You can artificially reduce your blood co2 level by forcefully exhaling.  So, I have my swimmers blow out so hard that the water in front of their mouths splashes up.  However, I allow them to do this only 4 exhalations.  Any more and they can reduce the co2 level so low that the co2 level won't return to a high enough level quickly enough to supply blood that is oxygenated to the brain and they could pass out.

This has happened several times when the "4 breath rule" has been violated.  Fortunately, each time the swimmers were being monitored and, except for once, were never in serious danger.

I once had to revive one that had violated the "4 breath rule" as he had forcefully exhaled about 15 - 20 times.  By the time we reached him, he had not breathed for well over a minute.  He was hospitalized over night as he had some water in his lungs.  He's fine and had no ill effects.  He's now a junior in high school and recently went 48.8 in the 100 yd free.  But, when we pulled him from the pool, he was very cyanotic (blotchy blue), his eyes were rolling in his head, he was unconscious and not breathing.  I got the water out of his trachea (wind pipe) and he spontaneously began to breath.  He's a great kid and I thought he was going to die ... now no one on the team violates the 4 breath rule.

So, once again ... JUST DON'T DO IT!!