The duration of your breath underwater gives a huge impact on the rhythm of your movement. In this post today, our experts are going to share with you some professional yet easy-to-follow guides to hold your breath longer underwater while swimming.
If you wish to improve your swimming form and speed, keep reading.
Check How Long You Can Hold Your Breath At The Current
Prepare a timer.
Lie in a bed or sit on a chair, breath in and out gradually at your normal pace for 2-3 minutes. Now, inhale deeply and breathe out as much as possible, then, hold it whilst pressing the timer. Keep counting until you are unable to hold your breath any longer, inhale and relax.
Check the results. The more you’re able to hold now, the longer the time that you’ll hold it in the future.
For example, if it is no more than 60 seconds, chances are that you’ll reach your ability up to 3 minutes after the training.
If it’s within 90 seconds, the expected results after you take the training can be 4 minutes. 2+ minutes of the results then, you can hold your breath up to 5 minutes after training.
How To Hold Your Breath Longer Underwater While Swimming
To improve your duration of holding your breath underwater, you need to:
- Build up a tolerance of carbon dioxide
- Relax before and during your swim
- Optimize the energy used
Step 1: Adjust Your Daily Habits
Don’t use alcohol, energy drink, or caffeine before swimming
Drinking alcohol before swimming or driving is dangerous because it makes you feel confused and disoriented while underwater plus alters your sense of distance and impairs your senses.Meanwhile, caffeine or other energy drinks might make you feel overexcited or nervous before your swim. The reasons are that these beverages cause headaches, elevate your heart rate, shallow breathing, and increase muscular tension.
Not to say that all of those drinks dehydrate you.
Keeping your body appropriately hydrated before swimming is important, and the only fluid highly recommended drinking is water.
Avoid eating right before a swim
Eating before a swim is not as dangerous as that when having energy drinks or alcohol. However, it takes risks of making you drown.
The reason is during digestion, some of your blood is diverted from your muscles to the stomach whereas swimming inhibits this activity, which leads to serious cramps.
If you feel worried about being hungry while swimming, let's have a snack at least 45 minutes beforehand, and 2 hours before practicing holding your breath.
Step 2: Choose Proper Swimwear
Wearing a proper swimsuit is essential for swimmers because:
- Its material is dedicated to holding little bubbles to keep you floating so that you don’t have to use as much energy to ride back up to the water surface
- It prevents you from feeling cold, hence, your body doesn’t have to burn energy to keep you warm, which saves energy
- It helps prevent the system from shocking because of sudden outside temperature changes
While choosing swimwear, make sure to opt for those models that give you less drag and more buoyancy when you’re underwater.
Pay attention to the material thickness, too. It should be thinner on the legs and arms whilst thicker in those core areas where you need less flexibility.
Step 3: Practice Breathing Exercises
Practice holding your breath while on the dry land
Preparation: Keep yourself as relaxing as possible, which helps consume less oxygen and energy. Avoid seeing your timer as this probably makes you feel even more stressed.
How-to:
Inhale for 5 seconds, hold your breath for 1 second, and then exhale for 10 seconds.
While breathing out, remember to push the air out from deep within your diaphragm to get rid of low-quality CO2. A tip is to keep your tongue up against the teeth while you’re exhaling and you hear a hissing sound during this process.
Gradually breathe into 85% capacity. Begin from deep within your diaphragm, then to the sternum, and finally to the chest.
Hold it for the longest time possible until you feel that you can’t do it any longer, swallowing some spit will help relax your breathing reflex so you can hold your breath a bit longer.
Once it reaches your limit, exhale. Try to push as much air as possible.
The best time to practice this breathing exercise is when you first wake up because your body is still sleepy and your heart rate is slow. Your metabolism has not been activated yet so you’ll consume less energy.
After a cycle, breathe normally for 5-10 minutes before repeating. Don’t do it over three times each session, and only practice one session per day.
Practice holding your breath while underwater
Practice the same exercises as described above but underwater to allow your body to get used to the water environment.
At first, use your fingers to keep your nose shut if wanted.
In-depth exercises
Once you can hold your breath for at least 90 seconds, try these two in-depth breathing exercises if you like:
- O2 tolerance training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwyakvlQMcA
- CO2 tolerance training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4WsOd7yB-s
Extra Tips
For the best results, here are some extra tips:
- Sing in your free time to increase your lung capacity
- Learn to play a brass or wind instrument
- Take cardio workouts
- Stretch your chest and stomach
Conclusion
Above are some methods to hold your breath longer underwater while swimming. It’s essential to follow step by step for better breath-holding performance. Remember that breathing exercises take time to get good results.
Thanks for reading!
Nancy Lang
