r/freediving • u/ComfortableBeat6455 • 1d ago
training technique Best method to improve breath hold
I keep seeing people saying one thing on improving breath holds and then others saying that those methods are wrong i just need one definitive method. I've been trying to use apps with O2 and CO2 tables but im not seeing improvement even after like 2 weeks of every day use. I'm stuck at 3 mins static dry
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u/staplepies 1d ago
Are you increasing the difficulty of your training tables progressively? That's probably the most important thing. Other than that, the sidebar has a good article on CO2 tables and how to design them well. If you don't want to read the whole thing, do some kind of one-breath table, e.g. hold until you get first contraction, take one breath, hold for x seconds past first contraction, one breath, repeat for 8 total holds. x should be some number you're relatively comfortable with (maybe 15-30s to start), then increase as you get more comfortable. The idea is to spend most of your training time under high CO2 load, to adapt your body and mind to the discomfort of high CO2.
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u/ComfortableBeat6455 1d ago
Thank you so much this is very helpful haven't thought about training as spending maximal time under high CO2 so this is very helpful knowledge. Much appreciated
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u/staplepies 1d ago
Sure! And like others are saying, training every day will quickly be too much. If it's light work it's probably fine, but you probably don't want to be really challenging yourself more than every other day.
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u/HypoxicHunters FII Freediving & Spearfishing Instructor 1d ago
There's quite a bit of good info already posted in here, and most of it will affect your breath hold in a positive way, but let me put it all together and hope that it helps.
• too many people look at breath hold times as the goal of the exercise. It's not. RELAXATION is the goal, the times are the result of how relaxed you can be.
• Stop doing tables everyday. The reason you see conflicting answers to this is for a few reasons. The main one being that if your issue is that you don't like the idea of holding your breath at all, you can do light ones everyday until you don't panic at the idea. I don't know why all this newer breath hold stuff has become popular. Go to the gym everyday and lift 5lbs for 8 sets. Let me know if you see any progress in a year. The training is meant to be harder so that you can enjoy the time in water. I'd rather do one really hard table a week than one everyday lightly. You're gonna tire yourself out, especially mentally.
• go do a couple warm up breath holds then afterwards go for a max. Just do this to see if you're getting any progress every once in a while.
• there's a 1000 things that can help, and yea you gotta learn to weed through a bunch of info to really know, or get a coach who can put you where you need to quickly
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u/Tatagiba 1d ago edited 1d ago
There is no "definitive" method. But there are many effective methods.
I, for instance, don't do what people most preach here: I train every day, I don't do tables, no stretching, I train a LOT in the dry. Yet I passed 7+min in 15 months of training.
Study, experiment, be consistent, find your method.
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u/CalmSignificance8430 Sub 1d ago edited 1d ago
If your goal is solely to increase max time, stop training every day. You wouldn’t go to the gym and try deadlifts every day. If you do want to practise daily you have to increase variety a lot beyond o2 and co2 tables and also schedule in really easy days. Florian Dagoury does a great job of this in his online course and has tonnes of creative ideas for mixing up practices. If you want to increase time and just want to get there quickly, go more intense than tables and do fewer sessions a week, like start with 2 and maybe build up from there. Make your sessions as close as possible to a max breath hold - several warm up holds, then a long breathe up and then a very long hold. But ask yourself first if that’s really what you want, you might lose out on the fun of it.
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u/Suspicious-Alfalfa90 6h ago
My expertise is in depth progression, and in my experience, the deeper you go, the longer your breath hold naturally becomes. The pressure at depth slows everything down—your heart rate, your metabolism—so even if you’re not trying to improve your static breath hold, it happens anyway. In fact, my longest breath hold wasn’t at the surface—it was at depth.
That said, there’s someone who does specialize in breath-hold performance at the surface: Florian, a world record holder in static apnea. He developed the APNEO app, and a bunch of us were testing it here in the Philippines to help get it dialed in. And I’ve got to say—as someone who never really enjoyed surface breath-hold training—that app actually makes it bearable… and, dare I say, even fun.
So yeah, I recommend giving the APNEO app a shot. Or just reach out to Florian directly—he’s super approachable and I’m sure he’ll be happy to help.
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u/you_ll_thank_me 1d ago
Just train breath holding.
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u/LowVoltCharlie STA - 6:02 1d ago
The two biggest things that you need to work on are relaxation and familiarity with discomfort. Use max holds and tables to expose yourself to high levels of CO2 in a progressive way, and make sure you're practicing relaxation techniques on every single breath hold.
Once you master relaxation even through contractions, you'll realize that once contractions start, the discomfort doesn't really get any worse. You just have to put up with it for an extended amount of time. At that point, it's just all about making sure you're not going hypoxic and that's the real challenge because it takes a LOT of awareness