Apnea Walks

Leigh Ewin is a certified breathwork coach trained in various breathwork techniques including the Wim Hof Method, Oxygen Advantage, Breathology, and freediving. He has spent years exploring breathwork techniques to aid in anxiety, pain, stress relief and sports and athletic performance enhancement. He also leads cold exposure retreats where attendees dive under the ice.

Overview

In this challenge, you will learn to walk a few steps without breathing. This will improve oxygen delivery within the body and mimic or simulate “altitude training”.

Foundations

Apnea refers to a temporary cessation of breathing. "Apnea training" typically refers to exercises and practices designed to improve one's tolerance to breath-holding and increase the time one can voluntarily stop breathing. This type of training is often used by free divers, swimmers or individuals who participate in sports or activities that require extended breath-holding.

The objective of apnea walks is to create an adaptive process within the body that enables you to get used to higher levels of CO2 and lower levels of oxygen. In a performance setting, it is often the case that the difference between first and second place can be just milliseconds. Working through the increased physical load (and lactic acid build-up) can make all the difference. This exercise will help your training, whether cardiovascular or strength hypertrophy training, by creating a training mechanism for the body to deal with fast-rising carbon dioxide levels.

Instructions

The method is pretty simple: you count the steps you take, between breathing in and breathing out.

You might be walking to a bus in the morning, breathing in (inhaling) then exhaling to “neutral”, not emptying the lungs – and then counting the steps you take.

It is important to remember that this isn't a breath hold – again, you take a normal breath in and then exhale to neutral – then count the number of steps you take whilst “in-between” the inhale and exhale.

Carbon dioxide is the trigger to release oxygen from the bloodstream, so this is an amazing training mechanism to maximize this effect throughout the day.

Tips & Tricks

Make sure you find the small increases or incremental improvements. Try to avoid running or taking part using strenuous physical exertion. This is the kind of “ninja biohack” where no one will likely know what you are doing!

Conclusion

Learn how to regulate your sympathetic nervous system (after counting your steps) by learning which recovery breathing works best for you. Most people find that lengthening the exhales, pushing the exhale through the lips carefully and then inhaling slowly in the same way, is the most effective way. But you can also experiment and find something that works best for you.