As part of our warm-up for underwater rugby, we practice holding our breath. I noticed three distinct phases that I go through each time:
First, as phase one, and without any physical exertion, holding your breath while being submerged appears easy. When practiced, 30 seconds to a minute is possible. Try it at home while sitting on your couch.
What you will notice, however, is that your heart rate will increase, and you may actually break a sweat. Holding your breath is hard work! You may be able to repeat this one more time as part of phase one, but very quickly you will feel exhausted.
What follows is phase two: You are already out of breath, and now have to hold your breath. Ten seconds now become an eternity, if you can last that long.
This is the phase when most people give up. They take a break, slow their heart down, and try again later, back in phase one. In our underwater rugby training, the warm-up exercises are designed to push through this phase, where you are challenged to keep holding your breath just a little bit longer while swimming even harder. Mind you, this becomes painful, but it is important to keep pushing.
What eventually follows is the third phase, where your lungs are “warmed up” like a muscle, and provide peak performance. Despite having just performed exhaustive physical exercise, you can now hold your breath for an extended period of time, or perform strenuous exercises while holding your breath (i.e. fight for the ball).
I found that right after playing underwater rugby, while I am still in phase three but had a chance to slow my heart rate, I can hold my breath for two to three minutes without even noticing it.
Even as people become better at holding their breath through playing, they still have to go through these three phases when warming up. But, as they get better, the durations of breath-holding in each phase become longer. It is, however, still painful to push through phase two. It does help to know, from experience, what lies on the other side.
** As a note of caution: if you ever want to try out breath-holding in a pool, never ever do so without supervision! **