Courtesy of Tierney Blogs
David Blaine broke the Guinness world record for breath-holding today by staying underwater for 17 minutes and 4 seconds on “The Oprah Winfrey Program.”
It was quite a feat, particularly considering what “Oprah” did to his heart. When I watched him train in a swimming pool on Grand Cayman Island by doing a 16:09 breath hold, starting w his heart rate went down to 46 beats per minute right away and then stayed fairly low (sometimes up to the 60s) throughout. But he told me was concerned he’d have a tougher time slowing his heart on television, and sure enough, he did.
After he filled his lungs with pure oxygen, his heart rate remained at 130 during the second minute of the breath-hold and then stayed above 100 for much of the time. It was 124 in the 15th minute. The higher the heart rate, the more quickly oxygen is consumed, and the more painful the carbon dioxide buildup. But apparently his CO2 tolerance training (repeated breath holds every morning) was just enough to compensate. In the last minute his heart rate became erratic and he got concerned enough to start rising from the bottom of the water-filled sphere, but he kept his head underewater more than a half minute longer than the old record of 16:32.
“I really thought I was not going to make it,” he told me afterwards. “At minute 12 I felt the pain coming, and by minute 14 it was overwhelming. This was a whole other level of pain. I still feel as if somebody hit me in the stomach with the hardest punch they could.”
Besides the pressure of performing on television, he explained, there were a couple of other unexpected distractions working in the sphere: A heart-rate monitor happened to be close enough to his so that he heard its beeping, and he had to keep his feet locked in holds at the bottom of the sphere — instead of just floating freely, as he’d done in the pool on Grand Cayman. Back then he’d said he was so relaxed he “wasn’t even there” during most of the breath-hold. But when he emerged from the sphere today, he told Ms. Winfrey, “I was pretty much here the whole time.”
When she asked him what he’d been thinking about, he replied, “You.”
Mr. Blaine asked me to send his thanks to the Lab readers who encouraged him. And before today’s breath-hold, he offered an answer to readers’ questions about how and why he set out to break the world record:.
I have been fascinated by the idea of long breath-holds since I was just 5 years old. Houdini claiming to be so tough underwater
and living up to his claim inspired me as well. As a boy on the YMCA swim team in Park Slope in Brooklyn at age 5, I would win by not breathing across the length of the pool. At age 11 I was up to 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Back then I would fight to hold my breath for so long.
It wasn’t until I met Kirk Krack, my freediving coach, that taught me to relax into it. The stillness changes everything. It is much easier to go further when the condition is accepted instead of opposed. My next challenge was to control the heart rate. I found out that by doing good cardio training and not eating foods for the sake of indulgence but rather for the nutritional value the body functions like a well maintained machine.
I also use breathing techniques to control feelings, but the absence is the exact opposite. In order to go without breathing for extended periods, it is important to remove all thought as much as possible. That feeling cannot be described very well, other than I try to imagine going into the abyss of the ocean as I begin the breath hold and then everything fades slowly away.
Well, that wasn’t so easy to do today, but Mr. Blaine told me was more than satisfied with the results: “It’s better when you have to fight, anyway.”
Big Al - Support Advisory for www.MensForte.com
(Email your questions to me at bigal@mensforte.com)
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