How Long Can You Hold Your Breath? Science-Based Guide
How long can you hold your breath? For most untrained adults, the answer is somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds. With basic training, most people can reach 2 to 3 minutes. Elite breath-hold divers routinely exceed 6 minutes, and the current world record for static apnea is an extraordinary 24 minutes 37 seconds, set by Budimir Šobat in 2024.
Whether you're simply curious or you're training to improve, understanding what happens in your body during a breath-hold — and what limits it — is the first step to extending your time.
What Happens When You Hold Your Breath
The urge to breathe isn't triggered by a lack of oxygen — it's triggered by a buildup of carbon dioxide (CO₂). As your body metabolises oxygen, CO₂ accumulates in your blood, lowers blood pH, and stimulates chemoreceptors in your brain. These receptors produce increasingly urgent contractions of your diaphragm — the familiar "urge to breathe."
This means that improving your breath-hold is largely about training your body's tolerance to elevated CO₂, not just increasing your oxygen stores. Your body has far more oxygen available than most people realise — it's the discomfort of CO₂ that makes you stop. Learn more about oxygen and CO₂ dynamics during breath-holding.
Average Breath-Hold Times
Here's what you can realistically expect at different training levels:
Untrained adults: 30–90 seconds. Most people give up at the first strong urge to breathe, well before they're in any danger.
After basic training (1–4 weeks): 1.5–3 minutes. Learning to relax through diaphragm contractions makes a dramatic difference.
Intermediate freedivers (3–12 months): 3–5 minutes. Consistent CO₂ tolerance training and relaxation techniques push the boundaries further.
Advanced/competitive freedivers: 5–8+ minutes. At this level, physiology, mental training, and years of adaptation all contribute.
These times refer to static apnea — breath-holding while stationary, face down in water, fully relaxed. Dynamic breath-holds (while swimming or diving) are significantly shorter because your muscles consume more oxygen.
World Records
Static apnea is one of the official pool disciplines in competitive freediving:
Men: 24 minutes 37 seconds — Budimir Šobat (Croatia, 2024)
Women: 9 minutes 02 seconds — Natalia Molchanova (Russia, 2013)
These records involve extensive preparation including oxygen pre-loading (breathing pure O₂ before the attempt is allowed in some record categories but not in AIDA competition), lung packing, and years of physiological adaptation. They are extraordinary achievements, not benchmarks for recreational training.
What Limits Your Breath-Hold?
CO₂ Tolerance
The biggest limiter for most people. Your body's sensitivity to rising CO₂ levels determines when the urge to breathe becomes overwhelming. The good news: CO₂ tolerance is highly trainable. Regular practice with CO₂ tables — repeated breath-holds with short rest intervals — gradually shifts your threshold.
Oxygen Stores
Your body stores oxygen in three places: your lungs (the air you inhale), your blood (bound to haemoglobin), and your muscles (bound to myoglobin). Lung volume, haemoglobin levels, and training-induced spleen contraction (which releases extra red blood cells) all affect how much oxygen you have to work with.
Metabolic Rate
The faster your body consumes oxygen, the shorter your breath-hold. This is why relaxation is paramount — tension, shivering, anxiety, and movement all increase oxygen consumption. The best breath-holders are the most relaxed.
The Mammalian Dive Reflex
When your face contacts cold water, your body triggers automatic oxygen-conserving responses: heart rate drops, blood vessels constrict in your extremities, and your spleen contracts to release extra red blood cells. This reflex can significantly extend your breath-hold compared to dry attempts. Read how the mammalian dive reflex works.
Psychology
Fear, anxiety, and the unfamiliarity of the urge to breathe cause most beginners to stop long before their physiological limit. Learning to stay calm and recognise that diaphragm contractions are uncomfortable but not dangerous is often the single biggest unlock.
How to Safely Improve Your Breath-Hold
We've written a comprehensive guide covering CO₂ tables, O₂ tables, relaxation techniques, and structured training progressions. Read our complete guide to increasing your breath-hold time.
Here's a quick summary of the key principles:
Learn diaphragmatic breathing. Full, slow belly breaths before a hold maximise the oxygen you start with and activate your parasympathetic nervous system. See our breathing techniques guide.
Practice CO₂ tolerance tables. Repeated holds with decreasing rest intervals train your body to tolerate higher CO₂ levels.
Stay relaxed. Progressive muscle relaxation, body scanning, and meditation all transfer directly to longer holds.
Use water. Face immersion (even in a bowl) triggers the dive reflex and can add 15–30% to your hold time compared to dry practice.
Never hyperventilate. Excessive deep breathing before a hold blows off CO₂ without adding oxygen, suppressing your urge to breathe and increasing blackout risk.
Safety Warning: Never practise breath-holding alone in water. Shallow water blackout can occur without warning, even in a pool or bathtub. Always have a trained buddy watching you. Read about shallow water blackout.
Breath-Hold and Freediving Depth
A longer breath-hold doesn't automatically mean deeper dives. Depth is limited by equalization, technique, and comfort as much as by air time. A 2-minute breath-hold is more than enough for dives to 20–30 metres — equalization is almost always the bottleneck, not breath-hold. Read our guide to how deep you can freedive.
Key Takeaways
Most untrained people hold their breath for 30–90 seconds; 2–3 minutes is achievable with basic training
CO₂ tolerance — not oxygen — is the primary limiter for most people
The mammalian dive reflex, relaxation, and consistent practice are your best tools
Never practise in water alone, and never hyperventilate
Breath-hold is just one piece of the freediving puzzle — equalization and technique matter just as much