Most athletes train their muscles, their cardio, and their technique. Very few train the one thing that runs out first: their breath.
When a fighter gasses out, it’s rarely because his legs are done. It’s because his breathing falls apart — mouth open, chest heaving, CO2 building up, panic creeping in, and then the hands and the legs stop working together.
That’s why we do 5 strong breath holds a day. Not a quick test. Not a casual deep breath. Five strong, controlled holds, done right, done seated, done supervised — and done every day. The result isn’t just “better breathing.” It’s better CO2 tolerance, better oxygen delivery, faster recovery between rounds, and a calmer head when the fight gets hard.
What a strong breath hold actually is
A strong breath hold is not holding your breath until you pass out. It’s not a competition to see how long you can go.
In the Oxygen Advantage system — the system Breathletics is built on — a strong hold is a hold taken after a normal exhale, held until you feel a strong desire to breathe, then recovered with normal, calm breathing before the next one.
The rules matter more than the time: BOLT 20 or higher first. Strong holds are for athletes who already have a solid baseline. If your BOLT score is under 20, you build the foundation first — light, slow, deep nasal breathing — before you go strong. Seated and supervised. Always seated, never standing on a mat, never while rolling, sparring, driving, or in water. Five reps, with recovery. Five strong holds, with 12 to 18 calm recovery breaths between each one. No rushing the recovery — the recovery is part of the training. Stop if you’re dizzy. If you feel dizzy, lightheaded, or unwell, you stop. No hold is worth pushing through that. Medical check first. If you have a medical condition, get your practitioner’s consent first. Strong holds are powerful work — they are not for pregnancy, and they are not a kids’ copy-at-home drill.
Done that way, a strong hold drops your blood oxygen for a short, controlled window — in altitude-simulation work, into the 80 to 87 percent range, simulating roughly 4,000 to 5,000 metres. Your body learns to work with less oxygen, and to tolerate more CO2, without panic. That is the training stimulus. Five times a day, every day, it adds up.
CO2 tolerance and oxygen delivery
CO2 tolerance is super important for athletes, and it’s the part most people miss. When you work hard, CO2 builds up in your blood. That build-up is what triggers the urgent feeling that you must breathe, right now. Most athletes don’t run out of oxygen first — they run out of tolerance for CO2 first, and their breathing spirals.
A single short hold, stopped at the first want to breathe, doesn’t really show CO2 building up. It stops before CO2 really stacks. Five strong holds, day after day, teach your body to stay calm while CO2 rises. You don’t panic at the first signal. You keep your breathing nasal, controlled, and efficient for longer. In a fight, that means late rounds feel less desperate — because you’ve trained in that CO2-heavy state, on purpose, in a safe seated session.
That’s why the Breathletics Test exists as a separate measurement — a sustained test that shows CO2 building up, hold after hold, like late rounds. The holds are the training. The test, on a separate non-workout day, is how you measure progress. Never test on a workout day.
This is the part that surprises people: breathing less air, more efficiently, can help your muscles get more oxygen. It’s called the Bohr effect. When CO2 rises in the blood, haemoglobin releases oxygen more readily to the working muscles. Breath Athletics’ book puts it this way: reducing inhalation effort can increase blood flow to the legs by up to 7 percent.
In plain language: if you breathe calmly through your nose, with a full diaphragm, instead of over-breathing through your mouth, your body is better at handing oxygen over where it’s needed — legs, arms, hands — instead of wasting it on the work of breathing itself. Five strong holds a day train that system. You learn to hold, to tolerate, to recover calmly, and to breathe less air for the same work. Over time, that shows up as less huffing, less panic breathing, and more work done per breath.
Altitude, repeated sprints, and recovery
When a strong hold drops your oxygen low enough, your spleen can release stored red blood cells into circulation. Breathletics’ book describes this as spleen venting: a temporary increase in blood oxygen capacity of 2.8 to 9.6 percent. It’s the same idea behind altitude training, without the plane ticket. Repeated strong holds also stimulate EPO, the hormone that drives new red blood cell production — reticulocytes take about four days to appear, so this is a long game, not a one-day trick. Five holds a day, consistently, is how you get that stimulus regularly. One hold once in a while won’t do it.
Fighters don’t need one great effort. They need the fifth effort to look like the first. That’s repeated sprint ability, and it’s where breath holds help most. In the book’s program, breath-hold sprints and repeated sprint work are used to train the body to recover and go again, and again, and again. Strong holds train the same recovery system off the mat: hold, recover calmly, hold again, recover calmly. Your body learns that the stress ends, breathing comes back under control, and you can go again. On the mat or in the ring, that translates to: you get taken down, you get up, you breathe, you go again — instead of staying in panic mode for the rest of the round. For short, high-intensity sports, the book also notes breath holds can be used once, about seven minutes before a match or event — as a prepared, trained routine, not as a new experiment on fight day.
This is the benefit fighters feel first, and it’s the one they talk about most. Between rounds, between rolls, between efforts — the athlete who can bring his breathing back down fastest thinks clearest. The 3-2-1 Corner Reset is the in-fight version of that: a short, controlled reset between rounds, not a hold while you’re fighting. Five strong holds a day train the nervous system behind that reset. You practice staying calm while your body is screaming for air, in a safe seated setting. Then, when a real fight or roll puts you in that same state, you don’t have to learn calm for the first time. You’ve already rehearsed it. That’s not just physical. It’s mental toughness, trained through the breath — and it’s why testimonials from fighters matter so much. When a fighter says, “I used to panic on bottom, now I breathe and think,” that’s the training showing up where it counts.
How to start, safely
Five strong breath holds a day is simple. Simple does not mean casual. Check your baseline first. BOLT 20 or higher before strong holds. If you’re under that, build with light, slow, deep nasal breathing first. Do them seated, supervised, in a dedicated breath session. Not while training, not while rolling, not while sparring, not while driving, not in water. Five reps. Hold strong, recover with 12 to 18 calm breaths, repeat five times. Stop if dizzy. Do them daily, but test separately. The Breathletics Test — 3 minutes beginner, 5 minutes standard — is your measurement, on a non-workout day. Training holds and testing are not the same session. Track what matters. How you recover, how calm you stay, how late rounds feel — not just how long you held. The goal is tolerance and recovery, not a longer hold at any cost.
What 5 a day will NOT do: It won’t replace your conditioning, your technique, or your coaching. It won’t make you a fighter overnight. It won’t work if you do it once, film it, and forget it. And it won’t help if you do it unsafely — standing, sparring, driving, or pushing through dizziness.
What it will do, if you do it right, every day: It will build CO2 tolerance, improve oxygen delivery, simulate altitude in a safe seated session, improve repeated sprint recovery, and give you a calmer head between rounds and between rolls. Same breath, different fight — boxing, jiu jitsu, MMA, any sport where you gas out and need to think under pressure.
If you want to learn it properly, with a coach, not just from a post: breathletics.net/boxing
Never do breathwork while driving or in water.
Turn your breath into a weapon
Sources: Breathletics Athletic Breathwork Program book (Mike Kolander) and the Oxygen Advantage Advanced Instructor Training Manual (Patrick McKeown, 2022) — BOLT and strong-hold gating, altitude simulation ranges, and safety rules are from those sources, not generic breathwork claims.
