Breathwork for surfers really should be one of the first things you learn when you get serious about surfing. If you’re ready to be proactive rather than reactive to address your surfing fears such as Hold downs and Wipeouts, it’s time to educate yourself about specific breathwork for surfers exercises and techniques. Start a daily breathwork practice that is specifically for surfers will help you connect with your breath and increase your maximum resting breathhold to push yourself outside your comfort zine.
I hope you’ll agree that spending a few minutes each day breathing can have a tremendous effect on your surfing and your life. I really did a deep dive into breathwork. When I did my breathwork instructor training and breathwork certification, I became obsessed. I do breathwork everyday when I work up.
Breathing is the first thing we do when we die and the last thing we do when we leave. In between, you can chose to breathe consciously to conquer your fear instinct, diminish stress, and stay centered even in the most tremulous seas.
Activiating Your “Subconscious Autopilot:” Breath Training
Is there a way in which breathwork can serve our surfing skills? Short answer: yes there is. For the long one, you can keep on reading how Breathwork for surfers can change how you feel in the ocean.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Victor Frenkel
I recently saw an incredible video of a big wave surfer at Maui’s Jaws getting absolutely pummeled by a 30-foot monster wave. Incredibly, just before the lip of the wave detonates on his head, he stands on his board, and uses it as a diving board to dive as deep as possible. The most interesting thing about the snippet was that the surfer narrated his experience as the beatdown unfolded before my eyes. He said, “I knew the situation was serious, but something like a subconscious autopilot takes control. What followed was definitely the most aggressive beating and rag-dolling, that’s for sure.”
I’ve been surfing all my life but I’ve never gone anywhere near a 30 foot wave. Nonetheless, the sea has shaken me to my core more times than I can count. As anyone who has taken a surf lesson will tell you, the ocean can be a very, very scary place. You can cop a beating in small waves when you least expect it. You need to know how to react and control yourself at any given moment with very little warning.
This concept of a “subconscious autopilot” is where breathwork for surfers comes in. Breathwork teaches us that it is possible to respond in a calm, collected, purposeful way to our greatest fears. Breathwork creates the space between the monster waves of life and your reaction. Breathwork allows you to make the right choice no matter what is bearing down on you.
If you break it down, here’s how to get started with breathwork for surfers from 1 ft to 30 ft.
Close Your Mouth
Start here. I want you to check in with your breathing throughout the day. How are you breathing while you are reading this article, driving, sitting on your surfboard waiting for a wave, or doing exercise? If you are breathing through your mouth, you’ve got work to do.
Nasal breathing is essential to your wellbeing. Nose breathing has a whole host of benefits including better sleep, unblocked sinuses, reduced anxiety and depression, and faster recovery from physical exercise. Most important for surfers, nose breathing will help you control instinctual survival reactions and create an on-demand connection to the parasympathetic nervous system.
Mouth breathing triggers your sympathetic nervous system. Big set on the horizon? Your reptile brain brain steps in and activates your fight or flight instinct. Immediately, you start breathing quick, shallow breaths through your mouth. Your heart rate goes crazy. You either freeze and wait to be demolished or start paddling as hard as you can away from the wave. You are out of control physically and mentally.
Own Your Parasympathetic Nervous System
Contrast this state with the “subconscious autopilot” the surfer described as he took the beat down of his life. How did he survive? He trained to focus on what he could control. He activated his parasympathetic nervous system through breathing to ride it out. Way before the monster wave, he in-built an adaptation. His mind and body learned to respond to stress in a way that helped his body conserve oxygen and handle hold downs.
The surfer understood that the way our body and mind react to a situation can affect our energy and O2 consumption rate. As he saw the looming set, he breathed as deep to calm himself to conserve oxygen.
Next, he may have used affirmations or triggers like, “you’re going to be ok,” “you’ve got plenty of oxygen,” or “you’ve trained for this,” to calm his brain down. The brain uses around 25-30% of the body’s total energy and O2 consumption.
Being able to calm his mind and body, even in an incredible situation like this, can reduce the use of O2 and energy and extend your survivability time under water.
Steps for Emotional Regulation in Scary Ocean Situations
How do you stay cool as a cucumber in the water?
Become a nose breather
Learn how to relax your mind and body using deep, slow belly breathing and breath-holds on land
Rehearse stressful situations in the water
Learn how to get a full lung last breath + prevent air leaks before you go under
Learn how to take 3 -5 superventilation breaths following and before to a short intense breathhold (hold down) to safely bring ‘excess’ CO2 levels back to ‘normal’ resting levels without inducing any risk of black out. The surfer will be in a more relaxed and less stressed state.
Breathhold sprints really prepare you for a solid wipeout.
BECOMing FRIENDS WITH CO2: Co2 Tolerance Training
Many people think that CO2 is just a waste product of respiration. Little do they know that CO2 is an essential part of our body chemistry. CO2 balances your body’s PH levels, oxygenates your blood and tissues, and stabilizes and calms your neurons. To the untrained mind, CO2 is all bad. When you hold your breath, increased CO2 triggers an innate sympathetic nervous system response (fight or flight) and the fear of suffocation. That’s why many people feel anxiety or panic during breath-holds.
Surfers use breathwork to learn to withstand increasing levels of CO2 and control their natural urge to breathe in a safe way. This is known as apnea training. Building a higher CO2 tolerance allows you to keep calm and control your breathing on demand. Becoming CO2 tolerant can also improve performance. The ability to handle CO2 comes with a lower respiratory rate, a lower heart rate, better form and composure, and a more efficient use of oxygen.
CO2 tolerance training is all about controlling the urge to breathe. When you hold your breath, whether with full or empty lungs, you’ll reach a point where you feel a strong urge to breathe. This is often accompanied by spasms of your diaphragm and throat. Breath training for surfers incrementally increases the amount of time between the start of the breathhold and when the urge to breath becomes unbearable. Add stress from physical activity to breath-holding and you’ve got a recipe for preparing your body and mind for wipeouts and hold downs.
Static Apnea Training
A good place to start is doing CO2 tables and working on your static max hold. Below is an example of a beginner CO2 table that you can do at home, lying down, in a relaxed environment. After going through the table, you can spend a couple minutes relaxing your mind (breathe 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out). Then measure your maximum static breathhold. This will give you a good idea of your tolerance to CO2.
Rest
Hold
1:00
1:00
:45
1:00
:30
1:00
:15
1:00
1 breath
1:00
Beyond the basics, you need incorporate cardio like swimming, squats, or burpees with your apnea training in the water. Dedicated surfers will couple moderate to high physical activity and short breathholds to their practice either on land or in the water. It’s important to remember, if you train in water, you must train with a buddy.
Any surfer who surfs waves of consequence should consider breathwork for surfers training in the water. It’s the only way to handle situations like the one described above and survive.
Guided breathwork takes your mind to the next level.
ON YOUR WAY TO YOUR VERY OWN “SUBCONSCIOUS AUTOPILOT”
A strong foundation in breathwork gives me an invisible superpower when I am surfing. When I know that I can hold my breath for 2:00 minutes, 8 second wipeouts are laughable. Breathwork for surfers has also helped me navigate extreme physical discomfort like unmedicated childbirth. I know that breathwork is always there for me and I hope you can see what it can do for you as a surfer and human being.
Giving yourself the gift of space between stimulus and reaction is invaluable in surfing and life. Imagine if everyone could connect with their parasympathetic nervous system on demand… An endless number of arguments, fights, accidents, and drownings could be avoided. Inevitably, you’ll face unexpected situations and conflicts where knowing how to calm yourself down will be the difference between success and disaster. Building CO2 tolerance supports this mission to control your responses. You only need to do one round of Wim Hoff-style superventilation and you’ll experience the feelgood benefits of CO2!
6-Minute Breathwork for Surfers Practice
Here is a 6-Minute Breathing Routine that I use everyday to improve my breathing for surfing and prime myself for success during the day.
STEP 1 – RELAX
Sit in a comfy chair or lay on the floor. Start by taking a few deep breaths through your nose and out your mouth. Breathing deeply and slowly allows you to activate your parasympathetic system and counter your fight-or-flight instinct and stress. You can do this for 60 seconds or 10 minutes if you like. I use this practice as part of a longer meditation routine or as a standalone meditation when I am short on time. Thus, I reap the benefits twofold. First, by being able to hold my breath longer for wipeouts and hold downs while surfing and second, by connecting with my breath and the present moment to reduce stress and anxiety in my life.
STEP 2 – PRANAYAMA BREATHING
I find this kind of breathing wakes me up and energizes me. It also helps me get ready for my Practice.
STEP 3 – DIAPHRAGM PUMPS
The best way to breath is to use our diaphragm and engage our core muscles, rather than breathing shallowly. These exercises help strengthen our diaphragm muscles and a more powerful diaphragm allows for more even, rhythmic breathing in times of stress or high exertion. A stronger diaphragm also increases the uptake of oxygen and elimination of CO2, enhancing both mental and physical performance.
STEP 4 – LUNG STRETCHES
We do this exercise to improve our lung capacity by slowly stretching and strengthening our lungs. This is basically stretching for the lungs just like you’d stretch your body before you surf.
STEP 5 – BREATHHOLDS: Training to Hold Your Breath for Longer
30 Second, followed by recovery breathing
1:00 Minute, followed by recovery breathing
Go for time, followed by recovery breathing
Repeat if desired
STEP 6 – RECOVERY BREATHING
After each breathhold, when you’ve held your breath as long as you can, you take three recovery breaths. They are strong active inhales where you hold your breath at the top for one second followed by a relaxed passive exhale. This trains your body to start automatically breathing if you were held under and loss consciousness.
This is the process: Active inhale, Brief pause, Passive exhale.
After you’ve done a few rounds of Recovery Breathing. Close your eyes, breath in and out through your nose, and concentrate on relaxing and bringing your heart rate down.
Do this after every single breathhold.
STEP 7 – RECORD PROGRESS:
Keep a record of all your breathholds on our Breathhold Worksheet or in your phone to chart your progress. Can you do a long breath hold?
Breathwork is a variety of breathing techniques and exercises that involve intentionally controlling the way you breathe. To legendary big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, breathwork is ‘anytime we isolate the respiratory system.’ These exercises range in pace and affect from calming slow, deep breathing to fast super-ventilation that can bring on feelings of euphoria.
What are the Benefits of Breathwork?
Breathwork activates the parasympathetic nervous system, reducing stress and anxiety in everyday life and extreme situations. Breathwork is also said to improve focus, boost your energy levels, and enhance emotional well-being. Translation: breathwork makes you feel like a million bucks!
Is breathwork Dangerous?
In general, breathwork is pretty safe. However, if you have certain health conditions (heart conditions, respiratory conditions, or epilepsy), you are pregnant or have mental health issues, you should proceed with caution. No breathholds while pregnant. Make sure you are in a safe environment – ie have a buddy if you are in water, lie down when doing long holds.
How Often should you do breathwork?
For gentle practices like mindful breathing, box breathing, long inhales and exhales, daily practice is great. If you are training for a specific surf trip or trying to stay surf fit in general, you can also have a more vigorous daily breath holding practice including Co2 and o2 tables and static max breathholds. More intense practices like Wim Hoff can be done a couple times a week. For trauma and holotropic breathwork, use as needed but give yourself ample time to process what you experienced.
Who Shouldn’t do Breathwork?
Again, people with medical issues or who are pregnant should not do breath training.
How Long Do Surfer’s hold their breath? What Should You Aim For?
There is no magic breathhold time to strive for, everyone is different and starts with a different baseline for Co2 tolerance and lung capacity. Work up to holding your breath for :30 seconds and then a minute or longer. A 2 minute breath hold is great, but many experienced surfers aim for a 3 minute breath hold. Big wave surfers train to hold their breath for 3 minutes or longer. Remember, even the worst hold-downs usually aren’t more than 10-20 seconds, but it feels damn good to know you can hold your breath for wayyyyy longer.
What is Apnea Training?
Apnea training is specific breathing exercises to increase your ability to function without oxygen for extended periods, in other words hold your breath for longer underwater. Apnea training usually focuses on increasing lung capacity, tolerance to high levels of carbon dioxide (Co2) and to control the body’s response to lack of oxygen.
Hi tthanks for posting this