One.

If you're like, most people, you can probably hold your breath 30 seconds, maybe a minute before you start to feel the urge to breathe.

But the truth is, most healthy people can actually hold their breath quite a bit longer than that.

Some people can hold it a lot longer.

The current world record is 11:32.

And as if that weren't ridiculous enough, some competitions allow athletes to breathe pure oxygen before their breath holds.

In 2016 spanish free diver Alex Segura used this technique to go 24 minutes and three seconds without breathing.

How is that possible to find out?

I spoke with professional free divers and researchers who study their physiology.

I also took a crash course in proper breath holding technique when I started I could hold my breath for about a minute, but by the end I was holding it way longer than I ever would have expected.

But before we get to that, let's talk about some of the science behind breath holding and why the professionals are so much better at it than the rest of us.

The reason why some people are better at holding their breath for a long time would be partly genetics and partly because of training.

That's Peter Lynn paul, he's a physician researcher at Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

He's been studying the physiology of elite breath hold divers for more than two decades.

He says that a lot of them are just physically gifted, take lung size, for example, The average human has a total lung capacity of between four and 6 L but many of the world's top free divers have lung capacities of 10 liters or more.

This isn't necessarily something that they've trained.

They were just born with big lungs on top of this.

Many professional free divers use the muscles of their mouth and throat to overfill their lungs with air.

This is called lung packing the X ray footage you see here shows an elite free diver using the technique to expand his lungs.

Several leaders beyond their normal capacity lin home also says a lot of elite breath holders have relatively slow metabolisms and relatively large blood volumes, which makes sense your blood and your lungs hold oxygen and your body consumes it.

The slower you turn through your oxygen supply, the longer you can go on a breath full of air before succumbing to unconsciousness.

But when it comes to breath holding lung size is only part of the equation.

Even more important is a physiological response called the mammalian diving reflex.

When you hold your breath, it actually causes your heart rate to slow down.

This reduces your body's oxygen consumption, and what that does is it reduces the blood flow to your legs and your arms so blood is pumped preferentially to the brain, which means that the oxygen that's in the blood and oxygen stores in the lungs is used by the brain and not consumed by your muscles.

And cold water actually amplifies the response, exposing your face to cold water, activates your trigeminal nerves.

What are your trigeminal nerves?

Take your fingers and you pinch your cheek and you feel it.

You have your trigeminal nerves to think they're responsible for sensation in your face, but they also connect to the part of your nervous system that regulates your heart.

It's not totally clear how or why this response evolved and it's found in a lot of animals, but for some reason when your trigeminal nerves get chilly, they tell your autonomic nervous system to tell your heart to slow things down and as it turns out, slowing down is probably the single most important thing you can do when you're working with a limited supply of oxygen.

I don't try to focus too hard.

This is also a sport where you can't really just push it like you can, you know, get them do a run and really pump yourself and go do it.

This is something completely the opposite.

You have to be really, really relaxed.

Serbian free diver Laina balta is a 16 time national record holder.

She showed us some of the techniques she uses to calm herself before a dive.

The most important is a series of slow, controlled inhalations called a breath up.

These help her relax and purge her lungs of carbon dioxide when she's ready to go.

She takes a series of sharp inhales using the muscles of her diaphragm to fill her lungs before topping them off with some lung packing.

Okay, these techniques take time and practice to perfect which is important because when done incorrectly they can be pretty harmful or even deadly purging too hard before a dive can cause you to black out.

Which is not something you want to do in the water.

And it's exactly why divers not only compete but practice in the company of spotters and lung packing.

I can actually tear the tissues in your lungs.

But Lindholm's says that with just a few hours of supervision and instruction, most people can actually learn to hold their breath well over two minutes.

So I gave it a shot to brian Stanley is a free diving instructor at bamboo reef dive shop in san Francisco.

He had me start by holding my breath on land with my face in a bowl of cold water.

I lasted about a minute.

But thanks to the mammalian dive response, my heart rate dropped from 74 to 51.

Next Brian had me move outside to the pool deck to hold my breath while lying down.

The idea here was to help my body relax.

This time I held my breath for just over two minutes.

Next brian taught me some basic breathing techniques to use my diaphragm to fill my lungs and to focus on relaxing and what this will do is it will help to relax your muscles, reduce any stress or tension that you have in the body and then get that heart rate lower which is key for starting your free dive.

As I held my breath, he calmly instructed me to relax every part of my body, beginning with my toes progressing up to my head and then going back down to my feet.

If you've ever taken a yoga class, it felt surprisingly similar to that before I knew it.

I had held my breath for just over three minutes.

Finally brian had me put on a wetsuit and get in the pool where we did some more breathing exercises and finally had me lie face down and hold my breath for as long as possible.

Now there's a few things going on here for starters.

Being in the pool did a lot to relieve tension throughout my body.

I found it much easier to relax while bobbing in the water than I did when I was on the pool deck and the wetsuit made me super buoyant, which helped me relax even further.

Nobody knows for sure, but the mustache probably helped you.

After two minutes in the water brian started having me signal with my finger every few seconds to let him know I was okay, We'll say this again, please never attempt this without professional supervision.

And before I knew it I had lasted three minutes and then three minutes and 30 seconds.

Then three minutes and 45 seconds.

There you go, Nice and slow.

Bring your feet in, hold, catch your breath, That was so cool.

4 16.

That's insane.

That's awesome.

4 16, Yeah.

Nice job.

Thank you so much.