How a Breath-Hold Champion Keeps Muscles Strong

Have you ever wondered what happens to the body when you hold your breath for a really long time? A study looked into this by observing a world champion breath-hold diver. This diver can hold their breath for over seven minutes! When we hold our breath, our body goes through two phases: easy-going and struggle. During the struggle phase, our breathing muscles start to contract on their own, even though we're not taking any breaths. This is called involuntary breathing movements (IBMs). Some people think these IBMs can tire out our breathing muscles, but no one had measured this before. So, scientists did a test with this world champion diver. They measured the strength of the diver's breathing muscles before and after a series of breath-holds. The diver did some warm-up breath-holds first, then did three really long breath-holds with breaks in between. The longest breath-hold was over seven and a half minutes! After all that, the diver's breathing muscle strength didn't change at all. This might be because the diver is really well-trained, or it could be something special about this particular diver that helps them excel in this sport. Either way, it's amazing to see what our bodies can do!