Oxygen Program

This is from the book called The Oxygen Advantage that I highly recommend you read. It has changed the way I look at not only training but life in general. This is a 260 page book taken down to the basics so I highly recommend reading the book as it is filled with so much value that you can take real time off your swim, bike and run without the stress of actually doing the extra miles.

The main areas of what this program is created around is
• Body Oxygen Level Tests (BOLT)
• Nasial Breathing
• Breathe light, breathe right
• Strategic breath holding

There are a number of benefits you should expect to receive from this program like

• Improved anaerobic and aerobic energy supply system, allowing for greater endurance, strength, speed and power.
• Faster VO2 kinetics, allowing the blood to carry more oxygen to the muscles.
• Increase tolerance to high-intensity exercise.
• Decrease recovery time
• Reduced lactic acid build-up
• Improved oxygen of active muscles,
• Increase in natural Erythropoietin (EPO)
The Program
For the next 14 days, I want you to aim and do this every day and after the 14 days are up, you can make up your own mind whether you would like to continue or quit.

BOLT – Between 10-12 minutes
• Gently exhale and pinch nose
• Time how long you hold and you start breathing at a “normal rate”. If you inhale with a large breath, you most likely held your breath for too long.
• 30 seconds of normal nasial breathing and repeat ten times.
**** Ideally you want to increase this number to 40 seconds or longer. Don’t stress if you can only do 10-20 seconds at first, you should see great improvements within a days****

Warm ups in training (Don’t do this if your average BOLT is 10 or less)
During your warm ups in training, include a half a dozen of breath holds with around 30 seconds normal breathing between each one. No need to times these. Each breath hold you should have no oxygen in your lungs.

Altitude Simulation Session
The other breath hold session is Altitude Simulation Session that can be carried out a few ways (walking, running, cycling. Swimming as well as an advanced running session) but just start with the walking session as this is a session you can do anywhere without any impact to your recovery or needing to add another training session.
Walking: Walk 2min, exhale & pinch nose, walk to medium to strong breath is needed and start breathing with short sips of breaths for 15 seconds then normal breathing for 30 seconds. Repeat this for 8-10 times.
What you are doing here is getting red blood cells to be released from your spleen.

Nasal Breathing
This is the most important thing you can do during rest (awake and sleep) and as much as possible during training. Most people take in too much oxygen and often through their mouth and this is not a correct way to breath.
This list of benefits of nasal breathing versus mouth breathing in everyday life a crazy long.

Summary
Personally I saw around 10 seconds per 100m taken off my swim time over a 500m time trial. I have found I am significantly more efficient cycling and running uphills. For the athletes who I coach that have completed the 14 days have all seen improvements with one seeing major improvements in his FTP in under a month.
If you do continue the oxygen program past the 14 days, you really need to read the book so you can get a greater understanding of the science and for further information, tips and exercises.

Tim Egge – tim@trainsmooth.com