Dry-land breath-hold training for spearfishing, surfing and pool events

Dry-land CO2 tables build tolerance to the urge to breathe. Dry O2 tables extend the hold at a fixed recovery. That is the part of water performance you can train alone, on land. It will not teach equalising, finning, or composure under a breaking wave. Never move any of this into water without a trained buddy.

Off-season, or the pool is closed: the dry table itself does not change. What changes is its shape, and the false comfort you have to give up.

Pick your trigger

• Spearfishing bottom time, if the day is sixty dives rather than one big one.
• Surf hold-downs, if your hold starts after a wipeout.
• Military and pool selection events, if there is a date on the calendar.
• Coached hypoxic swim sets, if someone else is setting the underwater repeats.

Spearfishing bottom time

Run a CO2 table: the hold stays the same every round, the rest shrinks. Three or four sessions a week. In the training plan builder, choose the spearfishing goal and four days a week.

Do not rely on your dry max as a bottom-time number. Work at the bottom spends oxygen that a seated hold never charges you for, so the water figure is always the smaller one.

The DAN Annual Diving Report, 2018 edition, counted 855 breath-hold diving incidents between 2004 and 2016, 78% of them fatal, with most fatal cases in snorkelling and spearfishing.

Do not run a table in water alone. Shallow water blackout gives no reliable warning, and it takes divers near the surface, when the dive already looks finished. The breath-hold safety guide has the buddy rule. Shallow water blackout gives no reliable warning; what it is and why is worth reading first.

Surf hold-downs

The same CO2 table, plus one weekly session started straight after light exertion. Stay dry, seated and stable for that one. In the training plan builder, choose the spearfishing goal and three days a week. There is no surf goal in the builder; that table shape is the closest match to what a hold-down asks of you.

Do not rely on a calm seated hold as evidence of what you can do after a wipeout. The hold-down begins with your heart rate near its maximum and your breath already spent. A dry table trains the discomfort. It does not train the shock.

Instructors teach the in-water half, in water. Ocean Freediving International in Hawaii runs its breath-hold surf survival course over about four days, with confined-water and open-water sessions, capped at six students per instructor.

The table does not go into the sea with you unless someone competent goes too. Shallow water blackout is the reason nobody trains alone in water, and the breath-hold safety guide sets out what a trained buddy has to do. Read what shallow water blackout is before you take a table anywhere near the sea.

Military and pool selection events

Selection is a pass or fail date, so count backwards from it. CO2 tables for the early blocks, then an O2 table for the last one: recovery fixed, hold growing. In the training plan builder, choose the static goal, four or five days a week, six weeks. Do not try to peak in the week of the event.

Do not rely on the pool to let you rehearse. US Navy MWR pool rules at Guantanamo Bay state that "hypoxic training (excessive underwater breath holding) is not allowed at any time". The rule is there because blackout in a pool has killed swimmers.

Fitness and motivation buy you nothing here. Never train the hold in water alone, because shallow water blackout arrives with no stage you can act on. The breath-hold safety guide covers supervision. Shallow water blackout is what the pool rule exists to prevent.

Coached hypoxic swim sets

Move the breath-hold work to dry land, on non-pool days. Run the CO2 table there, never at the poolside. In the training plan builder, choose the CO2 tolerance goal and three days a week.

Do not rely on a set being safe because a coach wrote it. The Australian Institute of Sport position statement on breath-hold training says such training should never be undertaken in unsupervised environments, because of blackout and drowning risk, and that arterial oxygen left low by one hold raises the risk on the next.

Stavrou and colleagues followed 28 youth fin-swimmers over 16 weeks in the Journal of Human Kinetics, 2015, with breath-holding on 40% of each session. The breath-holding group improved 50 m by 4.7% against 3.1% for the free-breathing control, and 400 m by 6.0% against 2.8%. One trial, one age group, and an in-water protocol. It is not evidence that dry tables produce the same result.

Never let a swimmer hold their breath underwater alone, in a lane or at the wall. Shallow water blackout is why. Give a coach the breath-hold safety guide. Show them shallow water blackout too, because that is the mechanism.

What dry training does not solve

A dry table teaches nothing about equalising, finning efficiency, buoyancy, rescue, or staying composed under a breaking wave. You learn those in water, with a qualified person watching.

BreathHold publishes no bottom time and no hold-down duration you can expect from this. No first-party analysis stands behind such a number, so there is no number. Research on apnea training and sports performance is mixed and protocol-specific: reviews report possible benefits for some outcomes while calling for better-defined protocols.

Learn the in-water part from a certified freediving instructor. The freediving schools map lists supervised instruction, and the breath-hold safety guide explains why an app or a timer is not supervision. The single risk to understand first is shallow water blackout.

What this is based on

• The Culture of Freediving Safety, Peter Zuccarini, DAN Alert Diver, 11 March 2026: never dive alone, even for training, and one up, one down.
• Standard Safe Diving Practices, Jen Clent, PADI Pros Blog, 30 March 2016: a certification agency requiring a trained buddy and an escorted ascent.
• Breath Hold Training position statement, Australian Institute of Sport.
• Effects of intermittent breath-holding training, Stavrou, Toubekis and Karetsi, Journal of Human Kinetics, 2015.
• DAN Annual Diving Report, 2018 edition, covering 2016 data.
• Pool Rules and Policies, US Navy MWR, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

Written by MJ Kühn, Freediving Instructor Trainer and Functional Breath Coach. Last reviewed 10 September 2026, review due by 10 March 2027.

Next step

• Build the block with the training plan builder.
• Set a starting hold with the CO2 baseline test.
• Generate the session with the CO2 table generator or the O2 table generator.