Most people can hold their breath for no longer than 90 seconds. With training, the world’s best freedivers can stretch that to over four minutes.
However, they must simultaneously use considerable strength to dive more than 100m below the water’s surface and pull themselves back up on a rope, which limits their breath-holding capacity.
Static breath-holding is a different discipline.
The world record currently sits with Croatian freediver Vitomir Maričić, who in 2025 breathed in pure oxygen before lying still on the bottom of a hotel pool for a staggering 29 minutes – four minutes longer than the previous record!
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Elijah Lewis, Durham) ‘What’s the longest you can hold your breath for?’
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