When you hold your breath to the maximum your body will allow, be it underwater or just in air, you can gain a few seconds extra by slowly releasing your breath. It will feel better and your body won’t react like it is suffocating while you are doing it. Why does this happen? We’ve all tried to hold our breath for as long as we can. We take a huge intake of air and then hold it as much as we can. But, when you breathe out slowly the “air” that’s in your lungs, you don’t feel like you are going to suffocate while doing it. In fact, it’s almost like a great relief. Why is that?
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Your body doesn’t really sense “I’m out of oxygen, I need to breathe!” Instead, it realizes “There’s CO2 in my lungs, I need to breathe!”
You can use this trick to win ‘hold your breath’ contests, as you’ve noticed. Take a bunch of deep breaths (to oxygenate your blood), and then breathe out (bonus points if you can start the timer as you start to breathe, such as going underwater). Your body senses the leaving air (which is assumed to contain all your CO2), giving you the mentality to not breathe and just use up the oxygen you already have.
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