Acute and chronic application of novel incremental breath-hold technique increases endurance exercise performance in healthy men and male military personnel.
Burley MJ, Wall BT, Bond B, Williams CA, Monteyne AJ, Stephens FB. · Physiological reports · 2026
We evaluated acute (Study A) and chronic (Study B) effects of a novel breath-hold technique (BHT) protocol on performance in military personnel. In Study A, 11 healthy male participants completed either rest or a 40-min BHT before 15 min steady-state (SS) cycling at 80% V̇O 2max and a 5-min time trial (TT). BHT acutely increased V̇O 2 (200.3%, p = 0.005), produced a significant rise in hemoglobin (Hb; 3%, p = 0.030), and altered end-tidal oxygen (ETO 2 ; 2.99%, p = 0.054), and lower end-tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO 2 ; 12.1%, p = 0.065), reflecting changes in pulmonary gas exchange following breath-hold exposure, during rest. During SS, blood lactate was lower with BHT (-12.2%, p = 0.051; subsample n = 3). TT work was greater after BHT (84.4 ± 12.8 kJ vs. 78 ± 13.4 kJ; p = 0.019). In Study B, 48 United States Marine Corps Officer Candidates completed 3 weeks of BHT during training, with performance assessed via 3-mile run time. Run performance improved in both groups (BHT 7.2%; CON 4.9%). Hb concentration increased in BHT (4.3%; p = 0.037), but declined in CON (-6.6%). Pre-test arterial oxygen saturation (S P O 2 ) was higher in BHT (97.7% ± 0.9% vs. 96.9% ± 1.6%; p = 0.03), while estimated partial pressures of arterial oxygen (P a O 2 ) and carbon dioxide (P a CO 2 ), used as indices of systemic gas exchange status, were similar between groups. These
Findings: suggest that acute responses to BHT may translate into adaptations when repeated, supporting BHT as an adjunct to endurance training and warranting larger, mechanistic trials.