Oxygen Advantage

“You cannot study this without trying, so you have to get into the water.”

On this edition of the Oxygen Advantage® Podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by research scientist, cold immersion specialist and author of new book ‘Winter Swimming: The Nordic Way Towards a Healthier and Happier Life’, Dr. Susanna Søberg PhD.

A scientific researcher, Susanna’s studies originally focused on metabolism and more specifically, brown fat, the body’s healthy fat that helps regulate temperature. As part of the research she started looking at how the brown fat reacts to various cold situations such as cold air on your skin or entering a cold room. This eventually led her to look at cold water immersion and ice swimming, a well-known pastime pursuit in her own home of Denmark and throughout Scandinavia.

After facing her fear and entering the water, Susanna soon learned the importance of breathing when putting the body into such an extreme environment. She says that there are big health advantages to cold water immersion and that everyone taking part could benefit greatly from learning to breathe calmly and lightly during cold water immersion.

Susanna takes Patrick and Daniel through how cold temperatures affect people differently, how important controlling your breathing is in dealing with the cold, how commonly cold water immersion is used around the world for health benefits and much more.

Winter Swimming: The Nordic Way Towards a Healthier and Happier Life is available from all good book stores.

For more information on breathing for health and performance, visit the Oxygen Advantage® website.

Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“Breathing is 50% of movement. Movement is everything.”

On the latest edition of the Oxygen Advantage podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by Mads Tömörkènyi, Copenhagen-based author and scientific researcher of biomechanics, neurophysiology and anthropology.

Mads is the author of Human Mechanics: Unleashing the Potential of a Highly Advanced Species, where he points to four main pillars of health: nutrition, breathing, movement, and sleep. Blending history and scientific evidence, Human Mechanics aims to help us “experience first hand the incredible benefits of digging deep into your biological potential”.

With a background in sports science and physical training, Mads’ studies have given him a deep understanding of the important role that breathing plays when trying to get the best out of physical movement and training.

Mads points to the importance of using the diaphragm when breathing during exercise and physical movement. He notes that too much emphasis can be put on big belly breathing which uses abdominal muscles but not the diaphragm to the same degree.

He and Patrick agree that people put too much emphasis on “the six pack” as the sign of true fitness which is not the case. In fact, they note that too much emphasis on building abs, and therefore focusing on just one group of muscles, has a negative effect on the development of core strength.

Putting a focus on breathing during physical exertion is the safest and most efficient way to build abs without neglecting the development of essential muscles.

For more information on OA, please visit our website; www.oxygenadvantage.com.

Check out Spotify or your local podcast provider to listen to more of the OA Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d

“There are three main physiological targets that you can hit when you do any sort of training session; Aerobic Target, Anaerobic Target and Neuromuscular Target.”

This week on the OA podcast Patrick and Daniel are joined by author, consultant and expert in high intensity training, Dr. Paul Laursen to talk about his work.

An avid sportsman throughout his life, Dr. Laursen describes himself as a “failed athlete” who had taken a deep interest in sports from an early age. He was able to leverage that love of sports into his successful career in medicine and sports science, specialising in High Intensity Training for his PHD.

While in a professor at Edith Cowen University in Perth, Australia, he met and carried out many clinical studies on Interval Training with his long term colleague Martin Buchheit. Following the successful publication of many papers and a large review of their work they co-wrote the very successful ‘Science and Application of High Intensity Interval Training’.

Dr. Laursen outlines some of the reasoning and methods behind his research and explains how he has started to put more of a focus in his work on breathing to see if performance can be improved at high intensity through targeting and conditioning the respiratory muscles.

“If you are terrified of vulnerability, best of luck having mental toughness.”

This week on the OA podcast Patrick and Daniel are joined by author, coach and mentor Todd Herman who trains and educates professional athletes, leaders, and public figures on performance, strategy, mind-set, and execution.

Starting a peak performance and coaching service in 1997, Todd has been closely involved in the field ever since. Despite struggles starting his business, the Canadian was able to build a strong, successful company and built a very large collection of clients across the sporting world, even to the point where he was working with different people in over 85 separate sports.

Leveraging this expertise into developing his own method for boosting athletic performance and into releasing his bestselling book ‘The Alter Ego Effect’, Todd has seen his success just grow from there.

He speaks to Patrick and Daniel about how he has started to bring breath work into his teaching and how he helps give athletes the tools they need to prepare mentally and find consistency.

James Cannings

“Kids are growing up and are now coming into the workforce. And in another ten years they're gonna make up a big part of that workforce and they're angry.”

In this week’s episode, Patrick and Daniel are joined by James Cannings, Sustainability Officer for advertising firm MSQ. James was the co-founder of MMT digital which he grew from a staff of 3 to over 100.

The company was acquired by MSQ where James now serves as Sustainability Officer. While much of his focus is on external environmental sustainability, he also points to the importance of internal sustainability as regards our own health and wellbeing.

James explains how he is role is a much newer one to the corporate world and is constantly evolving. Currently his focus is on environmental sustainability but he admits he has a “deep fascination” with broader sustainability across the supply chain, the workforce and beyond. He points out that the future for sustainability may be very positive thanks to a younger generation that are more concerned about their health and wellbeing and have seen what previous generations have done to the environment.

James also takes us through his own internal sustainability journey as he turned to yoga and better eating in his 30s as the pressure of selling his company lead to poor health and eating habits. It's a journey he says he could not have made without the help of his wife Em.

For more on the Oxygen Advantage visit www.oxygenadvantage.com.

Or check out Season 1 of the podcast at

https://open.spotify.com/show/5XTS4B3ODaEfsbNOBmYb6d.

“When you understand the principles of what you’re actually doing with your nervous system, it’s just a lot more straightforward.”

This week on the OA Podcast, Patrick and Daniel speak with yoga master, TEDx Speaker, podcaster, writer, and entrepreneur extraordinaire Lucas Rockwood.

Lucas is the successful founder of YOGABODY and since the earliest days of his love affair with yoga he has made it his goal to find out the relationship between yoga and breathing and he admits, it has not been an easy road to walk.

Yoga was the saviour of Lucas who was a very unhealthy twenty something in 2002. He worked a job he hated, was abusing drugs and alcohol and only fuelled himself with quick and easy junk food. Something had to change, and for Lucas that change came after a challenging but rewarding yoga class.

Since then, he has travelled the world to work with master yogis and continues his journey to clearly define the breathing exercises for yoga. He notes that the main focus in yoga classes is on the poses and, while essential, this can often mean participants are lacking in the specifics of how to breathe for various postures.

It a goal of his to educate the yoga community about the importance of the specific breath for the right posture.

“Stress is not just ok, stress is essential.”

This week on the OA Podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by Swedish Army Captain Niclas Wisén to speak about how breathing has become an essential part of his life both in and out of the military. A psychologist and captain in the Swedish Armed Forces with over 10 years’ experience, Niclas has been involved in the training and selection of new recruits for much of his time in the military. During this time, he has incorporated breathing as a way of improving performance and coping with stress. He outlines how things like Stress Inoculation Training (SIT) and various breathing techniques can help physically and psychologically in many facets of a soldier’s everyday life and during the rigors of military performance.

“I was not curious anymore.”

This week on the OA Podcast, Patrick and Daniel speak with retired Danish footballer Allan Gaarde to talk about how breathing helped bring back focus, motivation and fitness to his life after a career in football.

Allan enjoyed a 14-year career as a player in the beautiful game before transitioning back to the sport post-retirement as Sporting Director of top flight Danish club Aalborg BK. After leaving this post in 2019, Allan found himself ‘tired all the time’, having let a lot of his physical fitness fall by the wayside. He explains how breathing techniques brought additional motivation back into his life and helped him find a healthy balance.

“The more I’m listening to within, the better it becomes.”

This week on the OA podcast Patrick and Daniel speak to German model, health/wellness/breath coach and Oxygen Advantage Instructor, Jules Horn.

Jules speaks to Patrick and Daniel about his own life story as well as his own journey with breathing and his discovery of the Oxygen Advantage and the many health and well-being benefits that they have brought to his life.

Jules explains that finishing school at 16, he worked as an industrial mechanic for seven years before a friend encouraged him to try modelling. Since then he has worked his way up through the modelling world and is now living and working full-time in New York.

Despite a healthy life with a vegan diet, Jules says he was initially sceptical about breathing’s benefits but upon using breath holds and air hunger exercises, he began to see major improvements in breath, sleep and gut health. He explains how since then he has continued to deepen his knowledge of breathing and share this learning as a breathing instructor.

“That’s the thing I’ve probably searched for my whole life, that ability to wind down.”

In this week’s episode of the OA Podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by founder of Conscious Breathing, Anders Olsson as the “Three Breathing Nerds” delve into what started his journey into various breathing techniques and how he has used that knowledge to become a world leader on the subject.

Originally looking at breathing techniques such as Buteyko as a way of calming his racing mind, Anders even attended one of Patrick’s old Buteyko workshops in Copenhagen in 2009. “I could notice almost immediately that it gave me a new tool, an ability to unlock the turbo, to slow down.”

Anders explains the many trials and tribulations he faced on his journey, including having to sell his house in order to keep pursuing his Conscious Breathing dream, in this engaging and informative conversation with Patrick and Daniel.