Oxygen Advantage

“This is an amazing new planet you are landing on.”

This week on the OA Podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by Finnish ice swimmer Magnus Appelberg to discuss his new book, ‘Ice-cold piece of mind’ and his incredible journey through the freezing world of ice baths and ice swimming.

He outlines how he trained himself to calm the body’s natural panic state when entering freezing cold water and used it to develop his ‘Ice Lab Method’.

Similarly, he explains how he uses his exercises to train the body’s ‘fight or flight’ reaction to ice cold water and how learning to control this reaction and reach a certain level of relaxation can have huge benefits for our health.

“If I exhale at the wrong part of the movement, I’ll jeopardise my technique and there goes my efficiency.”

In this week’s episode, Patrick and Daniel are joined by Swedish CrossFit athlete Simon Mäntylä to discuss his career and the training required to be a top-level competitor. Starting in 2012, Simon had no competitive outlet for the variety of gym work he was doing at the time. Some friends in his local gym introduced him to CrossFit and after a short time found he had a knack for it and has competed ever since both in Sweden and internationally.

Simon outlines his journey to his current fitness obsession, the level of training he has to go through on an average week (a minimum of 11 different training sessions!) and the kinds of work expected of a CrossFit athlete at the highest level.

“Physical fitness is far from everything. You need spiritual, mental and emotional fitness also.”

This week on the OA podcast Patrick and Daniel are joined by Anna West, founding board member of the Global Wellness Summit and VP for Six Senses Spa brand of luxury hotels where the message is ‘Integrated wellness’.

Anna outlines how she became a wellness pioneer when setting up a series of successful businesses built around health in Sweden and how she used that knowledge to set up the Six Senses brand of luxury hotels with over 30 locations worldwide. She also outlines the chain’s initiatives to reduce its impact on the environment with goals to be plastic free by 2022, bottling their own water to reduce plastic waste and even hosting chicken farms and vegetable gardens on their sites where guests can collect their own ingredients to enjoy a sustainable, farm to table experience.

“It was my breathing outside the water that influenced my breathing inside the water.”

This week, Patrick and Daniel are joined by multiple World Champion free-diver Karoline Meyer to talk about how breath control has benefited her life and career diving to incredible, World Record-breaking depths, without breathing equipment.

The Brazilian national takes us through her training regime and explains how she began using breath control as part of her dive training. She outlines the kinds of complex physical and psychological training and breath control techniques she has utilised to make her a leader in the field.

“I would have loved to have discovered [breathing/mindfulness] when I was 25… This would have made a difference for me, for everything else that I did.”

In this week’s episode of the Oxygen Advantage podcast, Patrick and Daniel are joined by former NHL professional, two time Stanley Cup winner and Olympic runner-up Johnny Oduya. Making is way through the Swedish professional scene, Johnny made it to the National Hockey League (NHL), the world leader in ice hockey in his early 20s, reaching an apex in the 2013 and 2015 seasons when he won the league’s highest honour, the Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Despite his renown as an elite level ice hockey player, the Swede has taken a huge interest in mindfulness and breathing in recent years, leading to the opening of his own ‘HALE’ studios in Sweden. He takes Daniel and Patrick on his journey to finding focus and how important mental focus is for athletes.

“Recovery didn’t really start to speed up until I understood what had happened to me and before I started to change my life in a better way.”

In this week’s episode of the OA Podcast, Patrick and Daniel speak with former professional tennis player and successful businessman Robin Söderling. The Swedish ace started playing professionally in 2001 and reached the top of his field in tennis, playing all over the world and competing in two consecutive French Open finals (2009/2010). His career reached its apex in 2010 when he was ranked world number 4 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). However, in that time he says he was so obsessed with tennis and his performance that it started to negatively affect him mentally. He explains how, his tennis career was sadly cut short in 2012 after he contracted mononucleosis, a persistent illness that prevented him from playing until his eventual retirement in 2015 at just 26. On top of that he suffered regularly from anxiety and panic attacks, starting in 2011. He tells Patrick and Daniel how he was able to use breathing to deal with his anxiety and use the lessons learned to continue to build a successful business career in tennis equipment.

“I love to work hard, but for me it was more about making sure I could fortify myself.”

In this week’s episode, Patrick and Daniel are joined by elite Australian CrossFit athlete and author James Newbury to discuss his life and career and the benefits that breathing techniques have provided him.

Four times named Australia’s fittest man, James first discovered breathing techniques in 2016 “passively” and after his first rookie year competing in CrossFit, he looked into breathing more deeply to improve his performance, endurance and recovery.

“And it just flourished from there,” he explains. He says his methods were questioned initially by fellow competitors when he would utilise breathing techniques prior to events but after his times improved and he moved up the rankings he says this way of thinking started to change.

James explains how he has managed to remain positive despite a massive setback which hit him following an excellent season in 2019. He outlines how during mountain bike training for an Iron Man triathlon, he crashed his bike into a tree and suffered a punctured lung, mild concussion and a broken back. He tells Patrick and Daniel how he dealt with this setback and how he was able to motivate his recovery through breathing and mental fortitude and actually take part in that Iron Man triathlon only five weeks later.

In this conversation with Bellator professional fighter Georgi Karakhanyan and sports performance specialist Melissa Prieto you can learn the best breathing protocols for MMA fighters, how to use breathing during training camps and why breathing is so crucial during MMA fights.

The Sports Performance Specialist, Melissa Prieto, and the Meditation Guide Lucas Osorio meet to talk about why female breathing is different, based on science and their experience as Master Instructors of the Oxygen Advantage Method.

Learn how you can use your breathing to mitigate premenstrual cycle symptoms.

Hear in this breathtaking conversation how David Smith, Nike Athlete, Speaker, and winner of a Gold Medal at the 2012 Summer Paralympics, how sports burnout can affect athlete's health, how to manage a crisis, and go beyond your limits even when you feel that your body can't.