22 minutes, 22 seconds

That’s how long 35 year-old German ‘free diver’ Tom Sietas held his breath underwater to break the a Guinness World Record by over 2 minutes in Changsha on May 30th.

Sietas and former world-record holder, Brazilian Ricardo Bahia are touring China for a competition promoted by a Chinese television station.

To help competitors with the task when they were first plunged into the water it was 5°C but as the challenge continued that rose to just shy of 40°C. Sietas has broken his own records on multiple occasions for the event, officially known as static apnea, since he first started doing it in 2000. But he has also earned several records for ‘dynamic apnea’ - swimming as far as possible under water without breathing. Sietas has said in the past that he does not eat for five hours before carrying out the stunts to slow his metabolism. He then fills his lungs with as much pure oxygen as he can, but even without that he once held the record for static apnea without pure oxygen first, holding his breath for 10:12mins. The current record was set by Stéphane Mifsud in 2009 with a time of 11:35mins. Sietas has a lung capacity that is 20 per cent larger than average for a person of his size and his ‘talent’ was first noticed when his scuba-diver instructor noticed his ability to hold his breath.

Holding your breath underwater is a valuable skill in Changsha as the air here is best described as soup.