I started learning about the world-record holder.
His name is Tom Sietas.
And this guy is perfectly built for holding his breath.
He's six foot four. He's 160 pounds.
And his total lung capacity is twice the size of an average person.
I'm six foot one, and fat.
We'll say big-boned.
I had to drop 50 pounds in three months.
So, everything that I put into my body, I considered as medicine.
Every bit of food was exactly what it was for its nutritional value.
I ate really small controlled portions throughout the day.
And I started to really adapt my body.
The thinner I was, the longer I was able to hold my breath.
And by eating so well and training so hard, my resting heart-rate dropped to 38 beats per minute. Which is lower than most Olympic athletes.
In four months of training, I was able to hold my breath for over seven minutes.
I wanted to try holding my breath everywhere. I wanted to try it in the most extreme situations to see if I could slow my heart rate down under duress .
I decided that I was going to break the world record live on prime-time television.
The world record was eight minutes and 58 seconds, held by Tom Sietas, that guy with the whale lungs I told you about.
I assumed that I could put a water tank at Lincoln Center
and if I stayed there a week not eating, I would get comfortable in that situation
and I would slow my metabolism , which I was sure would help me hold my breath longer than I had been able to do it.
I was completely wrong.
I entered the sphere a week before the scheduled air date.
And I thought everything seemed to be on track.
Two days before my big breath-hold attempt, for the record,
the producers of my television special thought
that just watching somebody holding their breath, and almost drowning , is too boring for television.
so, i had to add handcuffs , while holding my breath, to escape from.
this was a critical mistake.
because of the movement i was wasting oxygen.
and by seven minutes i had gone into these awful convulsions .
by 7:08 i started to black out .
and by seven minutes and 30 seconds they had to pull my body out and bring me back. i had failed on every level.
So, naturally, the only way out of the slump that I could think of was, I decided to call Oprah.
I told her that I wanted to up the ante and hold my breath longer than any human being ever had.
This was a different record.
This was a pure O2 static apnea record that Guinness had set the world record at 13 minutes.
So, basically you breathe pure O2 first, oxygenating your body, flushing out CO2, and you are able to hold much longer.
I realized that my real competition was the beaver.
In January of '08, Oprah gave me four months to prepare and train.
So, I would sleep in a hypoxic tent every night.
A hypoxic tent is a tent that simulates altitude at 15,000 feet. So, it's like base camp, Everest .
What that does is, you start building up the red blood cell count in your body, which helps you carry oxygen better.
Every morning, again, after getting out of that tent, your brain is completely wiped out .
My first attempt on pure O2, I was able to go up to 15 minutes. So, it was a pretty big success.
The neurosurgeon pulled me out of the water because in his mind, at 15 minutes your brain is done, you're brain dead.
So, he pulled me up, and I was fine.
There was one person there that was definitely not impressed.
It was my ex-girlfriend.
While I was breaking the record underwater for the first time, she was sifting through my Blackberry, checking all my messages.
My brother had a picture of it. It is really...
I then announced that I was going to go for Sietas' record, publicly.
And what he did in response, is he went on Regis and Kelly, and broke his old record.
Then his main competitor went out and broke his record.
So, he suddenly pushed the record up to 16 minutes and 32 seconds.
Which was three minutes longer than I had prepared. It was longer than the record.
I wanted to get the Science Times to document this. I wanted to get them to do a piece on it.
So, I did what any person seriously pursuing scientific advancement would do.
I walked into the New York Times offices and did card tricks to everybody.
So, I don't know if it was the magic or the lure of the Cayman Islands, but John Tierney flew down and did a piece on the seriousness of breath-holding.
While he was there, I tried to impress him, of course.
And I did a dive down to 160 feet, which is basically the height of a 16 story building, and as I was coming up, I blacked out underwater, which is really dangerous; that's how you drown. Luckily, Kirk had seen me and he swam over and pulled me up.