Optimise Your Breathing: Why Your BOLT Score Matters and How to Improve It

When it comes to improving well-being, focus, and physical performance, the BOLT score (Body Oxygen Level Test) is one of the simplest yet most revealing measures you can track.

It offers powerful insight into your respiratory efficiency, CO₂ tolerance, nervous system regulation, and oxygen delivery capacity, all of which are central to energy, resilience, and long-term health.

In this post, we’ll explore what the BOLT score is, why it matters for your performance and recovery, and how you can improve it with practical, science-backed strategies. Crucially, we’ll also look at why breathing efficiency reflects your whole system is functioning.

If you haven’t yet measured your BOLT score, you can learn how to do that and undertand its meaning here.

 

What Is the BOLT Score and Why Does It Matter?

The BOLT score isn’t just a number, it’s a window into how efficiently your body can breathe, deliver oxygen, and adapt under stress. It measures the length of time you can comfortably hold your breath after a normal exhalation, and it’s closely linked to:

• Respiratory health

• Carbon dioxide tolerance

• Nervous system balance

• Oxygen delivery efficiency

Together, these shape how well you perform, recover, and stay calm under pressure.

Here’s why improving your BOLT score can make a real difference:

1. Respiratory Health and Oxygen Efficiency

A higher BOLT score means your breathing is more efficient and your body can use oxygen more effectively. That translates to more energy, better endurance, and a calmer baseline, which are especially helpful for managing the pressures of daily life.

2. Carbon Dioxide Tolerance

CO₂ is often misunderstood as just a “waste gas,” but it’s essential for oxygen delivery.
Without enough CO₂, oxygen binds too tightly to your blood and struggles to reach your cells. A higher BOLT score reflects a healthier CO₂ tolerance, supporting energy production, overall metabolic health, focus and stamina.

3. Stress and Anxiety Regulation

Chronic stress often leads to dysfunctional breathing: shallow, rapid, or mouth breathing. This hyperventilation (over-breathing) lowers CO₂ levels, disrupting your nervous system’s regulation of breath and reinforcing a loop of stress reactivity.

By retraining your brain’s tolerance to CO₂, slower, deeper breathing helps reset these feedback loops. You become less reactive, calmer, and more adaptable under pressure.

4. Trackable Progress

Your BOLT score gives you a measurable way to track how your physiology is changing. Whether your goal is to feel calmer, think clearer, or perform better in sport or daily life, watching this number rise can be both motivating and validating.

5. Performance and Endurance

For active individuals, a higher BOLT score often correlates with greater stamina and reduced breathlessness during exertion. It’s a subtle but powerful marker of training adaptation, helping you train smarter, not just harder.

How to Improve Your BOLT Score:

If your BOLT score is below 20 seconds, it suggests your body has adapted to over-breathing , taking in more air than you need, disrupting CO₂ balance and oxygen delivery.

The good news is that you can retrain this pattern and notice real improvements within weeks.

1. Breathe Through Your Nose

Nasal breathing filters, warms, and humidifies air, while producing higher levels of nitric oxide, a vasodilater, improving oxygen uptake and CO₂ retention.
During exercise, ease back the intensit of your workout until nasal breathing becomes comfortable, this builds endurance and breathing control.

2. Use Your Diaphragm

Diaphragmatic breathing engages the full capacity of your lungs and slows your breathing rate.
Place one hand on your chest and one on your belly, aim for the belly to expand more with each breath.

3. Light, Slow Breathing

Breathe gently in and out through your nose for 5–6 seconds each way.
This rhythm reduces over-breathing and restores calm. Start with 5–10 minutes, 2–3 times daily.

4. Practice Breath Holds

Breath-holding after a normal exhale trains your CO₂ tolerance. Start comfortably and gradually extend the duration. Try 2–3 rounds, 2–3 times per day. You can also walk while holding your breath (one step per second), then recover with nasal breathing.

5. Exercise with Nasal Breathing

Try keeping your mouth closed during low-to-moderate intensity activity.
Notice when your body wants to switch to mouth breathing, that’s your current limit.
Over time, your tolerance will expand, improving your oxygen efficiency.

6. Manage Stress with Breath

Mindfulness and gentle breathwork help reset your stress response. Even two minutes of slower, nasal breathing can calm your heart rate and shift your nervous system from “fight-or-flight” into “rest-and-recover.”

7. Supportive Lifestyle Habits

Posture, sleep quality, hydration, and sinus health all affect your breathing.
Small daily adjustments compound over time to support optimal breathing mechanics.

How IHHT Complements Breathing Training

If you’ve ever wished you could fast-track the benefits of breath training, Intermittent Hypoxic–Hyperoxic Training (IHHT), also know as altitude training, is the technological equivalent.

IHHT exposes you to alternating low- and high-oxygen air, training your body’s oxygen-sensing and utilisation systems, the same ones your BOLT score reflects.

This process:

• Improves mitochondrial efficiency (your cells’ energy engines)

• Enhances oxygen delivery and CO₂ tolerance

• Supports autonomic nervous system balance (seen as better HRV)

In short, IHHT supplies your body with lower oxyge air so automatically prompts your body to increase Co2 tolerance. This process is far eaiser and delivers superior fast tracked results than the, sometimes long and uncomfortable, process of breathing re-training.

Why Breathing Alone Isn’t the Whole Picture

Breath training is a powerful entry point,  but it’s just one piece of the performance puzzle.
If your nervous system is still dysregulated, or your recovery strategies are helping you reach your perforamne goals, then breathing improvements in isolation can only go so far.

At BodyMindBrain, we go beyond breath training to retrain the entire system that supports it.
Through neurofeedback for brain regulation, oxygen efficiency training (IHHT), EMS strength work, and personalised recovery coaching, we restore the communication loops between brain, body, and breath.

The result is train all of you to maintain steady energy, breathing efficiency, nervous sytem regulation and  a mental clarity, even under pressure.

When to Seek Expert Support

You might benefit from guided support if:

• You struggle to sustain nasal breathing under stress

• You frequently feel stressed or anxioud

• Your BOLT score doesn’t improve after 4–6 weeks

• You experience fatigue, tension, or poor recovery despite healthy habits

These are signs that your body’s stress and oxygen systems need retraining, not just more breath practice.

Final Thoughts

Your BOLT score is far more than a breathing test. It’s a measure of your adaptability, nervous system balance, and performance potential.

By improving your breathing efficiency, CO₂ tolerance, and oxygen delivery, you unlock more energy, focus, resilience, and clarity,  the essential resources for modern performance.

Start small. Be consistent. Let your system recalibrate.

If you’re ready to go beyond breathwork and retrain your energy system at its roots, we can help.

About BodyMindBrain:

At BodyMindBrain, we help you break free from the cycle of stress and fatigue and rebuild the capacity to perform at your best. Our integrated system restores balance across mind, brain, and body, helping you recover faster, think clearer, and stay stronger under pressure.

Modern life keeps the sympathetic nervous system switched on, draining focus and slowing recovery. Using advanced, science-backed technologies, we retrain the systems that drive resilience, optimising nervous system regulation, oxygen efficiency, mitochondrial health, and physical strength.

Alongside this, we rebuild the psychological and lifestyle foundations that sustain energy,  and protect long term wellbeing.