1.9
The Industry Has Taken Notice
Oxygen Advantage® Advanced Instructor Training is now recognised by NASM, AFAA, ACE, NSCA and CIMSPA — with credit values among the highest these bodies award to a single course.
Most fitness and wellness professionals never received formal training in breathing. Yet dysfunctional breathing affects how clients move, recover, sleep, manage stress and perform.
It's more common than most coaches realise. Patrick often points to a study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research that looked at 1,933 athletes and found that 91% had dysfunctional breathing from a biomechanical point of view. These are trained, conditioned people — and most of them had never had anyone look at how they breathe.
If you think of the best athletes, they'll have a sports psychologist, a strength and conditioning coach, a physiotherapist — various people around them. But they don't necessarily have a breathing coach.
Oxygen Advantage® was built to close that gap. And now the organisations that set the standard for fitness education have reviewed the training and put their names to it.
Reviewed, approved, and awarded
Continuing education bodies don't hand out credits on request. Each one assesses a course on its own terms: is the content relevant, credible and current? Is it pitched at experienced professionals? Who is teaching it?
"We've had our trainings looked at and examined by various organisations, both in North America and in Europe. In some of them, it's the highest number of CEUs that they award for any given programme. They've been through it, they've looked at it, they've given us feedback, and they've awarded us points on the back of it."
— Patrick McKeown
This is a signal of where the industry is heading — and of the standard the training has always been built to.
The numbers
1.9
AFAA CEUs
2.0
NSCA CEUs
7.5
ACE CECs
10
CIMSPA CPD
Breathing on the face of it is actually fairly simple. You have a breath in and you have a breath out. You could breathe faster, you could breathe slower. You could breathe higher in the upper chest, or with better recruitment of the diaphragm. You could hold your breath. You can breathe through your nose, or through your mouth. And that's pretty much it. But yet, however you change your breath can have wide-ranging effects in the human mind and body.
What you actually learn
Breathing looks simple from the outside. That's part of why it's so often taught badly.
The skill is knowing which of those levers to pull for the person in front of you — because no two people breathe the same way.
We all breathe a little bit differently. Breathing is influenced by the environment, by our experiences, by our state of health, by our genetics, by our lifestyle, by our stresses. So if you have somebody in front of you, what breathing exercises would be most appropriate for the person in front of you?
What's inside the training
The L1 Functional + L2 Advanced Instructor Training Bundle was rebuilt from the ground up in 2026: 36 structured modules, more than 100 hours of learning, and new training videos from Patrick, with the latest peer-reviewed research referenced throughout.
Level 1 Functional — Functional Breathing (50+ hours)
The foundation. Level 1 teaches you to recognise dysfunctional breathing, understand what's driving it, and retrain it — at rest, during exercise and during sleep.
- Assessment: the BOLT score, and how to identify breathing pattern disorders across all three dimensions
- The biochemical dimension: carbon dioxide, oxygen delivery and blood flow to the brain
- The biomechanical dimension: diaphragm function, intra-abdominal pressure and core stability, and the link between breathing patterns and lower back pain
- The psychophysiological dimension: the nervous system, self-regulation and heart rate variability
- Nasal breathing: why it matters at rest, in training and overnight
- Sleep: snoring, sleep-disordered breathing and the habits that support better sleep
- The female breath: how the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and menopause affect breathing
- Exercises at rest and in movement: Breathe Light, Breathe Slow and Breathe Deep, progressing from walking to jogging
- Working with clients: tailoring exercises to BOLT score, contraindications, intake forms, and running one-to-one and group sessions
Level 2 Advanced — Breathing for Performance (50+ hours)
Level 2 Advanced takes breathing into sport, high-pressure work and mental performance, across 13 specialist modules.
- Advanced assessment: the Maximum Breathlessness Test and the Nijmegen Questionnaire
- Nervous system balance: the vagus nerve, HRV, respiratory sinus arrhythmia and the baroreflex
- Breath-hold training: CO₂ tolerance, and the research on apnea training and repeated sprint ability
- Breathing and health: concussion, cerebral blood flow and cardiovascular health
- Sport-specific protocols: rugby, football, swimming, running, cycling, combat sports and high altitude
- High-pressure settings: first responders, flow states, and corporate stress and sleep
- Ready-to-use presentations for sports teams, corporate clients and group settings
Live with Patrick
Seven live two-hour sessions on Zoom with Patrick McKeown. The next run is 23–26 November and 1–3 December, 3–5pm Irish time. Every session is recorded, so you can catch up if the timing doesn't suit.
Assessed properly
To complete the training, you need at least 80% on every module assessment, plus three client case studies reviewed by the Oxygen Advantage team. That's part of what the accrediting bodies looked at — and part of why your clients can trust what you teach.
Support that continues after you finish
Ongoing refresher classes with Patrick and our Master Instructors, a private community of Advanced Instructors, and full course materials in seven languages.
How do you know that the breathing exercises that you're teaching your clients are actually improving their underlying breathing?
Built for professionals who want to lead
Whether you're credentialed with NASM, AFAA, ACE, NSCA or CIMSPA, or you work in yoga, coaching or wellness, this training counts towards your continuing education — and it fills a real gap in what most professionals were taught.
Physical exercise isn't just a training for the body. It's a training for your breathing. How do you breathe when you do physical exercise? Are you breathing through your nose? Are you breathing high, or low? How breathless are you? And where is your attention?