You just found out your BOLT score.

That number tells you something most training programs never measure — how well your body handles CO2 build-up under pressure. And that has a direct line to how you perform.

BOLT — Body Oxygen Level Test — measures CO2 tolerance. The practical version: a low score means your brain signals "I need air" earlier than your body actually requires it. On the mat, that's the gas-out in round two that isn't really about fitness. In daily life, it's the stress response firing when there's no real threat. Same mechanism, different context.

The good news — it's trainable. Functional breathwork can move that number, often within weeks.

Why it matters for performance

CO2 tolerance is the thing underneath your conditioning. You can be fit and still have poor CO2 tolerance — it's a separate system, and it's the reason some athletes stay composed deep into a hard round while others fade even with similar fitness levels. A higher BOLT score means a higher threshold before your nervous system hits the panic button. That translates directly into staying calm in bad positions, recovering faster between rounds, and having more in the tank when it matters.

It also matters off the mat. The same CO2 tolerance that determines how you handle round three determines how you handle a stressful day. Same system, same training.

What determines your score

Your BOLT score reflects training history, breathing pattern, and stress load combined. Most people — including trained athletes — test for the first time and are surprised by how low their number is. It's not a fitness gap. It's a breathing gap, and almost nobody trains it directly.

What I do with that number

I'm Everett — Oxygen Advantage Level 1 Instructor, Breath is Life Pranayama Instructor, and Cert IV Sports Nutrition Advisor. I train BJJ myself, which is where a lot of this work started — figuring out why I'd gas out in positions that had nothing to do with how hard I'd trained.

The Kensho System combines functional breathwork, pranayama, and nutrition into one protocol built around your specific BOLT score, your training load, and what you're trying to perform at. For athletes that means CO2 tolerance work, recovery breathing between rounds, and position-specific practice under simulated pressure. For anyone managing high stress alongside training, it means the same tools applied to a different context — your nervous system doesn't know the difference between a bad scramble and a bad day.

Progress is tracked. Your BOLT score is retested through the program, so you'll know exactly whether it's working, not just whether it feels like it is.

What's next

Book a session and we'll go deeper than the 60-second version — full assessment, a protocol built around your training and your goals, and a clear way to measure whether it's actually working.