Adam Ludwin on the One Thing You’re Doing 20,000 Times a Day That’s Limiting Your Race Performance (and How to Fix It)

THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST

Dominic Schlueter

Running, Sports

4.8 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the way you breathe is holding you back?

In this episode, we chat with Adam Ludwin, founder and CEO of FivePointFive, a science-backed breathwork app built for athletes and everyday high performers.

Before launching FivePointFive, Adam scaled his first company, Captify Technologies, to 300 employees across 13 countries and led it to a 9-figure exit. But after facing personal burnout, he shifted focus: from chasing growth to rebuilding health.

That turning point led him to the world of breathwork, where he trained under global expert Patrick McKeown and set out to build a tool that makes high-performance breathing accessible, measurable, and actually enjoyable.

Adam breaks down why most people are breathing wrong without knowing it, how elite athletes train their breath like a muscle, and how 90 seconds of targeted breathing can shift your nervous system, boost sleep quality, and sharpen mental focus.

He shares the vision behind FivePointFive: combining rhythm, music, visuals, and wearable tech data to personalize every breath. They also explore why breath is the next performance frontier—and how integrating it into sports, schools, and everyday life could change the way we train, recover, and live.

Whether you're a runner, a coach, or just tired of waking up exhausted, this conversation will make you rethink something you do 20,000 times a day without noticing.

In today's conversation, we dive deep into breathing, its effect on sleep, workout / race performance, his company FivePointFive, tips and tricks you can implement TODAY.

This one is powerful. It's one of those podcasts where you listen and you make immediate changes in your life.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What we need to remember is that when we're in a state of stress, our body reacts.
0:05.0	There's a physiological effect that comes from that stress.
0:08.0	So we can't stop the stresses that life brings, but we can stop the physiological negative effects that come from that stress.
0:16.0	A little stress is actually not bad. People think we can't be stressed in life.
0:20.0	Actually, no, stress is a little stress is quite good. The thing that you need to have is actually not bad. People think we can't be stressed in life. Actually, no, a little stress is quite good.
0:22.4	The thing that you need to have is a down regulator.
0:25.1	How can you offset that stress?
0:26.9	That's what's critical.
0:28.5	And breath work is certainly the easiest tool to do that.
0:43.6	I'm going to make a guess. Most of you right now are not aware that depending on whether your mouth is open or closed during sleep, it affects the quality of sleep. If you breathe
0:48.4	through your nose versus your mouth, it changes your facial structure. The way that breathing
0:52.6	changes stress, the way that it changes
0:54.8	training, racing. Everything underneath the sun, we are here to uncover with Adam Ludwin,
1:00.2	who is the founder and CEO of 5.5, which is a science-backed breathwork app built for athletes
1:05.7	and everyday high performers. Genuinely, in the 45 to 50 minute conversation I have here
1:10.6	with Adam, I learned an unfathomable amount about breathing.
1:14.4	And there are many things I'm implementing out of this conversation, including breathwork techniques, buying mouth tape for sleep, and a few others that I'll keep intentionally beg so you listen to this conversation that are going to radically impact how I live my life. And so today's conversation is high value for the amount of time you are spending with me. And I hope you guys enjoy this one. If you do, share it with a friend of him and member, a teammate, someone who you think would find value and benefit from it. Give us a five-star review. It takes three to five seconds to do and follow the podcast wherever you listen so you don't miss more episodes
1:44.5	like these in the future. And then Adam was actually gracious enough post conversation to give you guys
1:49.4	out there to try the app for seven days free with the code, the running effect seven. Again,
1:54.9	that is the running effect seven in all caps to try his app for free for seven days. I'm personally going to get on the app after this conversation to at least try it out.
2:03.7	I mean, I'm just fascinated by a lot of the science and the things Adam taught me.
2:07.3	So if you want to try it out, try 5.5 out.
	...

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