On April 30, David Blaine left us breathless by staying underwater and holding his breath for 17 minutes and 4 seconds on “The Oprah Winfrey Program.” According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the previous record of 16 minutes and 32 seconds was set February 10 by Switzerland's Peter Colat.

Blaine prepared himself before performing this stunt, training with various free divers. Wearing a silver wet suit, he got into an acrylic sphere filled with 1,800 gallons of water and in the first 23 minutes he inhaled oxygen to help clean out carbon dioxide from his system. Although in the last minute his heart rate got a little erratic and worried him, he managed to pull it together and keep his head underwater a half minute more to break the old record.

“I feel great,” he said after he got out, although he wasn’t all too sure he was going to pull it off. “I actually started to doubt I was going to make it because I'd never done it with such a high heart rate,” he said, as Reuters reports.

He wasn’t the only one whose heart rate was on the edge, as Oprah was clearly very concerned about Blaine: “I'll be glad when it's over. I don't like suspense,” she told the audience during a commercial break. Stedman Graham, Oprah’s boyfriend, who is a very big fan of Blaine’s work, was also present in the audience.

After the stunt, Blaine told Winfrey that breaking the record was “a lifelong dream,” although he was hoping to make it for 23 minutes.

He was clearly getting back in shape as he joked about coming back to Winfrey’s show to get used with the surroundings, lower his heart rate and set a new record, reports The Associated Press.