Dive Training Blogs
Improving your dive performance and comfort isn’t a massive stretch
By Kristen Fassolas
Stretching isn’t just for those who don tight leggings and own a yoga mat. Good flexibility can help improve your scuba diving experience and performance.
- Do you sometimes struggle to put on your wetsuit or your BC or harness?
- Do you find it hard to reach down to put on your fins?
- Is it difficult to bend down with your gear on to reach for something you have dropped?
- Are entries and exits into or out of the boat or water difficult?
- Would you like to be able to reach your own tank valve if required?
- Is just turning around to look at your buddy difficult?
- Do you suffer from lower back pain?
If the answer to any of these is yes, you should work on improving your flexibility. Having a healthy range of motion can help with all of the above. This even includes lower back pain. It can also improve your daily life and help to prevent injuries. Taking the time to stretch even helps clear the mind.
Stretching is most effective when your muscles are warmed up. Before you stretch, complete your usual exercise routine. If you simply want to have a stretching session, do a light warm up first. This can consist of a few minutes of gentle jogging on the spot, some arm circles and some hip circles. This will get the blood flowing.
To ensure progress, aim to complete the following stretches every day or at least every other day. If done frequently, they will also help to avoid cramps from tight muscles and ease tension in your body.
Once in position, hold the stretch for 20 to 30 seconds. No stretch should be painful. If it is, adjust the intensity when you need to. Never pull or push through pain. Inhale and exhale deeply while holding the stretch, relaxing further with each exhale. Perform each stretch twice.
Chest and shoulder stretch
Stand in the middle of a doorway with one foot in front of the other. Bend your elbows in a 90-degree angle. Place your forearms on each side of the doorway. Shift your weight onto your front leg, leaning forward, until you feel a stretch in your chest and shoulder muscles.
Triceps stretch
Raise one arm up into the air. Then place the palm of your hand on your neck or back as low as possible. While doing so, keep your elbow pointing towards the ceiling. Use your other arm to gently pull your elbow back to increase the stretch. Repeat with the other arm.
Glute (buttock) stretch
Lie on your back and bring your knees up to your chest. Cross your right leg over your left thigh. Grasp the back of your left thigh with both hands. Pull your left leg toward your chest. Repeat with your opposite leg.
Quad (front thigh) stretch
Lie on your right side. Grab the top of your left foot and gently pull your heel towards your left buttock. Keep your knees touching. This will stretch the front of your thigh. Repeat on the other side.
Hamstring (back of thigh) stretch
Lie on your back and raise your right leg. Keep your left leg bent with your foot on the floor. Pull your right leg towards you, holding your thigh or calf and keeping the leg straight. Repeat with your opposite leg.
Calf stretch
Put your right leg forward, keeping it bent, and lean forwards slightly. Keep your left leg straight and try to lower your left heel to the ground. Repeat with your opposite leg.
Make stretching a new habit. Remember, good flexibility translates into a greater freedom of movement. It helps prevent injury and improves your performance and comfort both above and below the surface.
To find out more about International Training, visit www.tdisdi.com.
Article by José Pablo Mir
Pictures by Cezary Abramowski
The world of technical diving is exciting. It opens the door to new sites, depths, and bottom times. More importantly, it opens our minds to a new way of planning, facing, and experiencing dives, even those not purely technical.
Becoming a technical diver is a process, and like in other aspects of life, we should find the proper entry point that suits us best based on our knowledge and experience. The Introduction to Technical Diving course from TDI -the world’s largest and most recognized technical diving teaching organization- is the best option for divers who have yet to gain experience in the fundamental aspects of this new practice. The course’s content and its embrace of new techniques and technologies make it possible to acquire a solid foundation to learn and gain experience in this practice properly.
Becoming a technical diver is not something that happens overnight, whether deciding to become one or receiving a certification card stating we are now technical divers. It is a slow process extending farther away than any introductory course. It requires effort and dedication. But it will bring us satisfaction from day one -or two.
It is a matter of mentality
First, we must understand and accept that technical diving, involving greater depths, longer bottom times, exotic gases, virtual or real ceilings, and more, comes with higher levels of risk than the sport diving we have been practicing until now.
Although this discussion usually starts with a warning about risks, as I’ve done in the previous sentence, our practice is not a game of chance.
Technical diving is a rational activity that requires maturity and good judgment, and we will put everything into ensuring that each dive is a successful one -meaning we return from it safe and sound. With this understanding, we will strive to establish a mental attitude more aligned with our practice and its realities.
This new “technical diver” mindset we will develop will lead us to be more cautious in our executions, more analytical in our plans, more rational in our strategies, and more detailed in our procedures.
Experience will keep teaching us to know ourselves better, to keep our anxiety and other emotions under control, and to manage our impulses. Over time, our senses will sharpen, and we will be more attentive to the particulars of the situation we find ourselves in.
Strategies and procedures
Our strategies, those broad guiding lines tracing the path to follow, from how to approach planning to where, with what, and how we are willing to get there, will be more specific and more practical. Not because they magically become so, but because we will consciously and deliberately frame them that way.
We will establish clear, concise, and realistic procedures. Not only for the undesirable situations that may present themselves but also for those that are part of our dive objectives.
Even though, as technical divers, we often use equipment different from what we were previously accustomed to, it is essential to note that the gear does not make the diver. In a way, we could consider such equipment as the necessary tools to implement what our goal seeks to achieve, according to our strategies and procedures.
Technique plays an important role
We must put our greatest effort into learning and perfecting the different techniques we will be acquiring. Buoyancy, trim, propulsion, cylinder handling, deploying DSMBs and lift bags, valve drills, and more are essential skills we must begin to master to progress in our art. What we cannot do, when we need to do it, can harm us.
Our techniques must be effective and achieve the purpose for which they were devised. But they must also be efficient and require the least resources possible, including the time they take and the effort they demand. Effectiveness and efficiency will prevail over beauty and other considerations that may come to mind, although none of them should be mutually exclusive. A technique executed efficiently and effectively tends to have an inherent beauty.
Refining techniques is a lifelong mission. Some of them will be easy to master from the go; others, on the other hand, will be our life mission and will require many repetitions just to resemble the idea we have in mind of how they should be executed.
We must consider the environment
Our learning, the needs and musts of the practice we engage in, the experience we gradually gain, our strategies and procedures, and even our equipment and tools change with the environment.
Diving in the ocean, everything about us must be suitable for ocean dives. Conditions there rarely emulate those found in a pool, lake, or river. Variable winds and currents, greater depths, visibility conditions, other divers with uncertain skills around us, marine life, maritime traffic, distance from the coast, and many other factors add complexity and uncertainty.
It is never necessary to master the pool on the first day, but planning and aspiring to gradually cope with the ocean’s conditions is essential.
The cost of good training
We are aware that our resources are often scarce in relation to the possibilities of use we could give them if they were not. To a greater or lesser extent, we are part of the economic reality in which we are embedded.
Fortunately, the cost of good technical diver training is not an entry barrier. Comparing training and equipment costs, we see that the former are generally lower. Yes, lower cost for personalized service, essential to our future
performance and safety, than for a series of mass-produced products that are mere, albeit necessary, tools for an end.
The value of good training
The value of the training we received encompasses a range of characteristics, from emotional and methodological to technical and technological. TDI and its Introduction to Technical Diving course offer a deep and modern approach, with a teaching strategy that aims to create thinking divers, not merely obedient ones.
As technical divers, our knowledge is our primary tool. In this type of activity, what we don’t know can harm us.
Is this course optional?
Unfortunately, the fact that this Introduction to Technical Diving course is not a prerequisite for any subsequent training is an invitation to consider it optional. And we all know what usually happens to “optional” under budget constraints.
However, this course should be seen as optional only by those divers who are somehow familiar with the use of technical equipment, who have a mindset more in line with the requirements of this type of diving, who plan and execute the dives the proper “technical” way, who know their gas consumption rate, who are not intimidated by non-decompression tables, who feel comfortable using their dive computers, and know the techniques and have at least an acceptable level of buoyancy, positioning, and propulsion. Those can go straight to a more advanced training course, such as TDI’s Advanced Nitrox.
We must ask ourselves whether or not we are in that group.
Remember our goal: to have fun
Recreational diving is our passion. Jumping into the water carrying heavy equipment and having properly dotted our I’s and crossed our T’s have only one ultimate goal: fun. This is the activity we have chosen as a hobby. We must enjoy it; it must give us pleasure and make us vibrate.
Having a good time is not optional!
Dive Friends teaches the Instructor Development Course (IDC) several times a year to students who are eager to share their passion for diving with the world.
Dive Friends is known for the personal approach throughout the course. Their in-house course director will lead the students through every essential step, mentoring them to achieve their fullest potential as a dive instructor.
Applications for the following IDC start dates are now open:
- 12 April
- 5 July,
- 20 September
- 29 November
Partnership with Casita Palma
If the student opts for the IDC-Deluxe or IDC-Supreme package, their accommodation will be arranged for them at Casita Palma. This small and quiet resort is within walking distance from Dive Friends Bonaire’s main dive shop location and has everything you need to relax after an intense day of IDC training. Breakfast is included, so the student will always be fuelled and ready for their day.
Contact Dive Friends Bonaire’s Course Director Eddy for more information: coursedirector@divefriendsbonaire.com.
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