Achieving and maintaining a high level of physical fitness should be a part of everyone?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s life, whether you are a diver or not. When you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re fit, you feel better, handle stress better, and perform better in your personal and professional life.
It isn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t necessary to be an Olympic athlete to be a scuba diver, but you should be reasonably fit to handle the demands that diving places upon you. As a diver you need to be comfortable in the water, you need a high level of aerobic fitness, and you need to be strong. A simple recreational dive in clear tropical water can easily become demanding when you suddenly find yourself swimming against a strong current or face a long surface swim to get back to the boat. Likewise, a cold-water beach dive may require a long walk on a sandy beach in 80 pounds of gear. If you take up technical diving you may find yourself climbing back on board a boat in rough seas with up to 200 pounds of gear strapped to your body. And cave divers routinely enter a cave against very strong flow.
In an effort to make diving more accessible to more people, many agencies and dive shops downplay the importance of fitness, saying simply that if you can pass a basic medical exam, swim 200 yards without stopping and tread water for 15 minutes you are ready to dive. Yet, we have seen overweight certified divers struggling to get out of the water; divers with poor aerobic conditioning having to be towed back to a boat, gasping for air; and out of shape, stressed divers on the surface having to be rescued before a dive even begins.
Achieving and maintaining a high level of fitness is part of the diving lifestyle for any serious diver.
If you are in good physical condition, you will not only be a safer diver, prepared to handle demanding conditions as they arise, but you will also enjoy diving ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù and life ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù much more.
Before you begin any fitness program you should work with your physician to assess your fitness as it is now and to determine the proper starting level for your training.
Fitness rests upon three pillars: strength training, aerobic training, and nutritional management. Strength training focuses on power and might, aerobic training emphasizes cardiac/respiratory fitness, and nutritional management deals with the foods that fuel your body. All three are equally important. Eliminate one from your fitness program, and the entire foundation crumbles.
One of the best fitness programs around is Crossfit. Check it out, and join us as we step up to the challenge of the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWorkout of the Day!?¢‚Ǩ¬ù