Last week we went diving in an old mine. It was a 250m way down to the water. And we dove with rebreathers and trimix, so it was a 4 times walk to get everything at the water. I was a little bit unlucky with a leaking neckseal, so my drysuit flooded suddenly at 65m depth. Because I could not swim horizontal easy anymore, it was a struggle to don't stir everything up. It was also a quite long swim out and the water was 8 degrees. At 45m on a longer horizontal swim I got a bad headache, shortly followed by an sort of out of breath, directly followed by a feeling of getting too less air. And I had 1 hour to the surface left. But had my first CO2 hit on a rebreather. So bailed out, all went fine soon again. Only not my flooded drysuit and the cold water of course. After the dive it was a 4 times walk again to bring everything out of the mine. But this time with a very bad headache which lasted almost 8 hours.
So was this a workout or not? I think if you are not fit, you can't do this dive.
And the next day we did the same dive again.
I don't think you get a good cardiofascular condition by just diving. It is probably the way to the water that makes you doing some 'sport'. But you must be fit to do dives like the ones I sometimes do. For an easy warm water dive there is less condition or fitness asked.
I do also 2 times a week running (want to go to 3 times, but have to be carefull as I got a very bad tendenitis in my achillestendons due to side effects of antibiotics), do walking (2 times a week), horseriding (2-3 times a week) and sometimes swimming.
On some sundays I go diving in the morning (at my home only shallow diving possible), then go horseriding right after the dive. And then in the evening I do a run. So then I do a triatlon on 1 day, haha. Today it was till now just a biatlon with diving and horseriding.
