diver 85
Contributor
Sounds like you'll be good to go---------& the breath holding thing is nothing to worry about----you NEVER hold your breath while diving.......sit back, relax & enjoy......
Fitness
- Thread starter Rob9
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paddler3d
Guest
Hello Rob,
SCUBA diving is known to be the 'great equalizer'. Every is neutral underwater. You will see a lot of folks diving, who are taller laying down, than standing up. Just go to e-Bay and look at the amount of XXXL suits for people that are 5-10".
Having some form of cardio fitness will help you with your air consumption. Also it will help you in the event of an emergency and you need to have the cardio..
For the most part you will learn that you want to stay calm and relaxed, that you don't want to swim here, swim there, swim all over. The more relaxed you remain, the less air you use. New divers tend to use their arms a lot. Once they stop using their arms, their air consumption decreases.
Typically you'll find the most cardio intensive aspect of diving, aside from an emergency, is getting in and out of your gear and to and from the water.
Getting to the gym and getting your cardio going is never a bad thing.
If you can get to a pool and start swimming before your OW class, that would be good as well.
Good luck.
northen diver
Contributor
Maximal heart rate is often used as a guide to exercise intensities such as swimming or running. It is recommend that unconditioned people train at a heart rate of between 50-70 per cent maximal heart rate. Thus a forty-year-old person with a maximal heart rate of 180 would maintain a training heart rate of between 108 and 126 beats per minute. The generally recommended training heart rate for a moderately fit person is between 70 and 80 per cent HRmax, and that for a highly-conditioned, competitive athlete is more than 80 per cent HRmax.
So lets assume your wife is 20 years old and hot. 220-20=200. 200bpm @80%(since she is in excellent shape) =160bpm.
So your wife should be targeting for a 160bpm taget heart rate to maximize her cardio conditioning and her fantastic looks.
Now lets assume you are 40 years old and a little overweight. 220-40=180bpm. 180bpm@ 60% (since your out of shape some what) = 108bpm.
So your target heart rate is 108bpm.
If these were your ages, you are actually getting more out of your routine excesise than your wife is. In fact your over training while your wife is severly under training.
Quite a few well conditioned athletes have a sitting heart rate of around 50 bpm. This is maintained by training almost everyday.
scottsax
Registered
+1 for swimming. I'm fortunate to live in a town with many public pools, so I've been hitting the lap swim 3 or 4 nights a week for the last month or so. I quit smoking a few months ago, and needed something to start rebuilding my lungs. I've already noticed a dramatic improvement not in weight so much, but in the way my clothes fit, and in my cardio stamina. And it's improved my air consumption.
Shoot, even a brisk walk for an hour or so a few times a week will help. I'm just waiting for the weather to warm up so I can start riding my bike again!
Shoot, even a brisk walk for an hour or so a few times a week will help. I'm just waiting for the weather to warm up so I can start riding my bike again!
Hi rob and welcome! 
Don't worry about your cardio, for most recreational dives at the OW level it has little meaning because unless you're paddling into a strong current (which is silly, if you're a fun diving newbie) you're not actually working very hard, if you're doing it all correctly. CV work may well improve your air consumption but will not have as much effect compared with good technique. Similarly, recreational diving will have little effect on your overall health and fitness, apart from a bit of muscle development if you dive regularly.
Breathing in diving is more down to technique than stamina. If you can't hold your breath very long, who cares? We don't do that anyway. With exercises such as the regulator removal, the key is to blow very small bubbles while the regulator is out of your mouth; humming is a good technique because it assures the airway is open whilst using a minimal amount of air. Underwater breathing is more akin to Yogic or martial arts technique than say, running a marathon.
Long and slow and deep and relaxed is the key. It is perfectly normal to be nervous for your first few times underwater and I can almost gurantee you will go through your air much more quickly than people who have a few dives under their weighbelts. The key to success is practice - dive more, talk to your instructors and to other divers, develop techniques that work for you.
Hope that helps,
C.
Don't worry about your cardio, for most recreational dives at the OW level it has little meaning because unless you're paddling into a strong current (which is silly, if you're a fun diving newbie) you're not actually working very hard, if you're doing it all correctly. CV work may well improve your air consumption but will not have as much effect compared with good technique. Similarly, recreational diving will have little effect on your overall health and fitness, apart from a bit of muscle development if you dive regularly.
Breathing in diving is more down to technique than stamina. If you can't hold your breath very long, who cares? We don't do that anyway. With exercises such as the regulator removal, the key is to blow very small bubbles while the regulator is out of your mouth; humming is a good technique because it assures the airway is open whilst using a minimal amount of air. Underwater breathing is more akin to Yogic or martial arts technique than say, running a marathon.
Long and slow and deep and relaxed is the key. It is perfectly normal to be nervous for your first few times underwater and I can almost gurantee you will go through your air much more quickly than people who have a few dives under their weighbelts. The key to success is practice - dive more, talk to your instructors and to other divers, develop techniques that work for you.
Hope that helps,
C.
tarponchik
Contributor
Athlets with good cardio consumed 27% less oxygen per unit of body mass in this study: Myocardial blood flow, oxygen consumption, and fatty acid uptake in endurance athletes during insulin stimulation -- Takala et al. 277 (4): E585 -- AJP - Endocrinology and Metabolism
Well I got to work this morning and I must admit the first thing I did was come here and check to see if anyone had responded to my posts and seeing more than a few responses I was a little excited.
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and advice, having somewhere to talk about my thoughts has been a great help in itself and at this stage while not having any dive buddies being able to communicate with fellow divers from beginner to instructor and beyond is an invaluable resource. It has certainly taken away that niggle in the back of my brain thinking about my fitness.
At a more advanced level of diving I am assuming dive/general fitness becomes more important? The reason why I ask is I am already looking past my OW certification (providing all goes well and trying not to get ahead of myself...there's no rush...) and thinking about other things in diving that interest me and a direction I would like to head in. I have an interest in getting my deep, night, wreck and nitrox certifications and although not hugely interested in them at this stage I think I will get my navigation and waves, tides and currents before I undertake anything else. My logic being that these two courses seem not too strenuous, would provide good experience and should provide some good safety skills and water education that would be useful in both day to day diving and when training in other areas of diving. In the long term future with some skills and experience I think becoming trained in diver stress and rescue would be a smart move and that's where I am assuming I would need to work on my water fitness.
Sorry for my ramblings, its just nice to write things down and have some feedback.
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and advice, having somewhere to talk about my thoughts has been a great help in itself and at this stage while not having any dive buddies being able to communicate with fellow divers from beginner to instructor and beyond is an invaluable resource. It has certainly taken away that niggle in the back of my brain thinking about my fitness.
At a more advanced level of diving I am assuming dive/general fitness becomes more important? The reason why I ask is I am already looking past my OW certification (providing all goes well and trying not to get ahead of myself...there's no rush...) and thinking about other things in diving that interest me and a direction I would like to head in. I have an interest in getting my deep, night, wreck and nitrox certifications and although not hugely interested in them at this stage I think I will get my navigation and waves, tides and currents before I undertake anything else. My logic being that these two courses seem not too strenuous, would provide good experience and should provide some good safety skills and water education that would be useful in both day to day diving and when training in other areas of diving. In the long term future with some skills and experience I think becoming trained in diver stress and rescue would be a smart move and that's where I am assuming I would need to work on my water fitness.
Sorry for my ramblings, its just nice to write things down and have some feedback.
I
idocsteve
Guest
You can make a huge difference in a surprisingly short period of time.
My latest exercise 'binge' has been several months now and going strong, and I don't even get winded when I do my treadmill workout, which is 45 minutes and includes mostly running at speeds of about 6 miles per hour.
Do this sort of thing 3x a week and good things will happen to ya.
As others have said, diving is my driving force, but losing my gut, living longer and decreasing my chances of having a heart attack or other health problems is right up there as well.
It's quite motivating to hop on the scale every morning and see that number gradually going down.
There's no doubt that better cardiovascular fitness is directly and inversely related to gas consumption.
My latest exercise 'binge' has been several months now and going strong, and I don't even get winded when I do my treadmill workout, which is 45 minutes and includes mostly running at speeds of about 6 miles per hour.
Do this sort of thing 3x a week and good things will happen to ya.
As others have said, diving is my driving force, but losing my gut, living longer and decreasing my chances of having a heart attack or other health problems is right up there as well.
It's quite motivating to hop on the scale every morning and see that number gradually going down.
There's no doubt that better cardiovascular fitness is directly and inversely related to gas consumption.
DaleC
Contributor
These are my thoughts on the subject:
Many people focus on taking course after course in order to improve their safety and enjoyment in the water but improving your basic cardio health and swimming ability is just as important.
In an attempt to gain more and more customers many training agencies/facilities will down play the importance of basic health and fitness and tell divers they need not know how to even swim. This may be true in order to "take the course" or to do only easy peasy resort dives but it is a disservice to anyone wanting to become more than an "occasional" diver.
Basic fitness and swimming skills will allow one to feel more confident in the water. More confidence will reduce ones tendancy to panic. I can't imagine how anyone can relax if they are aware that (should their bouyancy compensator fail for example) they would drown; or that they may not be able to make the surface swim to return from a dive. Looking at diving accidents for recreational divers one will see that the predominant underlying causes tend to be panic and health issues brought on by stress and/or over exertion. Lacking these core skills/attributes, one is completely at the mercy of the notion of "hope nothing goes wrong". And that is just a poor way to dive.
At the recreational level, forget about your gas consumption. It is what it is. Use the appropriate size tank for the dive and nature/time will take care of ones SAC rate all by itself. Diving is not a contest.
Many people focus on taking course after course in order to improve their safety and enjoyment in the water but improving your basic cardio health and swimming ability is just as important.
In an attempt to gain more and more customers many training agencies/facilities will down play the importance of basic health and fitness and tell divers they need not know how to even swim. This may be true in order to "take the course" or to do only easy peasy resort dives but it is a disservice to anyone wanting to become more than an "occasional" diver.
Basic fitness and swimming skills will allow one to feel more confident in the water. More confidence will reduce ones tendancy to panic. I can't imagine how anyone can relax if they are aware that (should their bouyancy compensator fail for example) they would drown; or that they may not be able to make the surface swim to return from a dive. Looking at diving accidents for recreational divers one will see that the predominant underlying causes tend to be panic and health issues brought on by stress and/or over exertion. Lacking these core skills/attributes, one is completely at the mercy of the notion of "hope nothing goes wrong". And that is just a poor way to dive.
At the recreational level, forget about your gas consumption. It is what it is. Use the appropriate size tank for the dive and nature/time will take care of ones SAC rate all by itself. Diving is not a contest.
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