Strength and aerobic conditioning for Rescue

[Chidiver1]

Oh, yeah, that's not where I'd like it to be at all. I follow the Starting Strength plan, and so when it's been a while (more than a couple weeks) since I've lifted, I do a total reset where I start back at the bar and add weight 10 lbs. at a time until my form starts to change noticeably. For whatever reason this last time my squat and bench reset to about the same level. There's certainly more muscle groups in the squat, so I think it's just a bit trickier. Today was a 135 lb. squat, and it felt good, so I should have it well in front of my bench in a couple weeks. It's just hard when you get sick or go on vacation to really keep up your weightlifting.

What's your age? Unless your relatively advanced in age you shouldn't need to reset to a 45lb bar each time you take time off. While you shouldn't be starting exactly where you left off you should be starting heavier than a bar if you want to be serious about lifting. Or are you doing sets of 20-25?

Ideally you should be able to do body weight on legs without much difficulty, if you can't you should be working towards that. Some people do a lot more than body weight.

Legs provide foundation for other lifting as well.

Stay consistent if you're looking for fitness and health gains. Which means be consistent in your days on and off of the gym, sleep, and eating habits. And change your routine from time to time in the gym in order to avoid plateaus. If you're always doing squats for instance try leg press/leg extensions, hamstring curls.

 

[rongoodman]

I wasn't being critical, just puzzled. There's no way I could get 95 over my head, even before my shoulders got too sore to try, and 125 is about it for me for bench sets, but I can squat 185 with decent form. We're at about the same place on the deadlifts.

 

[Chidiver1]

What's your age? Unless your relatively advanced in age you shouldn't need to reset to a 45lb bar each time you take time off. While you shouldn't be starting exactly where you left off you should be starting heavier than a bar if you want to be serious about lifting. Or are you doing sets of 20-25?

Ideally you should be able to do body weight on legs without much difficulty, if you can't you should be working towards that. Some people do a lot more than body weight.

Legs provide foundation for other lifting as well.

Stay consistent if you're looking for fitness and health gains. Which means be consistent in your days on and off of the gym, sleep, and eating habits. And change your routine from time to time in the gym in order to avoid plateaus. If you're always doing squats for instance try leg press/leg extensions, hamstring curls.

I wasn't being critical, just puzzled. There's no way I could get 95 over my head, even before my shoulders got too sore to try, and 125 is about it for me for bench sets, but I can squat 185 with decent form.

I wasn't either. He seemed to be looking for some tips on fitness, so I thought he might appreciate a little advice. It's not much but enough to improve and possibly a lot if he wants to.

 

[Nasser]

If you have an instructor who will really make it challenging, you will probably find that the physical stress is half of it... it's also the mental stress and being able to think clearly in high pressure situations that can also wear you down a bit... which in my estimation is a good thing for a course like this!

Best of luck.

 

[wnissen]

I believe Rescue Diver Cert should have two levels, the “muscle portion”, and the “Incident Mgmt/First Aid” portion. The course material was created without introspection regarding what we learned from the “macho days” versus the “everybody gets a trophy” model.

That's a very interesting perspective, and it makes a lot of sense. I will admit that even in a extremely mild situation, like getting rear-ended at low speed, the adrenaline kicks in and I can tell I'm not thinking clearly. Just being in a position to do basic management of the immediate emergency until professional response shows up would be valuable.

What's your age? Unless your relatively advanced in age you shouldn't need to reset to a 45lb bar each time you take time off. While you shouldn't be starting exactly where you left off you should be starting heavier than a bar if you want to be serious about lifting. Or are you doing sets of 20-25?

I'm 41. Everything you say sounds completely reasonable, but after 2 weeks off I get incredibly sore just from going from 145 down to 95. To elaborate, when I reset I start with 45, do a set of 5, 55x5, 65x5, etc., until my form starts to change (deviation from vertical bar path, uneven transfer between muscle groups, etc.). I looked in my log from Fitocracy and I squatted 41 times in the last year, with a max of 175x5. My guess is I would get to 200lb. pretty quickly if I could just motivate myself to go consistently. I don't do one-rep sets because of the increased risk of injury and it doesn't seem like it would really make a difference.

The motivation is honestly the hard part. When I had a lifting buddy, I barely missed a workout. For some reason it's way easier to disappoint yourself than to disappoint your buddy. Right now the only time I have to myself for regular workouts is to get up at 5:30 a.m., and sometimes I just do not feel like it.

I wasn't being critical, just puzzled. There's no way I could get 95 over my head, even before my shoulders got too sore to try, and 125 is about it for me for bench sets, but I can squat 185 with decent form. We're at about the same place on the deadlifts.

I was asking for criticism, and that's just the sort of thing that I was looking to hear. But I didn't interpret it as criticism at all.

 

[johndiver999]

You may find motivation to develop consistency by NOT going back to baby weights each time you are irresponsible. A week off will often result in an increase in strength but stamina often suffers.

If you try to resume close to where you left off, in weight and volume, then you might make better progress and this positive reinforcement might help motivate you.

It seems ridiculous to go back to just the bar after two weeks.
I could never lift at 530 am

 

[Chidiver1]

That's a very interesting perspective, and it makes a lot of sense. I will admit that even in a extremely mild situation, like getting rear-ended at low speed, the adrenaline kicks in and I can tell I'm not thinking clearly. Just being in a position to do basic management of the immediate emergency until professional response shows up would be valuable.



I'm 41. Everything you say sounds completely reasonable, but after 2 weeks off I get incredibly sore just from going from 145 down to 95. To elaborate, when I reset I start with 45, do a set of 5, 55x5, 65x5, etc., until my form starts to change (deviation from vertical bar path, uneven transfer between muscle groups, etc.). I looked in my log from Fitocracy and I squatted 41 times in the last year, with a max of 175x5. My guess is I would get to 200lb. pretty quickly if I could just motivate myself to go consistently. I don't do one-rep sets because of the increased risk of injury and it doesn't seem like it would really make a difference.

The motivation is honestly the hard part. When I had a lifting buddy, I barely missed a workout. For some reason it's way easier to disappoint yourself than to disappoint your buddy. Right now the only time I have to myself for regular workouts is to get up at 5:30 a.m., and sometimes I just do not feel like it.


I was asking for criticism, and that's just the sort of thing that I was looking to hear. But I didn't interpret it as criticism at all.

You have to be consistent with the things I mentioned for endurance and strength gains. I don't do one reps sets at all.

For instance last night on the leg press I did sets of 12 reps x 5 sets
Leg extensions. 12 reps x 5 sets
Ham curls 12 reps x 5 sets
I went light on calf presses so 4 sets of 25.

If you're that sore after being off for a bit, you need to ask yourself if you're doing proper warm ups before starting to lift.

As far as being sore after coming back from a period of not working out......the day after you lift with a particular muscle group....go into the gym and do a lighter load on those same muscles....it cuts soreness for me to work them just a bit.

Then move onto the primary workout you wanted to do for that day. If you're looking to cut weight and get stronger watch your consistentency as I said with # of workout sessions in the week and your eating. Try to eat the right things relatively often.

I.e. eating every few hours to keep your metabolic rate up and tissue repair going. This should also cut down on the size of your main meals a bit.

Your body needs protein after a good workout more than other times, but it also needs it throughout the day for the tissue repair. Try to eat lean meats, chicken, fish, turkey, real lean ground beef etc. That way you get your aminos and protein from leaner sources.

Anyway I didn't mean to deviate too mcuh from your question about rescue but these should enable you to meet whatever goals you want through consistency (sensing a theme yet?) in diet and fitness sessions. And make damn sure you're getting enough sleep, that's when the majority of body repair and cleansing occurs.

As far as finding time, you just have to decide how bad you want to obtain whatever goals youre after.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

A good rescue course is as much, if not more, about preventing an incident/accident as it is responding to one.
No one is going to be able to get every victim out of the water.
No one is going to be able to tow a diver 100 yds in all conditions by themselves. While doing rescue breaths? Forget it. The breaths I mean over that distance. If you can see help in any kind of range, you don't worry about more than 2 initial breaths. You haul butt to help where you can also start CPR if they are not breathing. Rescue breaths are not going to do much if a diver has lungs full of water.
Except for delaying effective treatment.
It's stupid that they still teach them to divers who will probably never practice them for years after the class. If they do have to do it then the adrenaline will kick in and you will turn the head or push the vic underwater and they will be even less effective.
You try two breaths and then yell like crazy for any help while towing for shore.
Study how to do a rope lift. A fireman carry out of the water with a much larger victim risks creating another victim. Get help and drag them out. Making students do unsafe lifts is a good way to actually get someone hurt.
More important is to learn to spot stress and equipment issues before getting in the water.
Also realize that if the person is actually missing and not on the surface, a recreational rescue diver is really not qualified to conduct a search and endanger more people. Call the pro's for that.
And a missing diver is rarely going to be a rescue. It'll be a recovery. Unless Edd Sorenson is around. Then they'll have a chance.
Again, call the pros.
A good rescue class is physically challenging if done right. Not ass kicking.
Mentally it can be far more strenuous if the instructor gets the students to realize that this is not just "fun" but is serious in order to keep someone from dying. Which may happen anyway.
Which is why there should be lengthy and detailed discussion of the after effects on the people involved.
Sadly the majority of materials from every agency do a piss poor job of addressing this issue.

 

[Efka76]

Hi All,
I have read a number of the previous threads and would like to know, roughly, what level of physical conditioning would be recommended to perform well in the Rescue course I'm taking in 6 weeks. The instructor shot down my idea of paying PADI extra for the right to rescue a 95-lb. circus acrobat, so I will definitely be rescuing a 250 lb. / 115 kg. guy.

Currently (if the stars align), I do the following: lift weights 2x a week, some assortment of squat (125 lb), deadlift (235 lb), overhead press (95 lb.), and bench press (130 lb.). Biking 2x, around 1:15 to go 11 miles / 18km. 1x swim, in fins and snorkel, 35 min for 1 mi / 1.6 km. It's rare that I get to do five workouts in a week, due to scheduling, but you have an idea of where I am currently focused.

So what should I work on? I'm overweight, but I'm not going to drop 50 lbs. in 6 weeks. Ideally I would go diving a lot but that's an all-day trip and difficult from a schedule standpoint. So I'm looking for things I can do in an hour or less, with access to a pool and your typical fitness center. Thoughts?

I had Rescue course last September. Actually I was a 115 kg guy which gave hard time to my instructor as he had to show to my various rescue techniques. Especially it was funny when I was a "panicked diver" and grabbed his both hands. He was really struggling to get away )) The whole course was really funny and interesting. Only towing was a slightly harder part, however, I am bench pressing 140 kg and not 130 lb

Overall, if you have to "rescue" heavy guy you have to be smart and try to toe him, not to carry, ask for help, etc. nobody expects that 45 kg skinny girl to carry 115 kg guy.

 

[JBFG]

you don't worry about more than 2 initial breaths. You haul butt to help where you can also start CPR if they are not breathing. Rescue breaths are not going to do much if a diver has lungs full of water.
Except for delaying effective treatment.

This is the most accurate and important thing posted on this whole topics.

Get to shore fast, start CPR!