Diving and Excercising

[gulfdvr68]

I have a good question that may have been asked and answered already. If you are diving very often and need to excercise, is it better to excercise first then give yourself about an hour before you dive?

 

[RU4SKUBA]

I would be very careful about how much exercise you do the day of a deep dive. Exercise the night before or dive on a day off from rigorous workouts.

Or make sure you're off-gassed completely...

 

[1_T_Submariner]

Diving is excercise when I'm diving a lot I don't worry about getting more.

That said I would excercise before diving or 24 hours after my last dive.

For a medical opinion you could ask Dr. Deco

Ask Dr. Decompression - ScubaBoard

 

[SurDo2]

5-10k or crossfit in the morning if I'm diving that day. Pre dive exercise is beneficial.

 

[SkimFisher]

Here's a thread I started recently on the relationship between heavy exercise and O2 toxicity. Slightly different angle but addresses pretty much the same thing. The first or second post has a good article on the subject from DAN that you might enjoy reading.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/advanced-scuba-discussions/311599-cns-o2-toxicity-exercise.html

 

[Mr Carcharodon]

I have a good question that may have been asked and answered already. If you are diving very often and need to excercise, is it better to excercise first then give yourself about an hour before you dive?

The theory is that friction in your joints during exercise causes cavitation resulting in new bubbles below a micron in diameter. But the surface tension of these bubbles is high enough to cause them to decay and ultimately disappear in the order of an hour. I recall Michael Powell saying that the consensus now is that pre-dive exercise is low risk.

Exercise post diving is different since there is a load of inert gas trying to find a place to go. In that case the nitrogen in solution can diffuse into the bubbles causing them to grow.

Four or five summers ago I was taking a diving class and training for marathon. One Sunday I did a 16 mile run immediately prior to a dive much to the consternation of one of my instructors. But there was no adverse outcome.

 

[fresh_fish]

I usually do only light exercise the morning of. The reason? It helps with circulation to keep me warm in Michigan waters. It also gets things moving to reduce muscle cramps while diving. A nice long stretch will too, but that takes longer and is rather boring.

 

[RU4SKUBA]

One of the divemasters from a popular Key Largo dive center got badly bent doing the USS Spiegel Grove after working out heavily the morning before a day. My understanding from one of the instructors was that he spent several days in the hospital, made multiple trips to the chamber, and might possibly never dive again.

Not sure about your opinion of diver safety, but our understanding of DCS in relation to exercise is not understood well enough to redundantly exercise on the same day of a deep dive. Ask Dr Decompression but the fact is we just don't know...

 

[adm3745]

For post dive exercise, should you wait untill you are desaturated completely or just wait around 4 hours where bubble growth won't be a factor.

 

[gulfdvr68]

5-10k or crossfit in the morning if I'm diving that day. Pre dive exercise is beneficial.

I love crossfit anyway, the reason for my question is this, physical fitness is promoted in diving, especially when it comes to technical diving. Now if you are diving frequently, when do find the time to get fit? Well in my opinion you must workout prior to the dive and make sure that you have at least a 1hr break before you dive. If you eat then you must allow yourself 2hrs. So what are your thoughts on that?