 It appears you have not yet registered with our community. To register for free click here
|
 | |
DIR Equipment Configuration Articles Articles written to help you know how we configure our DIR Equipment
 |
| | Article Tools |
| |||||||
| If you want tips on fitness, they may as well come from our very own olympian.... Chris Boardman... you may want a slightly cheaper bikethough  Let us take a look at what the average diver can do to improve their diving, their health and their sex life . . . ok, so I made up the last bit. The Starting Point When I was a professional sportsman, fitness and a low body weight were things I took for granted, they were literally unavoidable side effects of the job. Imagine my horror when I discovered that without enforced regular training, beer and chips make you fat! (That’s fries for you Americans.) At the end of 2000 when I retired from this line of work, I had to embrace the new challenge of having to consciously think about my condition, a considerable undertaking given that I hate exercising and am fundamentally lazy. But how fit is fit enough? How fit is fit enough for diving? Do we need to have the fitness of an athlete to participate in diving? Thankfully no, in fact, when I was in ‘Tour de France fit’ condition my air consumption when compared to an unfit diver was quite high; although this flipped the other way as soon as any exertion was called for. I can only deduce that this was a side effect of aerobic training; when your gas supply is almost infinite, ventilation rate is more important than pure efficiency . . . but I digress. Why Change? When I started diving, I thought it would be the perfect pursuit for someone with my anti-exertion tendencies; after all, the objective is to sink and not get out of breath! Unfortunately, I quickly realized that in this aquatic pursuit of ours, being fit was advantageous for a number of reasons:
Where to Start In defining an attainable fitness goal the first thing I wanted to do was examine the reasons (ok, excuses) why I was not already exercising regularly:
How fit do we really need to be? I’m afraid this section must be necessarily bland because it very much depends on the type of diving you wish to pursue. What is important is that you avoid simply making the facts fit what you want hear! A professional athlete will always maintain a certain level of fitness and from this base they will peak for given events. The latter is a level of fitness that although optimal for the objective, is unsustainable and even undesirable long-term. This basic model can work very well for us, too. I would suggest that in a scenario where your job and/or family commitments don’t allow you much exercise time, the ‘DIR’ thing to do might be to simply accept these limitations and curtail your diving aspirations accordingly. In short, your base fitness level is going to be defined by your lifestyle—typical diving and level of motivation. The ‘peaks’ must be defined by the nature of your chosen objectives. Be very careful of trying to aim for something that is what you think you can do rather than what you can do. Overreaching is likely to lead to failure. A goal should be challenging, but ultimately realistic and achievable. If you’ve got this ratio wrong, the review process (below) should pick this up. To give you an example: My regular diving is done in the North Wales area of Great Britain (if you had any experience of the visibility there, you would wonder why they called it Great), where temperatures vary between 7 and 15 degrees Celsius; depths range between 40 meters (132 feet) and 55 meters (182 feet) (meaning a fair amount of equipment is required), and in this very tidal area, currents can run at up to 6 knots. I decided that my base level of weekly exercise for this type of diving should consist of four, 20 to 30 minute sessions of Zone 2 or Zone 3 intensity for my aerobic needs, and three short gym sessions for strength (See Figure 1 for definition of training Zones). I decided that this quantity of exercise should produce about the right amount of fitness for my diving needs and that it would be doable within the constraints of my lifestyle. But what form should the exercise take? Deciding on the Method Aerobic Here are a couple of examples of how I integrated my exercise regime into my life. When working from home, I like to take the kids to school, then go straight out for a run with my beagle (actually, I run, she eats dirt and waits for me to come back) for about 30 minutes of upper Zone 2. This means that I have a reason to get out in the morning; the dog gets walked and I can be at my desk having done my daily exercise by 9:45 A.M. Once a week I go to visit a particular friend who only lives 10 miles away, so I make this journey by bike, giving me two, 30-minute blocks of upper Zone 2 work separated by a couple of coffees. Thursday is dive club night. The pool is available for an hour, and if there is no training to be done, I use the time for a 20-minute hard swim, (Zone 3) often with fins, before heading over to the bar for a pint of ‘diet’ Guinness. On rare occasions I even go for a bike ride, but only if I can get some company. Transport can also be an excellent marriage of needs; bikes are great for this and are suitable for overweight people because they are not weight bearing (you can not free-wheel when you are running), so consider jogging or riding a bike to work. This means you will be addressing the aerobic bit of your fitness using otherwise ‘dead’ time while saving you a few quid in motoring costs, not to mention the environmental spin-offs. The hardest bit about adopting a ‘transport strategy’ will be to get it organized (finding a shower you can use at work, getting spare clothing set up, etc). However, you do not have to do it every day, perhaps aim for two or three days a week, depending on the distance and the weather. If you could tie this in with a work colleague it could potentially give you an added incentive to be in a set place at a set time, while also making it a social activity. In short, it is really advantageous if you can find a way to fit the exercise into your day rather than bolt it on as an afterthought. Strength I don’t actually believe that weight training needs to form a massive part of our physical regime. As long as there is enough muscle mass to comfortably handle equipment needs, then I would argue that aerobic training would be more beneficial to our requirements. If you enjoy gym workouts and have the time, fine, it is certainly gratifying to have a muscular physique. But if gym workouts are replacing aerobic conditioning, then keep in mind the warning at the start of this section about making the facts fit what we want to hear. Tips
Implementation Once you have mapped out your fitness goals and a weekly regime, give it a one-month trial, then review. It is highly unlikely you will get it spot-on from the beginning. Review As in diver training, review is an incredibly important part of the process as it helps us identify what we could do better.
Motivation The hardest part of getting into shape is getting off your butt and start exercising, the second hardest part is keeping it going. The answer to both of these problems can be as simple as company. When we dive, we do so in teams and our physical conditioning will benefit from the same approach. If you can workout with people you will be diving with, so much the better, but if not, perhaps you can get a couple of other people interested from your club or even place of work. This can make all the difference when you are considering just jumping in the car and heading home rather than face that run; if you are committed to another person you are much more likely to put the running shoes on. Conclusion So while you are figuring out how fit you want to be, how much time you are prepared to dedicate to getting in shape, and how you are going to do it, consider the following five things. Five Fitness Tips
The road to fitness.
I still maintain that to remain motivated most people will require a number of exercise options in their ‘training toolbox,’ and preferably more than one reason to do it. But in this issue we are going to look more closely at just one of those tools, the humble push bike. Why bikes? The bicycle is an amazingly attractive prospect for us for a number of reasons. Unlike many of our aerobic training options, cycling is a non weight bearing, very low-impact activity and these facts have some very desirable connotations:
So why don’t we all use them already!? Why not bikes? Sadly, it is a tad more complex than it would seem at first glance, but only a tad. Human beings are more strongly linked to our cave dwelling ancestors than we like to think. Most of us honestly believe that we make our decisions with our intellect, but we don’t, for the vast majority of us, our decisions are driven by very basic selfish, instinct; we do whatever is best, easiest and most convenient for us not the environment or the wider majority. I know this may seem like a digression from the topic, but it isn’t; unless we acknowledge this fundamental trait and devise selfish reasons to do things, we are unlikely to sustain it. This is the reason I have been banging on about making training social and multi-functional; we need more than one motive to do it or we are unlikely to keep it up. Which bike? Let’s put the philosophy to one side for a while and look at some more practical issues. If we assume that you buy my arguments and are up for some serious cycle training, what kind of bike do we need? The truth is, as long as we have a reasonably productive and comfortable position it doesn’t really matter because speed is not important, our objective is the workout. If I am riding at my aerobic threshold (more later), it doesn’t matter if I am on a mountain bike climbing a dirt track at 12mph or on a full carbon racing machine averaging 35mph, as long as I am getting the exercise I need. If you want a fancy bike, great whatever you enjoy but it isn’t mandatory. Positions Earlier I mentioned productive and comfortable positions, this is a tough one to discuss with such a broad audience so I am going to have to pass the buck a little and send you off to your local bike shop or the internet for individual advice; In this format I can only give you a few broad tips that are likely to be applicable to you all:
OK, so we have our bike, we have our shorts and have sought advice for position, shoes/pedals and set-up. What are we going to actually do? Before going any further I want to take a moment to briefly re-cap on the concept of defined training zones (Fig 1) as it is important that we are all on the same page before I start suggesting quantities and intensities. It is essential that you fully understand these concepts if you are to be in control of your cycle training (or any training for that matter). Fig 1 An abbreviated version of training zones Zone 1 Recovery rides no training benefit other than calorie burning Perceived effort: If having a conversation, you would not need to pause for breath at any point Zone 2 Base aerobic conditioning Significant volumes can be done with only moderate muscle damage resulting. This is the zone where the bulk of training time is spent. Perceived effort: Breathing rhythmically, conversation would be possible but with frequent pauses for breath. Concentration required but the thought of sustaining this for 1h+ should not be mind bending. Zone 3 High quality aerobic conditioning Very high quality work but only a limited amount of this is possible due to the resulting muscle damage. Perceived effort: Mentally very demanding, working at the physical limit of what is sustainable for up to 30mins. Conversation would be virtually impossible and concentration is intense Zone 4 Maximal training This is the highest quality of work with efforts lasting between 10sec and 3mins. It will form only a small part of a training program, possibly only for special projects or for a mental change. Perceived effort: Total concentration maximal effort, conversation is impossible. What is the most effective intensity to train at? As you can probably see from figure 1, we aren’t actually asking our body to do anything it can’t already do until we reach zone 2, then we can consider ourselves to be training. In zone 1 we are either on a recovery ride; just out to be sociable or we are kidding ourselves. The ‘ideal’ place to train our aerobic capacity would always be zone 3, where we are pushing our body to the limit of what it can sustain but as there is a lot of resulting muscle damage, we can’t do very much of this, not to mention the mental demands a daily dose of Z3 would impose. Logically then, the best compromise would be to spend most of our time around Zone 2. Zones 3 and 4 can’t still form an important part of our training regime, sessions of this intensity can be a very effective way of maximising a small training window in a busy day but we should strive to keep these sessions infrequent and varied. How much should we be doing? How long is a piece of string? Are you training to be fit enough to reef dive on holiday or to attempt some major cave penetration record? Only you can say however there are some basic guidelines.
If you can assemble a group to train with, you have it made; training suddenly becomes more social, you have to commit to be somewhere and the simple distraction of being in company can make the time pass much more quickly. When compared to being on the front of the group, by ‘sitting in the wheels’ (behind the others) you can reduce your effort by up to 80%. This slip-streaming concept means that training with a group can be much more exciting/appealing than training alone. Home trainers (static bikes or ‘turbo’ trainers) Home trainers are great devices for poor weather, environments with poor riding options or when you are simply limited for time, they can however be very monotonous to use. If utilising one, the trick is to break up the session, into smaller more mentally palatable chunks and limit sessions to a maximum of 40 minutes. Hill work. Simply altering our terrain can also help add some variation to our training, if for example we wish to do A 1.5H ride that includes 30 minutes of Z3 work, we could plan a route to include a number of hills to give us some tangible start and finish points, perhaps using the descents for rest. Additionally, there is no reason why these rides need be on tarmac; they could be just as affective on a forestry track or mountain path. Exercise Examples. Group of 2-8 riders. ‘Through and off’ Find a relatively flat road or circuit that is preferably free of junctions and traffic lights for up to 15minutes (aprox7 miles) After at least 10mins of warm up, form a line and keeping the pedal rate around 100rpm, take turns at the front riding just into Z4 for between 10 and 45 seconds (depending on the size of your group). When your turn is finished, drop back down the group and swing into the slipstream of the last rider. You will still be working hard at the back but nowhere near as intensely as when on the front. Aim for a total of approximately 30minutes of this and consider splitting it into up to 3 blocks of 15, 10 and 5minutes duration with a few minutes of recovery between. If a member of the group is struggling, rather than just leaving them behind, alter the length of turns so that the strongest rider does longer, perhaps slower turns on the front, thus giving the others more rest, whilst the less able rider does shorter quicker turns. This is something you have to play around with. Again, it is the DIR concept of looking after your team. The same session can be done alone but it is considerably more mentally demanding. Home training Ramp training Warm up over 10minutes, getting progressively harder from Z1 to Middling Z2 then, keeping the pedal revolutions at around 100 per minute and starting with the largest rear cog, change up one gear every 2 minutes until you are just touching Z4. At this point go back and repeat for a total of three ‘ramps’. This is another way of breaking up the 30 minute block and disguising the quality work; you will probably have averaged Z2 and above for more than half of it. Threshold work Same progressive warm up then 10mins Z3, 5mins Z1 8mins Z3, 5mins Z1, finishing with 5mins Z3 10mins fast pedalling warm down. This is a particularly nasty 45minute exercise that could just as easily be done on the road. As it is so mentally demanding, I wouldn’t recommend doing no more than one of these a week at most. Notice how each effort gets shorter to try and make it less mentally daunting. Hill work Z4 hill sprints These efforts can be done in either groups or alone and with ATB or road bikes but they do require suitable terrain. Find a circuit of approximately 5-10 minutes length with a 1-3 minute climb on it. Ride at least one lap in Z2 for warm up then ride each hill in Z3-4 either seated or out of the saddle before recovering at a high cadence in Z1-2. Do between 3-6 of these efforts. These sessions will produce a significant amount of muscle damage or ‘fall-out’ so will need to be followed by a couple of easier days. Conclusion Within the confines of a single article, I can do no more than suggest just one or two ideas but hopefully, you will have grasped the basic concepts of packaging your work to keep it both interesting, fun and mentally palatable. You can play around with these suggestions and adapt them to your environment, lifestyle and available facilities. As I have tried to outline above, the bicycle is an often overlooked devise that has many, many advantages for us as divers to exploit in our quest to maintain the DIR level of fitness that we aspire to. |
| ||||||
   | |||||||
