The Art of Precision: How Our Divers Perfect Their Technique
How we improve physical and mental skills to perfect our diving technique.
I’m a firm believer that perfection does not exist. Yes, I can work extremely hard and get everything I want to achieve in diving, but I’ll never be perfect and I’m very content with that fact. As a diver who trains with the idea of “progress not perfection,” I find myself being able to challenge the way in which I train, compete, and live. In such a complex sport like diving, every little nuance matters. From the way I take my first step into a hurdle to the direction I swim during my entry, every motion, every look, every breath matters. With this being said, diving is also more than just the movements we perform after we jump, it is every second of preparation and thought that occurs before we jump too.
Improving Diving Technique: The Jump
I’m always trying to improve my technique to the best of my ability. Practice is my main form of achieving this progress. As a high school diver, my practices usually consist of a dry-land warm up and then a water practice. A common misconception about diving is that we only get better at our sport through water practice, however our high school divers develop technique with both water practice and on land diving technique drills. Being strong enough to perform the actions divers execute is an integral part of boosting dive technique. Often when we are not balanced with our muscle strength, we will feel that imbalance directly in the board and the dive itself.
The imbalance can lead to a lot of various negative effects like hindered control, decreased power, slower flipping, and the scariest of all…injury. To avoid all of this we start our practices with land conditioning to balance our strength and some diving technique drills to further develop our foundational diving skills. Some of this training might look very traditional like push ups, V-ups, or even handstands, but we also get creative with drills like step-by-step diving kick outs and modeling for the various motions we execute on the boards. Though we improve a lot via land exercises, nothing beats the water for a diver.
Our water practice plan tends to change every practice depending on the schedule of the week and what point we are in our season, but a typical practice will look something like this: a few warm up jumps and line-ups on both the 1 meter and the 3 meter, and then about 2-4 repetitions of the dives assigned in the practice plan on both heights. After the workout we’ll often end with some light stretching so that we stay flexible and lower our risk of injury in the future.
Improving Diving Technique: The Preparation
Though we are only in the air for less than a second, a lot of thought goes into each dive before we even step on the board. Preparation is another primary aspect to improving dive technique. Preparing for a dive can look differently from athlete to athlete, but a very common and beneficial form of preparation is modeling. Modeling is a type of drill where you model every action that you will perform during the dive from start to finish on the ground. This technique is very valuable at helping our bodies and minds remember the proper positions and thoughts needed to execute the desired dive with precision and comfort. For modeling to be the most effective, modeling should occur during practice to reinforce the proper body position for specific motions performed during the dive, as well as right before the diver goes onto the board to do a dive during meets.
Mindset training is another important drill that directly benefits dive technique. Because diving is a mental sport, oftentimes when we think about a hard or scary dive, we tense up and let our anxiety come out. However, when we are in meets, we need to find ways to hone our nerves and bring ourselves back into a focused, composed, and confident mindset so we can execute the dive to the best of our ability. This can be done through breathing exercises, visualizations of calming places, or even simple affirmations reminding you that you have done this dive a million times and you will be fine.
The Importance of Mental and Physical Preparation in Diving Technique
Proper preparation and mental training are two key factors that directly impact the way in which we dive. Without preparation and composure, we lose our sense of confidence and inevitably dive weaker. This is why both the physical and mental aspects of diving are considered to go hand in hand when contributing to diving technique. Though I might never become a perfect diver, these few tricks help me everyday to be a better diver, and it’s progress we’re after not perfection.
