Have you been glued to updates about the Paris Olympics recently? I know I have been. And then I’ve been looking up some of the life stories of those athletes. Many of them have a few things in common: commitment – often over years – and time dedicated to targeted practice, for example. What’s it got to do with tech diving? Well, to me tech diving is a sport that has different disciplines, sort of like modern pentathlon, and while it may not normally be competitive, these disciplines are still something that you can strive to be better at. So, how can you master the modern pentathlon of tech diving?
Looking at Tech Diving by Discipline
Think of it: there’s twinset diving, sidemount diving, backmount rebreather diving and sidemount rebreather diving. That’s four disciplines, and we could add single tank diving with or without a stage as a fifth. Of course, you can break it down more into overhead or open ocean diving and add mines, caves, wrecks and more. But let’s not make it too complex.
I’d wager that many tech divers have some level of experience in at least two of those disciplines. For example, most rebreather divers started on open circuit. CCR diving may have become their main thing, but what about those destinations where sofnolime is hard to come by? Sure, you can choose different destinations, but you could also opt to keep your skills fresh in more than one discipline.
How Many Tech Diving Disciplines Should You Practice
So, how do you stay fit for all your tech diving? Well, I don’t have the perfect answer yet, but I can share what I do, and it’s based on my own tech diving journey.
TL;DR – you need to practice all the disciplines you’d like to be proficient in.
My Tech Diving Journey
My tech diving journey started in twinsets before I discovered my love for sidemount. As an instructor, teaching initially was divided between the two, but many of my personal dives were done in sidemount. I also felt that sidemount required and deserved more tweaking than a twinset configuration.
Over the next few years, sidemount took over both professionally and personally, and I certainly spent far more time in this configuration than in twinsets. Then rebreathers entered the picture. My first rebreather was and is an AP Diving Evolution+, and after certification, my personal diving was done on the yellow box. Naturally, it took a few years before I became an instructor.
At the same time, I started looking at the Kiss Sidewinder on social media, but it took some time before an opportunity arose to dive it. Like with open circuit sidemount, it was love at first dive, and I bought my instructor’s unit within months. A bit later, I started working toward the instructor rating on that unit.
How Many Tech Diving Disciplines Do You Need to Stay Fit In?
For me, this journey meant having to stay sharp in open circuit twinset and sidemount diving and closed circuit backmount and sidemount diving if I wanted to dive and teach those courses. I guess I had my work cut out.
I guess instructors are a bit of a special case in this respect, with a higher number of configurations or disciplines to stay fit for. Most hobby tech divers would likely be looking at one or two configurations, making it a little easier to keep skills sharp and ready to use.
How Can You Stay ‘Fit’ For Your Modern Pentathlon of Tech Diving
Whether you’re trying to maintain two sets of skills or five, achieving this starts with realising that it takes work to maintain those skills. And work takes time. The good news is that all of it is time spent underwater, so you’re really just committing to diving more.
Planning Tech Diving Training Sessions
With a day job and limited time for tech diving, it’s perfectly understandable that you want to spend all of your time completing dives “that count.” But if you only dive, say, once every two months or less and are trying to maintain fitness across more than one configuration, it may not be the best approach.
A safer approach would be to plan a dive dedicated to brushing off the cobwebs. Call it a shakedown dive, a tweaking session, or a skills dive – just make sure that you set aside time on that dive to work on and practice skills. The temptation to just set off and explore may be there, but do your best to resist it just for a few hours longer.
Which Tech Diving Skills Should You Practice?
Which tech diving skills you should practice depends on the configurations you need to get fit for. Here are a few personal examples.
1. Those Twinset Valve Drills
Earlier this year, I knew I had a couple of twinset-based courses in the calendar. I also knew that I’d spent the last few months almost exclusively diving the Sidewinder. And I knew, that I never really had problems reaching valves, so I thought a few days accompanying a friend’s course would be perfect.
Turns out that with a different drysuit and thicker undergarments, things were far from perfect. For the first time ever, I struggled to reach valves. The cure? Tweaks to the harness, review of my reach technique and dedicated practice dives as well as some stretching in between.
2. Stage Handling
One of those twinset-based courses I mentioned above was to be an Advanced Trimix course which means handling three or more stages. Carrying those stages is only one part of dealing with them. Switching safely between them and rotating them is the other part that simply requires practice and is best done following an efficient routine.
Most recently, my deep dives had all been conducted on rebreathers, so it was time to dedicate a few dives to bottle rotation. The beauty of practice dives like these is that you can see progress almost immediately. You may find that the first dive shows just how rusty you are, but within minutes or at the latest, within a couple of dives, you’ll start seeing wins. Stick with it.
3. Diving Different Sets of Sidemount Tanks
Then there is sidemount. Now, to be perfectly honest, if you don’t love tweaking equipment, you may not love sidemount. One of the biggest transitions in sidemount diving is moving from aluminium to steel tanks.
Then there are steel tanks and steel tanks. At the moment, I dive three sets, each with different weights. Two sets have round bottoms, and one has concave bottoms. One set acts a lot like aluminium tanks and gets noticeably lighter as the gas is being used. The heaviest set changes very little.
Understanding which one to choose with which gas and which level of thermal protection is critical for safe, enjoyable sidemount dives. It’s also important to know how they behave when you push them forward or unclip them.
4. Diving Different Rebreather Brands
To me, the difference between the two rebreather brands I dive regularly and teach on is perhaps the most noticeable of all the differences mentioned above.
Granted, this difference may feel so big because the AP Diving Evolution+ and the Kiss Sidewinder are almost on opposite ends of the rebreather spectrum. One is electronic, the other is mechanical (if you’re not that familiar with rebreather diving, imagine the difference between driving an automatic and a manual car); one is built in the traditional backpack style, the other broke most rebreather-building conventions – I could go on.
The basic concept is the same, recycling your breathing gas, but most other things are different. So, how do you stay on top of your game? For myself, I make time for both, not just diving but also practicing skills. Plus, I spent time trying to streamline the way I demonstrate and practice skills and drills as much as possible to limit the potential for confusion.
And while it may sound strange, I like diving in mixed teams: explaining to buddies, often not (yet) rebreather-trained, what to look out for and how to potentially react to a problem is a great way of keeping some of those skills sharp.
Conclusion
Is tech diving an Olympic sport? Unfortunately – or thankfully? – not. But it is an adventure sport and possibly even an extreme sport that deserves respect. Staying ‘fit’ in more than one discipline – or configuration – requires time and commitment. Above all, though, it’s fun and rewarding at the same time! So when are you starting your tech diving journey?