Talk:Diving

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There's a place in South America somewhere where people go "cliff diving" from a 30 metre cliff into a natural pool. Anyone know where it is?

  • Perhaps the commenter is thinking of La Quebrada near Acapulco, Mexico on the Pacific coast? (Thu. 8/28/03 17:00PDT)

Re: The dual meaning of "diving." Other western languages also use one word (eg, plonger, bucear) to denote both activities. Speculation: this dual meaning could have originated with Greek, as before the introduction of external air supplies the procedure used by sponge-gatherers in the eastern Med was to take a headlong flying jump off their boat while carrying a heavy rock. Once underwater at their desired depth they released the rock, which was hauled back up on a line, and went about their business as long as their breath held out, then swam for the surface to repeat the procedure. (Thu. 8/28/03 17:15PDT)

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Could we refer as "jumping" to disambiguate, e.g. "diving" to denote going underwater and "jumping" to denote the above-water part, e.g. if you just want to get the thrill of jumping off the 5m cement tower but not really get all the scuba equipment, etc., to dive under the water.??? Glogger 04:14, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Boys Own

How can this possibly be fair use, assuming it isn't GFDL? Is it public domain? Toby Woodwark 02:14, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)

Published late 19th century [1], so it will be public domain. There's a copy on http://www.publicbookshelf.com/ from which this text was presumably copied. It could really do with rewriting into Wikipedia style though. sjorford 07:48, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've integrated some of the boys' own stuff into my attempted rewrite. Edit please! Also, someone can nuke this section of the chat. Toby Woodwark 13:48, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)

Leave the links in! Somebody (me, for instance) might find them interesting or useful... Trekphiler 15:38, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Learning how to enter pool without hurting too much

I just learned how to swim recently (as an adult, around the same time I did my doctoral dissertation), but only gently climbed in by ladder, never jumping off the side. More recently I tried off the side (0m) and then the 5m height at Summerville (Toronto); they only have 0m, 5m, and 10m (they took out the flexible spring-loaded apparatus of 1m and 3m long ago because it was deteriorated).

The first time I tried I went head first which I thought might be as streamlined as possible but I could not seem to get my legs straight. I tried 4 times, but bruised, took 20 days for bruises to go away. So I tried feet first, which seemed to hurt less, actually, though it's counter-intuitive. Why would it hurt less to go feet first since there's more parts of the body that get hit? (Main pain seems to be genitals and nose perhaps because they're going the "wrong way" when going feet first.)

Also a lifeguard suggested I try to intertwine my legs in feet first (he called it "impact jump"). Can anyone confirm if this is a standard method of entry? I don't see many of the others going in that way.

I found there was a 1m, 3m, and 5m at the University of Toronto so I tried the 1m and 3m, but seem to have tremendous pain in ears even with 1m. It feels like landing in an airplane, when it descends fast. It doesn't matter head first or feet first, same amount of pain. I added my thoughts on ear plugs to the Wikipedia entry, but maybe someone more experienced than I can confirm if this is correct, e.g. that earplugs should be worn. For some reason, though, my ears never did hurt when I did the 5m at Summerville, but later even just 1m hurt like crazy. Could it be time-varying? (Some days hurt, other days not???). Or maybe it was just that my first few tries were so uncoordinated that I wasn't going deep, even from 5m up.

Thoughts on how to hold nose if going feet first? I added my own empirical findings (using second hand to hold first in), but would also welcome other input on this matter. I see alot of children go feet first without holding their nose. I tried this even from 1m, and was not able to blow out enough to keep water out enough. Is this learned or does it just happen naturally in certain people, e.g. 4 year old children who go off the 5m don't seem to have any problems at all. Maybe it could be explained why children have no problems at all, but adults bruise, have splitting ear aches that last more than 12 hours after impact, etc.. Some more introductory "how to learn" kind of info is what I'd really find useful in the Wikipedia. Glogger

  • I have been competitively swimming for 10 years now. The key to keeping water out of your nose is experience and practice. Actually blowing air out of your nose is not ideal as it uses up your oxygen supply. When you hold your nose as you jump you push all the air out of it. If you don't hold your nose, but hold your breath instead, you should find that, so long as don't invert your head, the water will mostly be kept out of your nose by the air trapped inside it. The Olympic style divers hold their breath during their dives and usually release their air all at once as they swim back up to the surface. As for your ear problems... This is something that varies person to person. It is related to the pressure sensitivity of your ears. This pain is caused by a difference in pressure between the air in your ear canal and the pressure behind your ear drum. There is a way to equalize this by moving your jaw. So, "How to Learn": Place your fore and middle fingers, both hands, on your head just in front of your ears. You should feel the upper-back most part of your jaw. Keeping your fingers there, lower your jaw then jut it forward. This should give you some sense of how your jaw placement affects the volume of your ear canal, and therefor the pressure. You may be able to hear a muffled pop as you do this. That sound is the air pressure equalizing. There is a positioning of the jaw which allows for practically immediate and constant equalization to occur as you go down. This technique is used by abalone divers in Hawaii according to my marine science teacher. As for bruising, I really don't know what more I could tell you. The lifeguard's suggestion to intertwine your legs and feet—I assume this means something similar to crossing your ankles and straightening your legs—was probably because your legs and feet were coming apart as you fell. This could explain the pain in your genitals as there would be nothing breaking the water for them so they would receive the same impact as your feet. As you noted, reducing surface area is a positive thing. If you really want to pursue diving, or even just high jumping, getting a bathing suit which is tight fitting would probably solve the problem of genital pain. Most, if not all, of the divers I know wear a spandex or similar type of suit, even if it is under looser swimming shorts. If you are worried about appearances, these divers I'm referring to are by all accounts normal teenage boys. If they don't feel deterred in their hormonal quest to attract the opposite, then, in my opinion, we shouldn't have qualms about it either. I hope this was of help to you. If you have other questions or want a more detailed response, please feel free to contact me.WAvegetarian 06:05, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As a competitive diver for 12 years, and the girl in the picture in this article, I feel fairly qualified to comment. When jumping, competitive divers generally don't hold their noses at all. However, when I was teaching adults to jump off platform and they were concerned, I would have them hold their nose with one hand and cross their other arm over their chest to keep everything close to their body and keep them as streamlined as possible. When jumping or diving, you should always go for what you are trying to achieve as hard as possible. Jump as high as you can, it sounds counterintuitive but, the higher you jump, the more control you have. This may help to alleviate some of the "smacking" (hitting the water in unintended positions, generally parallel) problems. If you are going to attempt diving off of the platforms again, try this for your entry. Place one hand out in front of you with your palm facing away. Take your other hand and grap onto your fingers. Pull back gently so that you create a flat surface. This flat surface will hit the water first and break up the surface tension meaning you are less likely to hit your head on the water. Also, go for a medium shallow dive on your first couple of attempts, steeper angle than a racing dive, but not quite straight up and down. Getting straight up and down can be very hard, especially with only a 5m and nothing to build up to it on and may be part of why you were smacking your legs. The keys to diving safely are to go for it and to stay tight. Most injuries occur when people back out in the middle of a dive, or when they allow themselves to get loose. So as you enter the water remember to squeeze your arms against your head, hold your stomach and butt muscles as tight as possible and point your toes, this will help to keep your body in a straight line and minimize the chances of smacking. Good luck. (Megan)

[edit] clean up Learning section (explanation)

This section was written by someone who is/was still trying to learn how to dive (jumping off of high things). I feel that it could do with a rewrite from someone who is more knowledgeable about diving (competitor maybe) and would have some tips for people trying to learn as opposed to a collection of various methods tried by someone in the process of self teaching. It seems rather informal and unencyclopedic. I think it could benefit from a bit of a rewrite with more info. I realize that it's considered bad form to tag for clean up and not participate, but I don't really have expertise in the matter as I am a swimmer, not a diver. WAvegetarian 07:01, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested Split

It seems that there are two articles here, on two different subjects--the article is already formatted with this in mind, so an official split should not be hard. One subject is (broadly) swimming underwater; the other is jumping into the water. Further splits might be possible (such as underwater swimming done by humans vs animals; competitive diving vs cliffjumping and such, etc).

In addition, a few other uses of the word diving (or dive, which should redirect here) might be worth mentioning on a disambiguation page:

  • In soccer, faking an injury to fool the ref into calling a foul (or to stall the game) is called diving.
  • "Taking a dive" refers to intentionally throwing a match in sports, usually boxing.
  • Things like "dive bar" and such.
  • Dumpster diving

--EngineerScotty 01:11, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Might I suggest Renaming it "Springboard Diving and Platform Diving" instead of just diving

--Hanyu Xia 12:30, 30 November 2005

[edit] Suggested Split

I like the concept of "Springboard and Platform Diving" as a catagory except that's a pretty long entry title, and it leaves out cliff diving. Perhaps dividing this entry between "Competitive Diving" (or even "Exhibition Diving") and "Underwater Diving" might work, especially with a disambiguation page.

-Rick Obermeyer, 15 December 2005

[edit] Diving

Two of us re-wrote diving to conform to the athletic sport of diving. What do you think?

A HUGE improvment! Added text to the link for the USA diving page .Dive614c 04:21, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Added a page with a 3 level tower image for Diving Platforms and linked it to the Diving page.Dive614c 13 January 2006

[edit] What is the name of this "sport"

People dress up like clowns and fall down 10 meters in comical ways ending in a splash of water. Someone might even walk on stilts and act like he falls down accidentally. Usually a group of kids gives ratings for the jumps and the clown with the highest score is declared the winner. Lapinmies 11:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] move

This should be moved to something else and turned into a disambiguation page. I wanted to find Diving (football) and I assumed this would be about Scuba diving with a disambiguation link at the top. Jooler 10:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I see some anon removed the disambig link at the top about a month ago. I have restored it. Jooler 10:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Learning how to dive?

First time I dove off a diving board was 4 weeks ago; its a really springy board and I've gotten good bouncing high off the end of the board and entering the water "layed out" straight. But today's attempts at flips were painful disasters; I kept landing on my back or side. I tried a pike, and tried tucking into a ball, with no success. Should I just keep at it, will I "get it" eventually? Are there hints? suggestions? Is there a web site listing a set of graduated exercises and dives?

What about risks? Aside from the life-gaurd yelling "no gainers" at some of the divers, what else? Age-related risks? I'm, uhhh, getting old ... linas 03:42, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I recommend finding a qualified coach who will teach and keep you safe. (anon)
Uhh; thank you. ... well, that costs money and requires things like "dedication". I work on weekdays; I ride my bike to an outdoor pool on Sundays and would like to keep it simple like that. Driving a car to accomodate to the schedule of a coach at a chlorinated pool is kind-of the opposite of "fun". linas 20:02, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
If you are trying flips, I suggest trying them standing first, no bounces. Think about the physics of what you're doing, throwing your arms downward while popping your heels up behind you . . . this creates angular momentum which when you tuck or pike increases to increase your rate of rotation (dumbed down physics, obviously). I learned them by doing "watermelons" first, getting into a little ball at the end of the board and rolling off. If you stay in a ball, from 1m or lower you shouldn't get hurt, and you'll get the idea of how it should feel. For what it's worth, that's me on the front page, so apparently self teaching to a point, including front flips, followed by coaching works. Good luck, stay safe. (Megan)

[edit] Diving techniques

I created an article on diving techniques. (It's a long story involving New Pages patrol and a contested prod.) I know next to nothing about diving, and the article is in a sorry state and could use a lot of help from those knowledgable about the subject. Thanks! --Ginkgo100 talk · e@ 22:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cliff diving info?

'Cliff diving' redirects to this page, but there's no actual information on cliff diving here. I'd like to see some, especially on how they survive diving that far into the water; I was under the impression hitting water became much like hitting concrete at those heights...

[edit] With distinction

Anybody think it's worth including competitive springboard prohibits handstand dives, allowed in platform? Trekphiler 15:45, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scoring the Dive

I've added a brief definition of DD as it wasn't included on the page, but I am far fro many kind of exspert. Does some one more knowledgeable want to review it. Ideally it needs a fuller explanation, along with the way dives are pre-chosen, perhaps in the Dives Group section. There is alot of good detail here but not enough explanation, on how things work, for those who know nothing of the sport.

[edit] Bellyflops and Cannonballs diving competitions.

I know they aren't professional sports... but there are diving competitions for Bellyflops and Cannonballs. Some are even televised on ESPN. Should those be added into the non-professional diving section (along with a description of what they are). Antmusic 22:49, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Speed and Impact?

I'm trying to determine the speed of a diver when he hits the water, and the force they feel when the water decelerates them.

Wikipedia says that air resistance is negligible. Then the diver is falling with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2. If he dives off a 10 meter board, then he'll fall 10 meters and reach the water with a speed of 14 m/s. That's 31 MPH.

Say the pool is over three meters deep ( How deep are pro diving pools supposed to be? ). So the diver has 3 meters for the water to slow him down. That means his decelleration is 32.7 m/s^2. That's over three times the force of Gravity. Let's say he has a mass of 70 kg ( 154 lbs weight ). That means the pool water will exert a force of 2290 Newtons, the weight of 230 kg mass.

Are my numbers correct? If so, then geez, a 2290 Newton force doesn't kill the guy?!? Yikes. While I'm asking, does anyone know how fast the diver would decelerate to zero speed if he hit concrete, or how far would he move in the concrete vs the 3 meters he moves in the water?

Thanks Inkan1969 17:06, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not qualified to do those calculations, but I know that 3 meters is far to deep for a 10 meter dive, I'll try to remember over the break to take a look at how deep the minimum is. Another thing you might want to note is that some divers will "plane out" after they hit the water, which extends the distance they travel before hitting the bottom. Kessen (talk) 21:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)


We'll I never did find any definate information, but at a pool in Calgary Alberta the diving tank was 5.0m deep. This pool had all of the diving boards and blocks of all sizes at it.
We do need someone to research and cite what the diving depths required are sometime, my one example does nothing to better this article, other than give you a little more peace of mind when calculating numbers. Kessen (talk) 16:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Safety

I came across a Google Book that might be useful to this discussion, the URL is http://books.google.com/books?id=WHKvDcGxAqUC&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=high+school+athletics+risks+diving&source=web&ots=7ENGmWG3VG&sig=mAnC_11x2CQmJBf_l0m3qC-IOb8 Pbutts (talk) 23:46, 6 January 2008 (UTC)