Springboard Diving

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You see it at the Olympics : gymnasts jump launch, swirl and twist so elegantly; pointed toes; ballet hands; perfectly arched back; powerful yet graceful; and land with little splash.  Anyone can jump off a pool side, but it's all about trying to achieve the quality and perfect technique of beautifully pointed and powerful shapes/dives if you're having lessons!

Lessons occur on Fridays at a renowned venue for springboard diving, and with hockey season over, I had 6 Fridays free.  I learnt... a lot, and man, it's hard!  You water-slap-bruise a lot! 

You need to maintain a tense core body during the jump.  You need to be able to powerfully jump high enough off a non-springy and springy platform to gain enough height.  It is important that you don't arch your spine too far back or forward otherwise you don't get the right streamline or you get a painful water-slap on the back of your calves or bottom.  Even just the slightest change in curvature of the spine or angle that you approach the water can make a difference in terms of the amount of splash or how much you're going to water-slap-bruise yourself.  Pike dives and tuck dives are simple yet impressive, important basics.  Kids - their brains and body are like sponges, in other words, they pick up things so quickly.  Due to their low mass:muscle ratio, they would just 'fly' effortlessly.

Knowing dancing or gymnastics basics would help you speed along.  On my first lesson, within those 40 minutes, I progressed (well, I had the guts) to each level up : 1m, 3m, 5m... then the almighty 10m.  It looks high from ground-up, but oh my, from up there... it's soooo HIGH!  I just did a simple feet-first dive.  Perching on the edge, my toes went tense, heart racing, and I was psyching myself : 'Keep your body tense.  Remember, angle.  Arm straight and taut.  Look straight ahead.'  Then I jumped.  Tense.  But then I relaxed my core body at the VERY end (it felt like I was falling for a while), and BAM, landed in the water with a big water-slap on my bottom as my legs gave way.  I had to mermaid myself to the water surface - tensing my buttocks - because they were simply numb yet 'prickly'...and I just mermaided to the side and tried to act all cool as if my bum wasn't numb.  It was numb for like 4 minutes.  There was no evidential bruise the next day, but it was sore.

I attempted again.  This time much better.  With that 10m over the way, the next few lessons were more focused on technique, and moving from non-springy to springy boards. 

Sometimes I wish I could have continued, but I can't do everything and Friday nights are always busy.  But I definitely will never look at a diving board in the same way again.

I'd completely recommend that "To Jump off a 10m diving board" to be on your list of things to do in Life!!