Diving for Beginners: Don't be daunted by diving

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• Find a coach, and attend diving programmes
  Firstly, one must be able to swim with confidence in depths of up to four metres, and be able to enter the water head first. Then, one can look to take part in diving programmes for beginners or recreational participants. With these classes, beginners will be taught the basics of the sport, including jumps from a variety of heights, head-first entries, forward dives, somersaults, and backward dives. The significance is on increasing confidence and learning a new set of skills.

• Learning proper body positions
  Adopting a good body posture is critical foundation in springboard and platform diving. The faster a novice diver can master proper diving posture, the easier it is to maintain the correct body position during dives. Aside from the fact that proper body posture and body position leads to favourable results in diving competitions, an even more important aspect is diving safely and avoiding injury. When a diver enters the water at a high speed, proper posture and body position can make all the difference.

• Improve flexibility
  A fundamental physical element that can help any new diver is learning how to stretch and increase flexibility. Once you learn how to increase your flexibility, the learning process will be easier and the dives will turn out better. More importantly, if you develop flexibility early, it will not seem like hard work later on in your diving career.

• Learning a flathand
  A good entry into the water is always necessary if you want to get good scores. Learning how to do a “rip” entry – which is an entry into the water with little or no splash – can transform your dive spectacularly. One of the most important parts of a rip is a flathand. Before entering the water, the diver will grab his hand with his palm facing the water, creating a flat surface. Without a flathand, the chances of ripping are low, thus you give yourself a much better chance when the first thing that hits the water is your flat hand.

• Check the water before diving
  Before proceeding with a dive, always make sure that the diver before you has made it to the side of the pool and there is no one in the way. Thus, once you have finished your dive, swim to the side of the pool after you have resurfaced.

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