How far do you swim during a dive?

[John Yaskowich]

I just finished my OW course and the 4 open water dives were a lot of waiting while the instructor verified skills. So my question is - how far do you swim during an "average" dive? I figure a lot of time will be spent looking at fish and coral, generally looking around but not everything is going to be in one spot. So: a football field? Half? half a mile? More?

Part of my reason for asking is that between now and a Feb vacation I want to increase my fitness level and I am looking for an idea of how hard to push myself.

[Puffer Fish]

Originally Posted by John Yaskowich

I just finished my OW course and the 4 open water dives were a lot of waiting while the instructor verified skills. So my question is - how far do you swim during an "average" dive? I figure a lot of time will be spent looking at fish and coral, generally looking around but not everything is going to be in one spot. So: a football field? Half? half a mile? More?

Part of my reason for asking is that between now and a Feb vacation I want to increase my fitness level and I am looking for an idea of how hard to push myself.

It is hard to tell from one dive to the next.

Drift diving can be almost no swimming at all, hunting for Lobster, with no current is usually around 1/4 to 1/2 mile.

I take pictures, and sometimes spend the whole dive in one area.

However, you can never be in to good of shape.. so get to work...

[NucMed Man]

I have done dives where all I did was kneel on the sandy bottom and played with the sea lions that surrounded my daughter and me. I have also done dives on wrecks and have spent the entire bottom time swimming (mostly in circles) and probably did a good 3/4 to 1 mile, all at a lesiurely pace. So, I guess it really all comes down to what or where you plan to dive. And yeah, it does pay to get into or stay in better shape (UGH-EXERCISE) as it not only benefits with swimming stamina but helps conserve air as you lung expansion is increased, thus decreasing the need to breath more often to keep your O2 levels up. In other words you take slower deeper breaths. Yeah I know sounds like you would use more air but you don't (weird)

[texdiveguy]

Get to working out!

[Daved]

Start working out--keep working out--its the only thing that gets harder to do the older you get.
By the way to answer your question--to the end of course.

[gibson1525]

it's always a good idea to be in good shape but diving isn't usually a cardiovascular sport. i find that i actually cover a lot of ground with a few intermittent soft fin kicks. most places you are going to want to take it slow to see everything, so for the majority of the time you won't be sprinting to get somewhere. as far as actual distance, i'd have to make a rough guess of maybe a 1/2 mile in a 60 min. dive for me. excellent fitness isn't essential for this pace, my grandmother could keep up with me with her walker.

inevitably on every trip there ends up being a current on one dive or you get dropped in the wrong spot so you end up swimming quite a bit which should be enough motivation to hit the gym!

[rach]

like everyone else has said, work out for the sake of working out...if you're in shape anyway, diving will be that much more for relaxing...i can count on one hand the number of times i've come up from a dive feeling like i exerted a lot of energy...but i can also count the number of pounds i want to drop by exercise!

[BouzoukiJoe]

Diving is a deceptive sport. Ordinarily it doesn't require the diver to be in shape. But occasionally it's very important to be in shape. The DAN fatality reports are populated with divers who were obsese or had poor cardio-vascular health.

In the beginning I had a number of dives after which I felt terribly out of shape. I know that had things gone wrong it would have been a real struggle. I now run 3 times a week and haven't had trouble now that I am in better shape.

[Steve Scuba]

My first few dives after being certified (a very recent event) were all river dives. The longest was about 2,800 feet swimming (scuba-ing?) against the "mild" current on the bottom - special thanks to google maps for the satellite photo to measure. A mile is 5,280 feet, so just over 1/2 mile. I'm in fairly decent shape; running is my only exercise, though I haven't really been keeping up on that lately. The journey was not arduous at all, except from a leg cramp from what I assume is poor finning style.

So, from my very limited experience, I would say that cardio fitness can only be a help for diving. The other benefit that I noticed from my OW class was that I used less air overall than my less in-shape counterparts (except for the one guy that was obviously in considerably better shape than me). Using less air sounds like a good benefit too.

[mcc2318]

Be sure to make friends with the tread mill, one of the big things is cardio. Increase your cardio and your bottom time will increase!