Diving Fitness is important to divers.  How fit do you need to be to dive? The answer is “it depends.” Diving in colder water with a drysuit and extra weight requires a higher level of fitness than diving in warm, calm water. Does that mean you need to be super fit, zero body fat and ripped muscles? No.

For the most part, most people can dive safely as they are. If you get winded going up a flight of stairs, though, you might want to consider improving your diving fitness before diving. At the very least, you need to be fit enough to do a surface swim, in your scuba kit, back to the shore or boat. Scuba kit definitely adds drag, so you need to be able to overcome that resistance.

Some of the benefits of better diving fitness include:

• Better air consumption, because your body is operating more efficiently.
• Normal diving tasks are easier, such as carrying your tank.
• Using less weight; muscle is denser than fat, so you don’t need to use as much weight.
• Better able to respond to emergency situations.
• Excess weight has been correlated with a higher incidence of decompression sickness. Less body fat may lower your risk.

How do you get fit for scuba? Two essential items are building muscle strength and aerobic capacity. Muscle strength helps with kitting up, kicking in the water and weighting. Aerobic capacity is good for your air consumption and being able to respond to emergency situations.  You need both for optimal diving fitness.

Learn more about Diving Fitness from Divers Alert Network at alertdiver.com

Muscle strength can be built with exercises such as weight lifting or resistance training. Divers Alert Network has several great articles on strength training:

Core strength

Upper body strength

Lower body strength

Cardiovascular exercise to boost your aerobic capacity needs you to move and get your heart rate up. Biking, walking, running, and swimming are great activities. Thirty-minutes a day, most days of the week is a good goal.

Diet is also important for your overall fitness. Reducing your fat intake, eating more vegetables (without butter and cheese) and limiting your meat intake are good places to start. That doesn’t mean you need to make radical changes in your diet, just think about what your eating and see if you can trim out the fat and make it a bit healthier.

Of course, be sure to consult with your personal physician before taking up an exercise program.

So far, I’ve talked about physical fitness. What about medical fitness? Some medical conditions may keep you from diving. Others may not. The final call is a physician’s, but here are some things to think about:

• You need to be able to equalize any body air spaces as well as any artificial air spaces. Why? As you descend, pressure from the water will compress those air spaces. Failing to equalize body air spaces often results in your body equalizing in other ways, such as ear drum rupture or bleeding. If you are congested or you’re having problems breathing, you may not be able to equalize.
• Many medications have side effects, such as drowsiness. Some of these effects can magnify at depth, or the effects of the medications can wear off (e.g., decongestants) and put you at risk for equalization problems on ascent.
• Various types of surgery and/or other medical conditions can also be of concern.

In the US, student divers need to complete a medical form that determines if they need to be evaluated by a physician. In some countries, every student diver has to be evaluated by a physician. When you complete the medical form, you need to be honest. A “YES” doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t dive (I answer YES to several questions, but I’m cleared to dive), it just means you need to be evaluated by a physician to make sure you’re not at risk for injury.

Being cleared to dive once by a physician or not answering “YES” on the medical doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready to dive on that day. You need to evaluate yourself to make sure you’re ready for the dive.

• Do you have any congestion?
• Are you taking any medication that is imparing your judgement?
• Have you recently been injured?
• Is your mind on the dive, or are you distracted?

You need to evaluate yourself and make sure you’re ready to dive.   Diving fitness starts and ends with you.

Tools of the trade for a Divers Alert Network Instructor

The title might seem a bit daunting, Diving Emergency Management Provider. What does it really mean? It means you’re trained to provide basic life support and first aid for diving related injuries. Still sounds intense, right? Remember, in a nutshell basic life support comes down to making sure the person’s heart is beating or you pump the blood yourself with chest compressions, CPR. First Aid often comes down to applying direct pressure to stop the bleeding. For diving related injuries, we have some more specifics, but otherwise it’s basically that simple. Push hard & push fast (CPR) or apply direct pressure (bleeding). Now, that’s not so tough, right? Okay, let’s take a closer look at the details.

Diving Emergency Management Provider streamlines content and skills from the four core DAN diving first aid programs:

• Basic Life Support & First Aid
• Oxygen First Aid for Scuba injuries
• Neurological Assessment
• First Aid for Hazardous Marine Life Injuries.

Diving Emergency Management Provider: Neuro, O2, CPR, HMLI

Basic Life Support and First Aid covers how to do CPR, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which is one of the links in the chain of survival. You learn how to make sure the scene is safe for you to provide care, how to provide chest compressions for someone whose heart has stopped beating, how to assist someone that is choking and a few other skills. These skills really aren’t diving-specific. CPR and First Aid training can help you whereever you go: home, work, etc.

Oxygen First Aid focuses on the skills to deliver oxygen to an injured scuba diver. Supplemental oxygen is considered the standard of care for an injured diver or someone involved in an immersion incident (drowning). You’ll learn how to setup and disassemble oxygen equipment, how to provide oxygen to a breathing injured diver and how to provide supplemental oxygen to a non-breathing diver.

Neurological Assessment focuses on how to assess if a diver has a neurological problem. The F-A-S-T system is used as an initial assessment of the diver, but this is also the same system used to assess a stroke patient, so this is also applicable outside of diving. Other skills include taking a history and performing some other tests to see if there is a neurological problem, which can happen with decompression illness as well as a stroke.

First Aid for Hazardous Marine Life Injuries covers how to provide care to somethat has been bitten, stung, scratched or poisoned. As divers, we know we should stay off the bottom and be careful of what we come in contact with, but sometimes accidents happen. You learn how to bandage wounds, clean wounds and provide care for someone that might be sick due to seafood poisoning.

Combine these programs and you have DEMP. Why not focus on each area of care specifically? Because a diving accident is rarely just one problem. Imagine this: You and your buddy are diving on a reef. You see another buddy team poking around in the reef. One of the divers reaches in to a crevice. Unknown to him, there is a moray eel living in there. The eel feels threatened and bites defensively. The diver pulls back his hand and sees the bleeding. He bolts for the surface and his buddy follows quickly. You follow along at a normal ascent rate. When you arrive on the surface, you find they’re both back on the boat. You and your buddy get out of the water and start helping with first aid, tending to the injured diver’s bleeding finger. Once you get that taken care of and all of your equipment stowed, the injured diver starts complaining of an ache in his shoulder and elbow. That could be a sign of decompression sickness. His buddy stands up and walks toward the galley to get a snack. He staggers a bit, also a possible indication of decompression illness. You and your buddy act fast. The scene on the boat is safe; no hazards to you and your buddy. Your buddy calls for help. You retrieve the oxygen kit and first aid kit and start providing oxygen first aid to the two divers. After calling for help, your buddy starts taking a history and performing a neurological assessment on the two divers. The bitten buddy has some arm weakness and aches. The other buddy has impared motor skills. Because you and your buddy took the DEMP course, you know what to do for these divers.

In recent posts, I’ve looked at various PADI Professional opportunities. When looking to further your career, adding other teaching credentials can definitely help. In this article, I’m going to look at the Divers Alert Network Instructor credentials as a way to make you more marketable.

Tools of the trade for a Divers Alert Network Instructor

DAN, Divers Alert Network, is the largest diver safety organization on the planet. DAN members support the organization because DAN provides resources we can all use. They include DAN insurance for trips, accidents and equipment, DAN Research into how and why divers get injured, and DAN Education which provides training for divers and medical professionals on diving related maladies. DAN Instructors are at the forefront of diver safety training.

Let’s take a look at the DAN diving first aid programs for divers. They include:

• Oxygen First Aid for Scuba Diving Injuries
• Basic Life Support & First Aid
• Neurological Assessment
• First Aid for Hazardous Marine Life injuries
• CPR Health Care Provider with First Aid
• Diving Emergency Management Provider (DEMP)
• Diving First Aid for Professional divers (DFAPro)

DEMP, Diving Emergency Management Provider, is a composite of the four programs, Oxygen, Basic Life Support, Neurological Assessment and Hazardous Marine Life. The program efficiently streamlines training on the four topics and removes unnecessary repetition.

DFAPro, Diving First Aid for Professional Divers, is the professional version of DEMP. It goes into some topics in more detail and includes other topics like blood-borne pathogens which is suited to meet workplace requirements for employee training.

How can teaching these programs enhance your career?

• You can integrate them with your existing courses to add value
• You can offer them as stand-alone training to help your student divers learn more and be safer divers
• The skills taught in Basic Life Support & First Aid, Neurological Assessment and First Aid for Hazardous Marine Life injuries are also applicable to accidents outside diving—a great value for your students.
• For non-divers that are around divers (e.g., spouses, boat captains, life guards), they can use the training to be ready to help in case divers in their supervision need care.
• Unlike SCUBA diving certifications that have no expiration date, emergency care providers need periodic retraining. That means the people you train need to come back to you periodically for retraining. Why do they need retraining? Emergency care skills are motor skills. If they’re not used, they decay. The good news is that most providers don’t often need their skills. The less good news is that means they need frequent practice to be proficient and ready to respond.

Offering DAN training to your staff bolsters your risk management. If all of your staff are trained in diving first aid and ready to respond and something happens, you have a team that can help.

Okay, so now that you want to become an instructor, how do you do it? You need to attend a Divers Alert Network Instructor Qualification Course(IQC) taught by a DAN Trainer. If you’ve not already completed the programs at the provider level, your DAN Trainer will integrate that training. Also, you need to be a certified dive leader, such as a scuba Instructor, Assistant Instructor or Divemaster/Divecon (with any recognized scuba training agency). The IQC covers how to teach DAN courses as well as the specifics of teaching the skills in each program. It’s modular, so you don’t have to complete all of the modules if you’re only interested in one or two. For flexibility, I suggest you complete the full IQC with all of the modules. I’ll cover the details of the DAN IQC in a future post In the interim, please feel free to contact me if you’ve any questions about the Divers Alert Network Instructor Qualification process.

Safe Diving!

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2. Review

1. Question 1 of 10

   1. Question

   1 points

   What’s the most common diving-related injury?

   • Ear injuries
   • Decompression Illness
   • Lionfish stings
   • Shark Attacks
   Correct
   

   Incorrect
   
2. Question 2 of 10

   2. Question

   1 points

   By taking additional training, I can make myself a safer diver and a better buddy.

   • True. Training can enhance my knowledge and skills.
   • False. I already know everything I need to be a safe diver
   Correct
   

   Incorrect
   
3. Question 3 of 10

   3. Question

   1 points

   I’m using brand-new equipment that I’ve never used before.   I can just throw it on and jump right in to make a dive.

   • False. I should familiarize myself with the kit or get additional training.
   • True. I'm a certified diver. I can figure it out.
   Correct
   

   Incorrect
   
4. Question 4 of 10

   4. Question

   1 points

   The first step in handling an accident is:

   • Assure that the scene is safe before I provide care
   • Jump into the water and swim out to the injured diver
   • Get the first aid kit
   • Look for someone to blame
   Correct
   

   Incorrect
   
5. Question 5 of 10

   5. Question

   1 points

   My buddy and I should agree on procedures about what to do if we become separated on the dive.   A good guideline is to search for no more than one minute underwater and then surface, watch for bubbles and follow them back down.

   • False
   • True
   Correct
   

   Incorrect
   

   Once you’re on the surface, you should wait there for your buddy to surface.   You might not be able to find your buddy even when you see bubbles at the surface.   If your buddy surfaces and you’ve descended, you might both be going up & down looking for each other.   Wait on the surface.
6. Question 6 of 10

   6. Question

   1 points

   Before making a dive, my buddy and I should do a buddy check.   What are the steps?

   • BWRAF-BCD, Weights, Releases, Air, Final OK
   • SORTeD-Signal, orient, regulator, time, equalize, descend
   • H2TG: head-to-toe glance
   • Buddy Check? What's that?
   Correct
   

   Incorrect
   
7. Question 7 of 10

   7. Question

   1 points

   It’s okay to reach inside crevices on a coral reef.

   • False
   • True.
   Correct
   

   Incorrect
   

   Many forms of aquatic life live inside crevices.   Your hand reaching inside might be viewed as threatening and they may defend themselves.   Consider taking a Hazardous Marine Life Injuries course so you’re ready to bandage your fingers.
8. Question 8 of 10

   8. Question

   1 points

   I should look at my entry area before I make a giant stride off of a dive boat.

   • True. It's always good to look before you leap.
   • False. The divemaster said it was okay, so I'll just jump right in.
   Correct
   

   Incorrect
   
9. Question 9 of 10

   9. Question

   1 points

   When exiting the water and climbing a ladder onto the boat, I should:

   • Stay as close to the ladder as possible
   • Stay back a bit, probably holding onto the tag line
   • Stay underwater, under the ladder
   Correct
   

   Incorrect
   
10. Question 10 of 10

    10. Question

    1 points

    Which of the following are suggested pieces of first aid equipment when on a diving excursion?

    • First Aid Kit
    • Emergency Oxygen KIt
    • Radio or cell phone to call for help
    • All of these
    Correct
    

    Incorrect
    

PADI Certified assistants can make or break a diver training program. Unfortunately, all to often certified assistants are relegated to schlepping tanks and gear around. If you’ve read my recent posts on Divemaster and Assistant Instructor(AI) training, you know that the training isn’t trivial. As an Instructor, why would I spend the time and effort to train a PADI Certified Assistant and then have them do just grunt work?

PADI Certified Assistant leading a student diver

How can  PADI certified assistants help you in your training courses?

• Supervising students you’re not directly working with
• Coordinating course flow (see my post on multilevel training)
• Act as an equipment and travel counselor to your students
• Act as an intermediary between your students and you
• Be another set of eyes in the classroom, pool and open water to help prevent problems
• Be a trained person in case an accident does occur
• Be part of your risk management strategy

Let’s take a look at a few of these. How can they be an intermediary and why should I need that? Believe it or not, sometimes students are intimidated by the instructor. Your assistant might be more approachable. They might also be able to answer student questions directly.

Another set of eyes. I’ve made many dives in limited visibility with several students. The only way this could work is to have assistants keeping an eye on the students I couldn’t directly see. Knowing that my assistant was there, I knew the students were in good hands. When I needed to switch which students I was working with, I could signal my assistant to keep an eye on the rest. This is an extreme case. Just in a typical pool training session, a certified assistant might notice some difficulty a student has with setting up their gear that I might have missed because I was focused on another student.

Divemasters and AI’s have completed Rescue Diver and CPR/First Aid training (and it should be current if they’re working for you). They should be proficient in the skills from Rescue (having them help with at least one Rescue course each year helps a lot). With that in mind plus their Divemaster training, they are excellent assets in the event you do have a diving accident.

While it’s not always fun to talk about, we do have legal responsibilities and we need to manage our risks, including legal risks. Having a certified assistant around provides part of that for the reasons listed above. Beyond that, they can be a witness in the event there are ever charges that something was inappropriate. You should also use them as a second set of eyes on paperwork. Make sure all of the NO’s on the medical form are really spelled N-O and aren’t “N”, check marks or the mysterious Y-E-S that you thought was a N-O. This also get’s your assistant in the mind set of what they need to keep an eye on as they continue their diving career.

Remember, certified assistants, PADI Divemasters, PADI Assistant Instructors or higher, are highly trained diving professionals. They’re not just there to schlepp gear.