jonnythan:
AFAIK it's up to the instructor but this very topic, and updating the fitness requirements to something more useful, is currently being bounced around on the Quest list.
As a coach of some repute, I often have to administer fitness tests of different types to my players. One thing I have learned is that specificity to task is crucial.
If you look at a runner who does 10k runs competitively, you'd say that person is obviously fit. Ask that same runner to do 10, 100 yard sprints in under 20 seconds with 30 seconds rest between, and they'd nearly die. Though my last group of 14 year old girls can do that test fairly easily. Take that same group of "fit" girls and ask them to swim 300 yards, and half would drown inside 100 yards.
There are many kinds of fitness and many ways to test for it. It is important that for diving we test both aerobic and anerobic fitness, in my opinion. What you can do steady state, with a full supply of oxygen is aerobic. What you can do under stress without a full supply of oxygen is anerobic.
For full fitness training, both types of activities should be performed. There is also the mental aspect. An experienced diver with 200, 500, 1000 dives, will likely react to a free flowing regulator in a way that probably does not jeapordize their safety. A diver with 10 logged dives may respond quite differently. A lack of familiarity with the environment induces stress. A silt out in a cave is no different a scenario than turning the lights off, yet it seems more stressful from accounts I read.
So what is fit? And how should you test for it. If you were to use a balance of anerobic and aerobic tests, it is doubtful that half, maybe even 1/3 of recreational divers would pass it. Are these people not suited to dive? Should the requirement be different for those pursuing technical diving? Overhead environents? Deep diving?
Personally, I think the basic swim test and a basic run a mile in 15 minutes should suffice for an OW fitness test. However, we all know there are a LOT of divers who would be disqualified on these grounds. I think you should be able to do 2 10 minute miles, and a 300-400 yard swim for technical training. In that regard GUE has it about right. And I say this knowing that at present, I'd fail and this is in fact the type of diving I wish to pursue. If I can't do a basic swim, and a decent run, I have no business calling myself a technical diver, and being in life-threatening situations underwater.
That's the way I see it.