There is an elephant in the room, and how many instructors and dive guides did you see drinking lots of beer and smoking lots of cigarettes?
There is fitness, and there is fitness to dive, and these are not necessarily the same thing. Personally, I am not a strong swimmer. I can do it, but I don't swim regularly and therefore don't exactly work up a great deal of speed. I actually don't enjoy swimming either. On the other side of the coin - put a pair of fins on me and I can go forever.
I smoke, I drink regularly, and if you ask me to run a marathon I will die, that's why we invented motorcycles, after all. But again, I can scull through annoying currents without changing my air consumption and I'm for sure not the best but I usually finish the first dive of the day with 70 bar (about 1000psi) in my tank. As a comparison, last year I was diving with an olympic-trained long distance runner and not only was he not so great in the water (rescue diver) but he also sucked gas twice as quickly as me.
That's not bragging, that's just pointing out that some physcial fitness is of course required to be able to dive, but the way in which a person is "fit to dive" varies. I refer readers to the question on the RSTC medical form which is "[answer yes or no to an] inability to perform moderate excercise e.g. walk one mile in 12 minutes" I know one guy who, presented with two very overweight customers, asked them to do this, and when they failed, refused to instruct them!
Some types of diving do of course require a higher degree of physical fitness. Working hard, deeper technical diving, areas with strong currents and so on, but your average recreational diver need only be in reasonably good health and preferably not knocking on Death's door. I did have one medical with THIRTEEN "yes"' on it. I didn't even bother calling the hyperbaric doctor, I wanted to call an ambulance.
With regards to the swimming - as long as you are able to maintain yourself comfortably, there is no requirement for technique. You can butterfly, breast stroke or doggy paddle as long as you can do it, and you can do it comfortably. With the float, bobbing, drown-proofing, treading, maintaining yourself by regular farting, it doesn't matter, as long as you *can*.
I know people would like all divers to be great swimmers but the two activities don't actually have a great deal in common for the most part - apart from the water thing, of course. One might argue that anybody who wants to surf, water-ski, ride a rubber ring towed by a speedboat or otherwise engage in water based activities should also be required to be able to swim.
I'm not arguing for the removal of the swim tests from either OW or DM, but I think the scoring system for DM reflects that you don't need to be in peak physical condition to pass. Good physical condition, yes, and I think instructors who demand more than the requirements are acting admirably, but some of the rules I've seen don't make sense - for example, several instructor colleagues of mine would not allow kick-rolls to be performed if the candidate was taking the test in a swimming pool, because this was somehow cheating. I overruled that eventually, because to me it just meant that the people who can do that properly are really good swimmers.
It would be great if we all as divers looked as Baywatch as people sometimes think we should be, but most of us aren't, and actually this is not such a big deal.
I thought the elephant would go away but now it is asking me for peanuts.
Cheers
C.
