War Against Fatigue

[mr_v]

Work with the instructor to ensure that your classes fall into your preferred operating pattern. If you're an early bird, take classes early. If you're an owl, take classes later in the day. In other words, match the schedule with your peak performance. Mis-matching is what gets you in trouble.

 

[PfcAJ]

Hydrate, eat well with frequent snacks, make time for real sleep, but also consider the thermal impacts of multiple days of diving. That tends to creep up on you and can really make an impact.

 

[rddvet]

Zero alcohol, good sleep, and good quality, clean food. People go into classes and forget about nutrition and eat like crap. Poor quality food with greatly effect your mood and energy. But then again the average american eats like sh-t

 

[jadairiii]

Along with everything else, try to avoid caffeine or limit it. That will avoid the "crash". Snack on fruit, complex carbs.

 

[mr_v]

Y'all scare me with zero alcohol. I don't drink much, but once in a while I appreciate Bushé Lite with a good meal.

 

[divezonescuba]

For the first in water day of my initial technical diving training, we were in the water for 7 1/2 hours. It was brutal. For the rest of the training I was lucky to get to finish lunch (the onsite restaurant was slow). But, we always stopped promptly at 5 pm. That went on for 12 days.

My suggestion is to have some trail bars in your drybag for quick snacks.

 

[boulderjohn]

I started cave instruction with 6 straight days, the first one being all on land. At the end, my instructor flat out admitted that he was really tired. Me, too. I'm glad we did not go beyond that.

Once I was with a travel group of divers, one of whom did a week of cave instruction. Several others in our group were diving out of the same shop, so I saw her from time to time. The class was in session all day each day. At the end of one day, I watched her class. The instructor was droning on about the physical structure of the isolation manifold, explaining why it worked the way it did. (I guess the purpose was to prepare them for the day they would have to build their own. You never know when that is going to happen, so you have to be ready.) I looked at the glazed eyes of the students and thought, "They aren't getting a damned thing out of this."

I really think there is a limit to how hard and how long you can work without the law of diminishing returns coming into play. When you go past a certain point, continued instruction is not only useless, it does more harm than good, because the student will forget so much that they would have known more if they had quit earlier. That is the idea behind the "less is more" philosophy--students learn more in a given time period if you don't overwhelm them with too much.

 

[Alex Ouroboros]

I’d knock any alcohol on the head a couple of weeks before taking that on, I’d eat decent food and get as much stuff sorted before setting out and I’d definitely be doing my trick of sticking a deoralite sachet in a 2ltr bottle of water at the start of the boat ride each day (or equivalent) I take it you have arrangements for the loo? I have left capri-sun type drinks and haribo in a net bag on the trapeze that does help, (all energy) and I’m lucky enough to have a couple of I-dive music players,,, for me that’s a massive game changer as its truly relaxing whilst having the hours tick by… I don’t know if you use heating (uk is cold) but I have a couple of ammonite batteries and again one goes on the trapeze for later… all money though…
Best of luck dive safe buddy

 

[asher102]

I just finished a 5 day course and my recommendations are lots of electrolytes (Gatorade/liquid IV) and stretch every day. The regular stretching really helps with the muscle fatigue from hauling doubles around all day.

 

[happy-diver]

I've got 5 days coming up with my special Indian garlic ginger and sugar drink mixed
and bottle of O2 behind passenger seat pumped
and 38% to breathe