A failed dive in the twisting round can ruin your day. This unfortunate occurrence usually comes as a result of inexperience, and the majority of these occur on twisting dives with feet first entries.
Now it may seem obvious that less experienced divers fail dives, and this is true. However, even older divers can fall victim to this twister malady if they don’t train properly.
How does a diver avoid this common trap? By concentrating on two general areas when learning twisting dives and using them in competitions.
- When learning and practicing twisting dives, dedicate half of your time to learning to control the somersault without twisting, and on balance and control in the approach and hurdle.
- Only do what you can do! A diver should not add additional twists unless they are in control of their somersault.
Twisting is easy
Controlling the somersault during the dive is the hard part. Many times, if the diver has good twisting action (by that I mean that the diver has little or no problem rotating around a vertical axis), the movement that begins the twist will many times accelerate the somersault. This is especially true in inexperienced divers. If you cannot control the somersault without the twist, that acceleration will make it very difficult to stop the somersault and the result is a smack. And what makes this worse, smacking on a twister can be harsh.
If you have you every seen a full twisting somersault where the diver finishes the somersault two feet above the water, you know what happens next . . . belly flop!
Higher D.D...?
Young divers will often times be caught in the trap of trying to add more degree of difficulty by adding twists. When faced with the challenge of this added difficulty, many divers will generally throw harder in the somersault thinking that this will help complete the dive. Wrong! This will usually result in an out of control dive.
The Free Position
A twisting dive is much harder to control than a somersaulting dive. A diver can come out of a spinning dive earlier or later to help control the somersault, but in twisting dives, the fact that they take place in the free position does not allow that to happen. The result - an out of control somersault in the free position will stay out of control.
So if you want to avoid a failed twister and a dive that will leave a mark, make sure that you learn to control your somersault.
