World Aquatics Championships Doha 2024: How do divers train
Diving tests explosive strength, agility, flexibility, and mental fortitude. Find out how the world’s best, like Tom Daley, train to ensure they stay injury free and prepared to challenge for medals.
Diving
There are certain parts of an elite diver’s training regime that are non-negotiable.
Strength training to improve explosivity and control, stretching to ensure flexibility, and diving drills - both on dry land and in the pool - to learn the different dives.
But beyond this, each diver has a unique body composition, and may focus on improving some areas more than others.
In addition, a springboard diver may require more explosive power than a platform athlete, for example, and their daily workouts will likely reflect this too.
Ahead of the Doha 2024 World Aquatics Championships, we take a closer look at how some of the world’s top divers train, from men’s 10m synchro champion Tom Daley to Malaysian star Pandelela Rinong.
Tom Daley’s training regime
Daley has competed as an elite diver since the age of 14.
His training techniques have led to Olympic and world medals, while protecting his body as much as possible from the rigours of repeatedly hitting the water from the 10m diving board.
The Brit does 11 sessions a week in the gym and on dry land (diving into foam pits and crash pads), 11 in the pool, and one session of another movement-based exercise like ballet.
“Building to an Olympic Games, we train six days a week up to about six hours a day, involving dry land stuff like gymnastics, trampolining, yoga, cardio, weightlifting,” Daley told attitude.co.uk.
“Pretty much, you name it, we do it, because we have to train pretty much every single muscle in our body to withstand 35mph impact into the water from 10m.”
In the weight room, Daley squat-lifts 125kg and does press-ups with 80kg on his back, while he trains on the ballet bars to build core strength.
How Matty Lee varies training load
Matty Lee, who won gold in Tokyo alongside Daley, emphasised the need to adapt training during the season depending on whether he is in a preparatory or competition phase.
The Brit incorporates a lot of plyometric movements - such as barbell reverse lunges and hip thrusts - in order to prepare his body to launch from the 10m platform.
“In pre-season you do fewer reps, but you absolutely blast your body with heavy weights,” Lee told Coachweb.com.
“In the stage where we maintain our strength through the competition period, what we’re doing in the pool is a lot harder than usual, so we want to have the power and energy to perform.”
Lee explains that springboard divers ‘usually have much bigger legs and squat a lot more, because you’ve got to generate power through the springboard, but at 10m it’s just quick explosive power’.
In such an attritional sport, injury prevention is vital.
That means that even after training is over, divers like USA’s Sam Dorman still have a lot of work to do.
“My recovery is a lot of stretching. Since my diving routine is so repetitive and since I do the same thing so many times, I have to counterbalance with stretching,” Dorman, who won men’s 3m synchronised silver at Rio 2016, told oarsandalps.
“Even a lot of the workouts I do are to balance out my body - since my routine is quad-dominant, I balance it out by working out my hamstrings and glutes. The other three things I focus on the most are maximising my sleep, food consumption and hydration.”
Cassiel Rousseau's receipe for success
Australia’s Cassiel Rousseau caused shockwaves in the diving world when he won the men’s 10m platform title at the 2023 World Championships.
Not only had China suffered a rare loss at a major event, but Rousseau has not even been in the sport that long, having transitioned from acrobatic gymnastics.
“The amount of adrenaline you get on the 10m board is just completely different to anything you could imagine,” he told QLD Academy of Sport.
“I train twice a day, three hours each session. Three gym sessions a week, and the rest are water and dry land sessions.
“Dry land is diving into foam pits and crash mats with some conditioning."
Discipline and rest key for Pandelea Rinong
At the other end of the experience scale is Malaysia’s Rinong.
The two-time Olympic medallist trains eight hours a day – four hours in the morning and four hours in the evening - six days a week.
Despite working her body for such long periods, the 30-year-old ensures that she has enough rest to recover for the next day.
“In order to be successful, one needs to be disciplined, independent, have lots of perseverance to overcome obstacles and the patience to spend endless hours in training,” she told GoingPlaces.
Mental preparation with David Colturi
Finally, there is the mental aspect of diving.
While there is a huge adrenaline rush involved in jumping explosively before plunging into the water, divers have to master the art of staying calm.
“Relaxation, breathing exercises, visualisation, and trying to put yourself in that environment so your body responds to the stress and fear you’ll go through and you’re able to do it like you’ve always done it,” high diving World Series event winner David Colturi told InsideHook.
“It can be done lying down and stationary. It’s a mental routine of trying to calm your heart rate with your breath while imagining that you’re on a platform 90 feet in the air.
"You can be in your bed and start thinking about this and your palms will sweat, your heart will beat faster, you’ll start to pump adrenaline through your veins just like you would when you’re up there. You need to calm yourself just the same way you would in that situation.”