So... are you all ready for this? Because you may feel weird when you find out that since the end of summer, I have been spending weekly afternoons motherflippin' springboard DIVING. You read that right.
Here's the way it happened. Ballet was continuing to be super expensive, and while I still enjoy it and love to go, I was only getting back into shape and not essentially learning anything new. Just taking it up again and perfecting my form. And I'm always about trying new things and having new experiences. Then there was that whole obsession with the Olympics. I loved to watch the diving and always thought it would be such an interesting thing to try. I've always been attracted to activities with an element of grace and/or acrobatics. So I kept thinking how I'd like to try it, and it dawned on me that I wasn't too old to try it... yet. I feel like I'm running out of time to be trying so many new things. I researched it a little and found that dancers and gymnasts tend to transfer very well to diving. Go big or go home.
That's how I came to springboard diving with a team that practices out at Flushing Meadows Corona Pool. So conveniently just a few stops down from me. There was a handful of us starting for the first time on the same day, which was very encouraging. Going off springboards was a completely new experience, and from the very first climb up, I was in love with it.
(This is the actual facility and boards that I practice at)
Going off the 3 meter springboard (that highest of high dives) was a terrifying experience I couldn't not go back to. That adrenaline when your heart hits your neck because you're free falling hits just about midway. The coach was sympathetic enough to give us all one round to just simply jump off of it. After that it was all work. Oscillations, jumps, lineups, rolls into layouts... we're really not babied at all. As as I climb up three meters high I start to get tingly. Then I walk out confidently until I leave the rails behind and suddenly the water is really, really far below and there's nothing between us. Then I make myself jump, and I move and fight to get into position before I break the water, and as soon as I'm cushioned underwater and curling in the direction of my spine, all I can think is... let me try that again! Only once did I turn around to my fellow divers and say "I'm scared guys!" and they all looked back up at me with looks in their eyes that said "Yep. I was there and I definitely don't envy you right now" and then told me I could do it. I think I worked myself up into that anxiety because the coach had to talk to someone else and I stood up there on the edge of the board just waiting and anticipating.
So, I had such an out-of-body time with diving last night that I think I felt I could finally share it. Two things happened:
First of all, a professional Greek coach that was back with the team for the first time since I'd been around started working with me and a few others on the first 1m board. He was incredibly unforgiving and probably would make a lot of junior high girls cry. (aka, me, with the emotional stability of a junior high girl.) When my head would emerge out of the water and look expectantly at him to get feedback, he would huff "No! Not at all!" and wave me away. After a few failed tries he made me come on the pool deck and stand next to him and he moved my body himself to make me do the dive off the side. He had some magic Greek touch because on the next round he looked like he had won a March Madness bracket and threw a fist and said "Yes! THAT was it." When I switched to the second 1m board, I went off with this corrected posture and this coach didn't correct me or the jump. All he said was "What just happened? What did the other coach teach you? Come over here and tell me how he was able to make you do that." It was literally one dive to the next.
Secondly, I found my first Achilles heel. Doing line-ups from pike to layout was halting all of my progress. I could not get out of the pike position in time and kept entering the water still bent at the hip. More advanced divers were pulling me aside to offer advice and help me with different exercises, but I wasn't coming around. I was getting frustrated to the point where I was just going to sit out the rest of practice rather than keep feeling myself fail. I came close to asking the coach to give me something else to work on so I could get out of that funk. But I figured I'd still have to face this sooner or later. I went to the side and put everything into correcting this problem. When I started to go off the boards again, the coach looked hopeful that I had improved, but not entirely optimistic that I was getting it. I took more time to myself. At about 9:58 p.m. I went off to execute the troublesome dive from the 1m board. Something felt different, not entirely awful. I swam to the surface and with only my eyes and ears above the water, the coach was looking at me. He asked me how that felt. I said it felt "better" (that's always a safe answer to give coaches) and he said "Really? Well you should remember exactly what that was. Because it was FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC. That is what you should do every time."
To go from a wavering smile to a "fan-fucking-tastic"! I was so proud of myself. I still had time to try again before our boards closed at 10, but I thought it would be better at that point to go out on the high note. And I totally did.
More than even just loving the new experience of diving, I really like this team, everyone is so friendly and nice and they have a great community going on and we all take the train back together and they always get together outside of practices and meets and stuff. Diving is the new love of my life!
No comments:
Post a Comment