Hard Work

If you think diving is a sport where you can flip and turn and do all the tricks with ease, you better stop thinking that now. Diving is a really tough sport, it's mostly repetitive stuff, dive after dive after dive, practicing until you get it perfect. When I have my competitions every summer, I practice my dives almost every single day and it really pays off. Especially when you a competition soon, it pays to put a little extra time in the water,like I did with the competition I won, I went to the pool the day before the competition and practiced my dive a little more. Even doing it on the ground and going through the movements, to get your mind ready for what lies ahead of you. Also, most people arn't like this but for me it helps so much to have someone that is at the same level as me so that it pushes us to be better than the other, that's how i succeeded in doing my one and half flip, there was another girl that was trying to do it the same time as me and we both did it at the same time. Its all work, but you can absolutely have fun with it.

A member of United States National team and what it takes

The guy I'm going to talk about is on the National team but has never been to any Olympic games. Sean Moore, he is very good, and is always found in the middle of the pack, but has come in 1st, 2nd and 3rd a few time in his career as an international diver. He competes in platform and springboard, synchro and individually. It takes a lot of practice and consistency to get to a level like he has, it really isn't easy, it has always been a small dream of mine to be an international competitive diver, but when I look at them fly thru the air I say to myself, that I need to work a lot harder try new things to be open to trying new dives and not chicken out. Also, I think of the next time I would be steeping of the diving board and already thinking of a game plan, a plan to get my goal, and maybe my goal would be just to be able to do one dive that I already just better, or fixing one little thing of my dive to make it perfect. Sean Moore does exactly that he practices to get better at what he does.
http://www.usadiving.org/05redesign/media/profiles/Moore_Sean.pdf

Popularity and two members from National Senior team Canada.

Diving isn't a very popular sport where I'm from, because in the city there isn't a lot of diving boards, only in outdoor pools, but they're only open during the summer, but during the summer there is a little bit of interest. On the contrary in some areas, especially the areas where summer Olympics took place(because they have the right facilities for the job) and anywhere there's the appropriate facilities, these are the places where diving is a lot more popular. Just because a city or a town doesn't have the right equipment or they do have the right equipment just not a lot of it, doesn't mean that you cant be great at diving. Alexandre Despatie, isn't like that at all he's had a lot of training with the help of a lot of great coaches. He has placed in the top five at every summer Olympics since 2000, and many other wins in his career as a competitive diver. Including some in synchro diving(two divers do a dive at the same time). But he has placed low in some competitions. More details on his achievements visit this web site:http://www.diving.ca/english/html/bios/despatie.htm. Like any other diver he had to deal with injuries, he almost didn't compete in the 2008 summer Olympics because of an injury, but he ended up competing and placed high.
Emilie Heymans, she's just like Alexandre, they're both really good at what they do. She's also familiar with being at the top, just like Alexandre, she's also placed low, which is understandable, because you can't be perfect. We should be proud of what she's brought to the table in all of the other things she's done. More details: http://www.diving.ca/english/html/bios/heymans.htm

How to: inward

I've been talking about inwards a lot lately and I thought it would be nice to tell you how to do one. Well an inward is any maneuver that you start facing the board and your back to the water, and when you jump off you turn your body towards the board, like this:

Here's some tips:
1.To do an inward you need a lot of spin to get all the way around especially when your doing an inward flip.
2.Your need to make sure that when you jump off you get far enough away from the board, so you don't hit your head. (The girl in the video, she is really far away and could probably go a little bit closer). Another thing to note, your probably going to feel that your closer than you actually are, if you feel that way get your coach or someone to tell you how far you actually are and it should help you get closer our reassure you that you wont hit your head.

Here's how to actually do it:
1.Like the girl in the video, she gets a little bounce before she leaps off.
2.She swings her arms so she can get all the way around.
...and that's it an inward is kind of easy to do but it still has it's challenges.

Another good yet bad time

This experience again has to do with me not being able to do a dive, but this it's not because of an injury, I couldn't do it because of an accident i had earlier, but that's not the reason why it was a bad moment. This was a bad moment because it was right before a competition and in the division i was in and inward was a mandatory dive, and couldn't do it but my stupid coach put me in the division anyways, even though i told him a million times that i couldn't do it and i wanted to be in the lower level. Anyways....the night before the competition i was determined to do it, I didn't end up being able to but it's the effort that counts, right? So, during the practice rounds I tried to do it but nothing, the competition started and i went up to my inward, and i tried but nothing again, the judges told me i could try again, but i didn't want to, all i was thinking was "oh ,great!"(sarcastically). Guess what? The same thing happened. After the competition they announced the winners, I wasn't expecting to get a ribbon (they gave ribbons from 10th to 1st), because everyone else was able to do all their dives. Anyways, they announced 10th, and then 9th they said my name, I was so confused, and happy that I beat people without doing one of my dives. Just imagine it my dives must have been really good if I beat people who did all 5 of their dives.

A good yet bad time

Okay so, this experience was amazing. Me and this other girl, we both learned how to do front one and a half 's at the same time, it was great to be able to learn it with some else and it really helped me because I'm really competitive and I wanted to be the first to be able to do it, which I wasn't because we both did it at the same time. We were finally able to do it, my coach said she never saw anyone learn how to do this dive that fast. It was going really smoothly, but for I don't know what reason I wasn't doing it as well as I was before, and I was getting frustrated with myself. I think that's why I got hurt,(that's the time I hit the side of my head against the water) I wasn't focused enough. this experience was good because I learned how to do a really cool dive and it was a bad experience because I got hurt and I was never able to do it again.
Here's a video of a front one and a half dive, enjoy:

The times I got hurt

There's been a few times I've gotten hurt. All between smacking my body against the water and hitting my head against the side of the pool(like I said in one my earlier blogs). One of the ones I remember the most is one that happens a lot, and it's not because of diving, it's because of the water, but I'm telling you this because it did happened one time because of a dive. This happened like a year ago, I was at a practice and I was finally able to do a front one and a half, and I was doing them fine but one of the time i opened up(from my tuck) too soon and I freaked out and landed on my ear(like the side of my face). The bad thing about that is I couldn't do my front one and a half anymore and I had to wear these stupid ear plug things for a while(but that wasn't the worst part). Another time, this was after the ear incident, I was trying to re-due my flip (because I couldn't even do that anymore) and I freaked out again and landed on my side and my whole leg and some of my face was all red. I know I've gotten hurt more times than that but these are the two that I remember very well, and the other time I got hurt from my "bad experience­­" blog.