Habits are a powerful tool for us human beings. We are able to do most of our day to day without  actually thinking about it. Our habits allow us to reserve our energy for the more important things in life. But habits can backfire, and habits in extreme sports can either save you or kill you.

Once you have repeated an action several times, the action becomes hardwired in your brain. All you need is the right cue in order to set that action in motion. Often we don’t even remember the starting a habitual action a specific cue.

Do you remember your morning commute? Deciding where to sit on the bus? Probably not, because you do them out of habit. For me it takes about the same amount of time to walk to work as take the transit, and I often don’t even remember how I get to work!

Habits in extreme sports

I have experience with several sports in which mistakes can be deadly. Climbing, canyoneering and freediving are my favourites.

In canyoneering and climbing, we cultivated a buddy check before we started belaying (providing each other’s safety) or rappelling. This becomes a habit easily and has saved me from a silly mistake several times. To this day, before I or my buddy starts climbing I check both our knots, our gear, and whether we are on the same rope.

In freediving we need to cultivate similar habits in order to stay safe. One of these habits is the recovery breathing. We practice recovery breathing after every dive, even after warmup dives when we might not need it very much. This way, our recovery breathing becomes a habit and even when we come up hypoxic we will still breathe correctly.

Similarly, our posture during a deep dive is important. But it is easy to forget to think about posture during a new personal best. If you get into the habit of hanging on the weight at the bottom of the line, or looking around a bit at 20m, you might just do that when you are at 50 m too and put yourself at risk of a squeeze.

In freediving, you need to perfect your dives shallow, so you can make a perfect descent and turn a habit without risking a squeeze. This way, even when you reach that depth you have never gone to before you can turn the way you are supposed to without thinking about it.

How habits kill

Habits that are normally safe might kill in a different situation. Always being aware of your buddy is in general a safe habit. But what if an aggressive bull or tiger shark shows up? If you are so focused on your buddy that you don’t see the shark you might be in trouble.

What if a freediver that always shoots video takes his Gopro on a first spearfishing trip? The Gopro will likely be mounted on the speargun, and the diver will be shooting where the action is. The habit to point the Gopro in the direction of the action might be stronger than the sense to keep the speargun away from dive buddies. The results can be fatal.

About 10 years ago there was a fatal climbing accident on an indoor climbing wall. A belayer had unclipped his belaying device mid-climb, so Johnny, his climber fell to his death. This person was victim to the habits of his belayer. The belayer did not normally climb with this person and when he saw his normal buddy with both feet on the ground he unclipped his belaying gear!

This habit would be perfectly safe, had he not been climbing with someone else.

In ‘the power of habit’ by Charles Duhigg, Charles explains what a habit exactly is. With the right cue, we can fall into a routine that is fully automated. We can use this to our advantage, but it can also become detrimental.

For the climber in the above example, the cue was ‘Johnny is on the ground’ and it triggered the habit of ‘unclipping belaying gear’. Of course the cue should have been ‘my climber is on the ground’. Years of climbing with the same climber rigged the cue the wrong way with deadly effect.

Johnny is a fake name, the story is true.

Good habits

Good habits in freediving are:

• Discussing the buddy situation before the first dive. who safeties who if you are an uneven number of divers, what are your comfort levels for depth etc.)
• Checking your timer immediately when your buddy goes down not only for a PB, but for every dive, including the warmups.
• Keeping your breathe up consistent from dive to dive – no funny business like a few more purges or hyperventilation if you feel like it.
• Check each others’ gear before getting in the water – 2 lanyards attached to each other to hold a camera on a mount is an entanglement hazard and hence a bad idea.
• Don’t interrupt a safety and a buddy if one of them just dove – you might distract the buddy from a diver about to have a blackout
• [your comment here… please add it below!]

Preparation

As you can see habits are what protect us, but they can also backfire. Be mindful of the differences between different dive sessions. Ask yourself (and your buddies) some questions:

• Is today any different than usual?
• Are we using the same gear as always?
• Is anybody unsure about their weighing?
• Do you have  different levels of experience?
• Do you have different expectations of each other?
• What are your expectations from yourself? (for example, is anybody going for a PB?)

If you are mindful of the differences between dive sessions you are more likely to be prepared for anything that might go wrong.

Dive safe!

–Images by David Denz & Pixabay.