Mountain biking and scuba diving – Venn diagram

Sudden curiosity after discussing with the OH.

I have no interest in scuba diving. Have never been and no desire to try it out.

None of my MTB friends have done it either and I can’t think of anyone I know who does MTBing and scuba diving.

So is this mutual exclusivity a weird quirk of my friendship group?

Do the two sports frequently co-exist in people’s list of hobbies?

Thinking about it, the sports share similarities, adrenaline, danger, lots of kit, air pressures. So am I a freak?

What’s the experience of the forum? Who on here does both? Or know people that do both.

Have dabbled in the past. Hated it

Love scuba though

I used to know a few scuba divers and it was interesting comparing mtb stories with scuba stories.

Most mtb stories seem to involve some sort of weird stupid accident where the rider or bike ended up in a funny position or they got injured and the scar looks a bit like Marlon Brando.

All the scuba divers’ stories seemed to involve a weird stupid accident where they almost died but didn’t.

Make of that what you will.

Think in the 90s MBUK did a feature with a rider in a pool with scuba gear

I have a friend that i climbed and MTBed with. He went onto Scuba and is now on gravel.

So at least one person had done both

My neighbor’s as a kid were big into scuba. My memory is somewhat vague but it did seem to be a hot house for extra marital affairs and general shaggery. Presumably all that tight neoprene and gasping coupled with lots of weekends away

All the scuba divers’ stories seemed to involve a weird stupid accident where they almost died but didn’t.

I’ve done a bit of paddling – mostly kayak and packraft – and it’s always seemed to me that had more potential for death than (my style of) MTB, especially once faster moving water is in play. Go on a training course with Andy at backcountry.scot and you’ll likely hear the phrase “the water will not stop trying to kill you”.

FWIW I’ve been looking at a snorkeling break but scuba certainly appeals too.

I was a SCUBA instructor for 10 years. I was a MTB guide for two years.

In my experience there’s not a lot of crossover.

Tbf snorkeling is really good fun, I way more enjoyed it than scuba. Wetsuit and weights, all you need extra

Yeah I mtb and dive, both very much at the recreational end, have spent quite a bit of money on both and haven’t done either for over a year, so yeah quite a lot of cross over for me.

They’re both summer sports so not much time to do both.

Whereas plenty of cross over between skiing and either scuba or mountain biking.

I did quite a bit of scuba in my 20s/30s. Probably quite a bit of overlap in that I got fully into it, enjoyed tinkering with the kit, had holidays to do it. Chance to go places and see things that can’t be accessed any other way.

As a side note Chris Boardman got very into scuba when he retired from competitive cycling. Did a lot of technical diving and wrote for one of the big magazines.

He wanted to make scuba diving the normal way to go to the shops.

Didn’t work out so he picked cycling instead

I was a fairly adventurous technical diver, and yes I have some stories including the one where I woke up in my dive kit surrounded by concerned people who’d been administering CPR.  That kinda stopped me from throwing myself into the sea at weekends so I’m now a moderate rider, and the risks and rewards are totally different – biking is very reactive whereas diving was much more considered.

They’re both summer sports so not much time to do both.

Some people do both all year round.

Wife was in uni sub aqua club and has a raft of alarming stories (including people doing daft stuff like dosing themselves up with decongestants when not really fit so they could get in the water).

I also did the RN Standard Diving & Underwater Medicine Course years ago and there seemed to be a lot of creative ways to end up dead or disabled if the diver or their dive partner cut corners, more so for anyone doing technical diving without a load of backup.

Best mate from uni was also mad keen and was always telling me I should have a go but after the course I decided it wasn’t for me.

I was a keen scuba diver in my teens, 1980’s.

Ended up taking a commercial course in my 30’s, a sort of side requirement for my dayjob.

Carried on sport diving on and off, still have a lot of kit in my store room. Drives the Mrs mental as I rarely use it.

I’ve done both.  Scuba diving isn’t just for the summer though, if you do that you are missing out on loads of great dives.

I gave it up when i had a realisation that your training makes if look very safe.  For example out of air or loosing  your regulator.  You know its going to happen so you take a big lungful of air.  How long can you hold your breath like that?  A couple of minutes?  In reality if you ran out of air the first thing you’d know about if would be when you try and breath in.  How long can you now hold your breath while you franticly grab for your buddy?

I’ve done a lot of scuba over many years getting to divemaster but not wishing to go to instructor.

Once you’ve learned to swim around underwater – which takes about 10 minutes – it’s all about not dying whilst you do it.

Then it’s about others not dying when you’re diving with them.

Then it’s about rescuing others so they don’t die.

Then it’s about planning & navigating & guiding so people don’t die.

Did I mention the bit about not dying? 😁

In reality if you ran out of air the first thing you’d know about if would be when you try and breath in

Not really. You’d do a buddy check initially on your gear & your buddy would look for air leaks under water. Then you’d regularly check you air pressures during the dive & aim to finish with ⅓ air remaining for your safety margin.

If your air was diminishing faster than expected you’d know about it.

There’s also a signal for out of air & your buddy would have an octopus on hand in seconds.

Yes, i get all that and its great in theory.

Did a few hours of scuba diving once. Was very fun but im not a confident swimmer at all so never did it again.

I do both and in terms of crossover I would say that with each there’s a similar ratio to the amount of time spent actually doing it,  to cleaning/servicing/fettling both before & afterwards.

Also after a good weekend of doing either, I’ve usually seen someone using or wearing something that I like the look of, and that they swear by, which means I go down a rabbit hole of online research for the following week.

At least mountain biking doesn’t seem to have been afflicted by the ballache of having a club & committee structure intent on taking all the fun out of your pastime.

I’ve once scuba’d and ride bikes.

Make sure you join an active club.

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A freinf of mine was a very experienced technical diver and keen mtber. Sadly the former took his life some years back, never surfaced from a wreck he was diving. Very sad as had young family etc. not sure what the venn diagram tells me if anything,  tbh.   also had another friend die at scappa. Sod diving. At least when I smash myself /make an error there’s a fair chance I’m going to live!

Did a few hours of scuba diving once. Was very fun but im not a confident swimmer at all so never did it again.

+1, although did my turn in the carribean and it was a wonderful sight, so I’m glad I did it once.   my wife scuba dives and I ride MTB, I took her mtbing on our Honeymoon as a treat, she never did it again.    Then, I was “shore party” during a cold wet weekend in a quarry somewhere in the midlands whilst she qualified for something, that put me off.

I did a tester course, and realised that large expanses of open/dark water gives me the fear. Not for me

I know quite a few “holiday” scuba divers who also MTB.

I did a dive day thing in Oban.

I really really enjoyed it in he water, the instructor commented he wasn’t used to people on their first dive swimming off exploring :-D

But the thought of what it is gives me the fear just thinking about it.

Swimming underwater is ace though but i think will rely on holding breath.

adrenaline, danger, lots of kit, air pressures.

Sort of depends on the type of diving.  I’m a tropical water diver, advance/Nitrox level and I’ve done a few hundred dives in the 30 years since I got my PADI. Tends to be none for a few years and then a liveaboard or week of diving with 3 or 4 dives each day.

If you’re not going super deep, or diving difficult wrecks its a very safe sport – if something goes wrong at recreational depths (up to 30m)  you should be with a buddy, and if they’re not close enough, dumping your kit and swimming for the surface will almost certainly be fine.

Lots of kit, but no danger or adrenaline of the sort you get mtb-ing.

I’ve not dived since 2020 and find it rather depressing the last few trips – if you’ve been diving some time it’s a stark reminder of how the oceans are pretty much dying.  Over fishing, global heating, massive amounts of plastic and other pollution.

I did an adventure dive course when I had a year in Oz.

The description of diving in the UK cold, limited visibility and expensive put me off doing it when I got home.

All the scuba divers’ stories seemed to involve a weird stupid accident where they almost died but didn’t.

Perhaps it’s to do with how far out from your body’s intended window of operation the sport is:

• Cycling – going a 2-3 times faster than running
• Motorbike racing – going way faster than running
• Climbing – normal operation but at height
• Scuba – no air environment

the way you conserve air diving is nothing like the way you ride a bike

I’ve scuba dived quite a lot.

Did some training in a miserable quarry in Lancashire somewhere whilst at uni, have had a few boat/beach based diving specific holidays over the past 20 years, and have dived in exotic places for a few days on around 10 other holidays, although driving was not the main purpose of the holiday.

I’m unlikely to do it again.

I find it quite boring, and on reflection I have probably always found it boring, although I’ve only recently come to realise that. Not saying that I haven’t enjoyed it at times, just that it doesn’t really do anything for me other than the joy of being somewhere interesting, doing ‘something’ with friends.

Sure, I like looking at fish, sharks, turtles, wrecks and stuff, but I think I’d rather snorkel for 30 minutes twice in a day from the shore, and have the rest of the day to do something else that doesn’t involve a tonne of equipment, travelling for hours on an uncomfortable boat, a lacklustre lunch bobbing around on the water, risk of death, and usually some people that are way too interested in fish.

I actually don’t mind fish and things, but in the same way that I don’t mind birds. I wouldn’t take specific expensive and admin heavy holiday to see  birds. So why do it for fish? I get that there are thousands of different types of underwater animals that can be seen, but most of them are quite similar. Guides/ dive leaders usually try and get you excited about seeing a particularly rare shark or something like that, but in reality if you only dive once or twice a year, all sharks are as rare.

At least with mountain biking you get physical acceleration based excitement, the opportunely for visiting unusual places, but can also do it for an hour after work.

The salt water plays havoc with the BB and pivot bearings when they are combined.

I like seeing sharks,turtles,exotic corals,mantarays etc but its hard and getting harder to see such things, most of the diving ive done has been relatively boring, nothing to see. If I could afford to go to Burma banks, or Raja Ampat Id love it, but its highly unlikely

I do both and have for 25 years, absolutely no cross over but love both.

They’re both summer sports so not much time to do both.

They absolutely are not. When I dived it did it all year round, now that I MTB I do it all year round.

I got back into MTB after a long break after I decided that rebreather diving was getting too expensive. I’ve subsequently spent far more on bikes than I ever did on diving…

I’m not really into fish as they tend to get in the way of the wreck and the marks I was hitting were getting deeper every trip while my rebreather training was only good for 30m. Not a problem in the UK but some of the places I wanted to go insist on suitable qualifications which came to head in Croatia at the end of a week of 60-70m dives that we were warned the coastguard were on the prowl checking certification. Luckily they didn’t get to us that day but to keep doing the diving I was interested in would mean £1000s in courses plus a minimum of 50 hours at each certification level before progressing and I couldn’t be arsed.

I’ve done a fair bit of both – MTB in teens and late 20s to now, Scuba for a chunk of my early twenties. Mostly in SE Asia, but some in the UK and Med. Logged about 1300 dives.

However, generally when I was into one, I wasn’t doing the other. Both are quite time (and money, especially diving) intensive.

I tried to go for an introductory dive thing when I was on holiday in the Azores but it was out of season, nothing was open.

The idea kind of appeals. The actual practicalities of it are a bit overwhelming. My sister did her PADI qualification years ago at Capernwray dive centre near Lancaster but has only ever been scuba diving once since that.

Did my Padi course about 15 years ago in Thailand, absolutely loved it. I’ve no desire to dive in cold water with poor visibility though.