Comfort Zone, Challenge Zone, Panic Zone

The following is an autobiography of my diving career. I use it to make my points about the different zones we face in our lives. Pay particular attention to when I mention comfort zone, challenge zone, and panic zone.

On my very first day of high school, I found myself in competitive swimming class for my very first class of the day. We met, for some odd reason, on the football stadium bleachers. I didn’t know why I was there. I wasn’t a particularly good swimmer, I had certainly never swam competitively before. I mean, I spent my summers swimming because I lived in Arizona during the summers, but that was just for fun. Anytime I tried to swim a race, I usually lost to whomever I was swimming against. Why hadn’t I been signed up for a general P.E. class?

The coach starting talking about how strong a swim team Venice High School had, and I felt increasingly out of place – this was a familiar feeling for me as I had felt out of place all through junior high school. You could say that at this point, I was in a panic zone – I was afraid I was going to embarrass myself. But then, my coach said something that was music to my ears. Along with breast stroke, butterfly, backstroke, and freestyle, they also needed to field a springboard diving team.

When I was a kid, I’d taken diving lessons for one summer from one of my mother’s best friends. Pat Clark had finished in third place in U.S. Springboard Diving Nationals in her heyday. Since my brother and I liked jumping off of diving boards, she showed us more than a trick or two. Every summer, I was practicing those dives so I knew I already had a few dives in my repertoire.

I told the coach that I didn’t think I would make much of a swimmer, but that I might be a decent diver. He said that diving would start later. In the meantime he would need me to swim laps because I needed to get a grade for the “class.” My first few weeks in the pool confirmed what I’d long suspected, I sucked at swimming!

About two months into the school year, a guy came in and Coach introduced him as our diving coach. He said that diving practice would be daily before school started. I groaned inwardly – I was not a morning person; I still am not! Nevertheless, I really wanted to compete in something while I was in high school. We had no soccer team, and we had no track team; diving was my only chance.

On my team were a senior and junior returning divers along with a handful of rookies. Clearly, I was the third best diver on the team from the beginning. My coach stressed fundamentals and preached learning a full repertoire of eleven dives even though we only used six dives in our weekly competitions. Eleven dives is what we would need for League and Los Angeles City Diving Finals. Needing to learn eleven dives pushed me into my challenge zone because I only knew about six dives.

I don’t know why, but I listened to my coach. He told me what dive to practice, and I did it. The senior and the junior on my team would try maybe once or twice with a new dive, but would just go back to practicing their solid six dives. They stayed in their comfort zone as much as they possibly could.

There are two great fears that all divers have to contend with. The first is fear of hitting the board. Ironically, one of the things that helped you score well on your dives was staying close to the board. Many dives necessitate having parts of the body over the board so that divers could stay as close to the board as possible without hitting it. For example, with an inward dive in straight position, I would stand at the end of the board with my back to the pool. As I bounced the board and released upwards, my head should be over the board momentarily as I am rotating inward. As I rotate my body in mid-air, my head clears the board and I complete the dive. This is a why most beginning divers prefer to do the dive in pike position. When one does it in pike position (also called a “jackknife” dive as you bend at the waist, but not at the knees), one’s head spends less time over the board. Advanced divers prefer to do it in straight position because the degree of difficulty is greater. This means that if one diver does the inward dive in straight position and one does it in pike position and they receive the same score, the one who did it in straight position would get more points.

The second fear is the fear of doing a back or belly flop. While these are typically only momentarily painful, they are painful enough to send divers out of their challenge zone and into their panic zone. Sometimes, they will revert back to the dives which are only in there comfort zone for weeks, if not forever.

I won’t bore you with more specifics, but the point I want to make is that I chose to do dives that pushed me out of my comfort zone because I wanted to have that edge on my teammates. My teammates had more experience than me, but they kept their list of dives pretty tame. If I could get harder dives than them, then I could potentially score lower, but beat them because I was using more difficult dives. Now you might ask why I was competing against my teammates. Well, it was because that was all I had at the time. They were the only ones I had ever competed against.

As it turned out, I was not only the third best diver on my team, but I was also usually the third best diver in nearly every meet. Our team usually swept the top three spots in competition. As my teammates continued to practice their best six dives, I was quickly adding new dives to my repertoire. Several weeks prior to League diving finals, I was practicing eleven dives in my practices. My coach kept telling everyone that I was developing the best repertoire, but the two other divers paid no heed.

Having finished third in every meet of the season except one, I was pretty certain that I was headed to a fourth place finish in League Finals even though my coach was saying that I had the best set of dives. There was one senior at another school who was better than all three of our best divers. When the big day arrived, I dove about as well as I had ever dived before. At the end of the meet, I was stunned to find that I had placed second! (scores are not tallied till the end in diving) I had beaten my teammates for the first time! The senior from another school had taken first. My teammates on the swim team were stunned. I’d provided some valuable points to the overall swim totals in our quest for a league championship. We did end up being League Champs that year, I wish I could say my points were the difference, but we actually trounced the competition.

I enjoyed the glow of my performance in the two weeks leading up to city finals. For an outcast in junior high, it was a pretty big moment for me. All my pleasure died down when I failed to qualify for the top twelve in City Diving Finals because I’d chosen to save my best three dives for last. In the City Finals, there were so many divers, that they had to cut after the ninth dive. I hadn’t known this. If I had included my best three dives at the beginning, I believe I would have placed in the top ten, as it turned out, I finished 14th. This was a devastating blow to me. I’d missed the cut by less than ten points out of about three hundred. My best three dives would have easily eclipsed that amount easily.

Riding on the high of now being the best diver at my school (I’d finished ahead of them in city finals, as well), I decided to train all summer. While I was in Arizona, my mother drove me to diving practice every morning for six weeks with an elite diving team. I practiced with divers who were far superior to me – they’d trained since they were in elementary school. Suffice to say, Arizona divers were better than Los Angeles ones. My coaches were constantly pushing me out of my comfort zone into my challenge zone. Occasionally, they would push me into my panic zone, however, and I would chicken out on those harder dives time and time again. But the dives I learned were good enough to make me the best diver in my league during my junior year.

Unfortunately, in my Junior year, I messed up on a dive in League Finals and ended up coming in second place again. However, I vindicated myself in City Diving Finals not only beating the diver who’d beaten me in League Finals, but finishing with the Bronze Medal – third place! These points helped my team finish in second place in Los Angeles City Swimming & Diving Finals. A huge accomplishment considering how many schools are in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

That summer, I decided not to practice diving. I was pretty confident that I could win league diving finals as a senior. I was also pretty certain that I was probably going to be the second best diver in the city, as well. So I relaxed all summer and into the swim season the following spring. I stayed within my comfort zone all season. I finished in first place in every single swim meet vs. other schools except one. My swim team competed against the school, not in our league, with the best diver in the city, and he trounced me.

I was only practicing six dives during the season. As league diving finals loomed, it was clear that I was the best diver in the league, but I needed to start practicing those dives beyond the initial six. A couple of weeks before the finals, I started moving into my challenge zone. But I found that I’d lost my touch in a couple of my staple dives because I hadn’t practiced them in a while. I found myself entering a panic zone. I was practicing those dives which I was struggling with over and over and over and it was hit and miss. I was affecting my confidence. As the finals arrived, I knew that there was a fifty/fifty chance that I was going to mess up on a couple of my dives.

As it turned out, I had the good fortune of hitting them both and doing well in my other nine dives, as well. I finally took first in League Diving Finals – my first Gold! I was still very uncomfortable with my two dives that I was struggling with so I continued practicing in the week leading up to City Diving Finals. I practiced with a sense of urgency that I hadn’t felt before. I felt like I’d blown it by not practicing these dives through the summer and during the season. By the end of the week, I hadn’t improved my two dives that I was most concerned about. I was still only hitting them fifty percent of the time. In the meantime, I was practicing those dives so much, that I’d neglected my solid dives.

I entered city diving finals knowing that I was probably the second best diver – when I was on the ball. The question was, would I be able to nail my problem dives? My first five dives went as well as I could have expected, including one of the dives I had been struggling with. My sixth dive was not only my best dive, it was my favorite dive – and inward one and one-half somersault. This was a dive I had nailed in every competition since I’d started diving in high school. In other words, this dive, to me, was a slam dunk.

I flubbed the dive.

I barely completed one rotation. It was a stunning turn of events for me. Scoring zeros on a dive meant a big drop in rankings. One thing for certain – while I knew I was not going to win because the best diver was far superior to me, I was also not going to come in second.

Two dives later, I botched one of the two dives that I hadn’t been practicing throughout the year by making a huge splash on the entry. When the meet was over, I found that I had finished a disappointing sixth place.

When we get stuck in out comfort zone, it means that we stop progressing. We must constantly venture into our challenge zone. If we don’t, we won’t see our circumstances improve. If we hold off on going into the challenge zone, then we find ourselves entering a panic zone. When we are in the panic zone, fear takes over. Fear takes a hold of our psyche. When we plant that seed of fear in our mind, it causes us to do things we wouldn’t normally do.

It is important to remember that we need to challenge ourselves, but we need to do it in a logical, meaningful way. You can’t rush perfection. Perfection comes with steady practice over time.

This was a hard lesson to learn in my senior year of high school. In fact, I am pretty sure I lost my will after that. While I dove in junior college, I rarely ventured into my challenge zone again. In fact, I hadn’t completely learned my lesson yet. I found myself trying to increase the difficulty of my dives toward the end of the season in preparation for Southern California Diving Finals the same way I’d prepared in my senior year of high school.

All that said, I have no regrets. Diving did things for my self confidence that nothing else could have done in my time in high school. I had the great honor of being the best at something in my school for two years.

As I move forward, I have become cognizant that I am spending more of my time in my comfort zone and not stretching myself to my challenge zone enough. I see that I need to push the envelope, so to speak, if I am to move into the next phase of my own spiritual journey.

Namaste