Gear Check: Setting Up for Precision

Before each training session, I treat my smartwatch like any other piece of essential equipment: it has to be reliable, comfortable, and precise. During my jumps I need absolute focus, any scratching or pressure on my wrist could throw me off rhythm. Every jump is a perfected routine that can be easily disrupted.

Training for Control: Building Power and Balance on Land

Although diving takes place in water and air, most of the actual training happens on land, especially during the winter. Strength training, core stability, balance drills, and breath control form the base for every successful dive. These foundations matter for anyone who wants to build a strong, functional body.

One feature I love is the vibration every 10 minutes during my session, which helps me stay aware of time during long strength sets or circuits without looking at the screen. It keeps my rhythm consistent and lets me stay in the flow. What really surprised me though is how complete the health tracking is. During interval training my heart rate graph shows every spike and drop, so I can see exactly how my body reacts to different exercises in real time.

Tracking my body’s reactions

During a long travel day to the world diving competition followed by a sauna session I experimented a bit more with the arterial stiffness feature, activated on the HUAWEI Health App. I measured twice. Right after the sauna my PWV was 6.7 m per second with a heart rate of 82 bpm. Later that evening, once I had cooled down and relaxed, my PWV reading dropped to 6.4 m per second and my heart rate was down to 55 bpm again. For me as an athlete this is fascinating to watch. It makes me wonder is there a direct link between higher heart rate, heat stress and temporarily increased arterial stiffness, or was this just a coincidence on that particular day. I am not a doctor, so I can only speculate, but having these numbers on my wrist gives me a much better feeling for how travel, recovery routines and even sauna sessions might influence my cardiovascular system over time.

In the water, the watch performed impressively. During pool training, I used both diving and freediving modes, and the watch automatically and accurately detected depth, dive time, and underwater duration. This precision is rare in such a lightweight watch.

Recovery and Reflection: The Art of Resetting and Learning from Every Session

A Small Feature That Won Me Over

One of the first things I appreciated is the watch’s automatic detections. Without setting anything manually, it even recognized a short 22-minutes daytime nap between two training sessions and logged it perfectly. For me, sleep is the foundation of everything I do, because if I am not rested, I lose timing in the air and precision on entry. The Wearables I used before don’t catch short naps at all.