“‘At the water !” The twenty divers take turns entering the Bozon swimming pool in Tours. About once a month, they meet for training in one of the swimming pools in the Touraine metropolis. The specificity ? Eight of them are with disabilities, motor or mental, and the rest are their valid monitors.
Diving exercises and equipment adapted to each handicap
Magali, visually impaired, is equipped with a face mask. Underwater, she can hear her instructor, Fabirama, directing her vocally. “I put my hand on his, and he guides me like that too.” For an hour, the pair does several lengths. “We do buoyancy exercises. I inflate my vest, I deflate it, I feel my body rising, falling”, describes Magali.
Sensations that she discovers over the course of the sessions. “Two weeks ago, I dived in the Mediterranean Sea. I discovered the ocean with my body, I was able to touch a starfish, it was magical”, she marvels. Like her, divers understand their body and the world around them in a new way.
It forces us to have a different approach to diving, more individualized – Fabirama, instructor
Depending on the handicap, each is accompanied byone or more monitors, up to four for Eric, a quadriplegic. The exercises are also suitable. “We are forced to ask ourselves how to deal specifically with each diver. It forces us to have a different approach to diving, more individualized and paying much more attention to the person than to the techniques”, explains Fabirama.
– Chloe martin
Disability disappears underwater
“I work on mouthpiece release and recovery, mask emptying. I also do exercises by closing my eyes to find my stability.“, explains Claire, who started diving in September. Hemiplegic since birth, she does not feel her left arm or leg. “But in the water, I find a balance that I don’t have on land.”
Physical well-being, but not only. “I feel lighter, more feminine. More like everyone else and that’s something I was looking for.”, she notes. Diving thus allows get out of disability, the time of a session. “The handicap is soluble in water”, summarizes Agnès, disabled person in the Center-Val de Loire region.
In the water, in weightlessness, it is only happiness – Agnès, handisub referent
“Some people consider themselves to be severely disabled because they are in a wheelchair, for example. Well, once submerged in water, in weightlessness, it is only happiness. For people with a mental handicap, it is is also a bubble, apart from the aggressive outside world, they will be enveloped in a liquid and in a world of well-being “, she develops.
The Codep 37 handisub pole – which brings together the French Handisport Federation, the French Federation of Underwater Studies and Sports and the French Federation of Adapted Sport – regularly organizes this type of training in the swimming pool. But also outings at sea, especially in the Mediterranean.