What you need to do to avoid injuring your back while diving.
Diving requires constant lifting of heavy equipment, which means you risk injuring your back. Back injuries are insidious because if you injure your back at 20, you may not notice the problem until you are in your 40s.
Unfortunately, when you see young divemasters carrying scuba tanks playfully, you can say with some certainty that some of them will have a serious backache one “beautiful” day. Do your best not to join these guys. Read on for tips on how to save your back.

Grab the gear
Cylinders are almost perfectly designed to injure the diver’s back. A handle on one end encourages one-handed carrying of the balloon, creating an unbalanced load on the back. Instead, carry the balloons by holding them across your chest with both hands, as you would with a newborn baby.

Get your gear on
To transfer the cylinder to the dive boat, put on the compensator together with the cylinder. It is also much easier to carry a weight belt on yourself.

Ask for help
Many of the divers put on a compensator with a balloon, like outerwear: first one arm is threaded (one shoulder is loaded), and then the other. It is much safer for the back to ask the partner to hold the compensator and pass both hands through at the same time, and then put on the weight belt.

Use your feet
When you need to put on your gear, bend your knees instead of bending at the waist. Try to avoid twisting loads on your back.

Keep heavy objects close to you
Holding heavy equipment with outstretched arms greatly increases the load on the back.

Train
A well-planned training program to strengthen and stretch the back can have a very good preventive effect. Do not forget such a simple truth that an ounce of prevention is worth a kilogram of treatment.

Say no
If heavy weights make you jerky to lift weights, don’t do it. Better ask a partner to help you.

Get out of the water slowly
One of the specific moments is the rise of the diver from the water on board the vessel. In most cases, the dive boat is moving. Together with this, the high position of the center of gravity makes the diver unstable. Avoiding a fall, the diver often makes rotational movements in the lower back, which means that, potentially, he can earn a serious back injury. To avoid this, drive very slowly and hold onto the handrails.