What Are The Four Diving Positions?

Short Answer

There are four: straight, pike, tuck, and free.

They're the letter at the end of every dive code. 105B is a pike. 205C is a tuck.

Tuck (C)

Knees pulled to the chest, heels tucked toward the backside, body squeezed into a ball. Hands grip the shins.

This is the fastest position, and the reason is simple physics. The tighter and smaller you make yourself, the faster you rotate.

It is the same effect as a figure skater pulling their arms in.

Because it spins fastest, tuck is the easiest way to get a hard dive around, which is why it's usually the first position a diver learns a new somersault in. It also carries the lowest difficulty rating of the three main positions (A,B,C).

Pike (B)

Bent at the hips, legs locked out straight, toes pointed. Hands usually grip the opposite arm or the legs behind the knees or on the calves.

Pike is almost always slower than tuck, because your legs are extended and your mass is further from your center. To make up for it you have to fold deeper and get there faster, which is why flexibility matters so much in diving.

Divers with good hamstring range can pike tighter and spin faster than a potentially stronger but stiffer diver.

Straight (A)

No bend at the hips or the knees. One long line from fingertips to toes, though a diver can range from a flat position to a slight arch depending on the dive and moment within the dive.

This is the slowest position by a wide margin and the hardest to score well, because there is nowhere to hide.

Every judge can see whether your legs are together, whether your toes are pointed, and whether your line is clean. 

This differs from a tuck where you can change your knee position to speed up or slow down a dive. This "cowboying" can be hidden from judges.

It's the highest difficulty of the three, and when a straight dive is done well, it looks so good.

Free (D)

Free isn't really a shape. It means the diver can use any of the other three, or move between them, and it's used exclusively for twisting dives.

The reason is practical. A twisting dive genuinely does change shape partway through. You might come off the board straight, twist, then fold into a pike to finish the rotation. There's no single position that describes it, so the rules just allow all of them.

If you see a D at the end of a code, there's a twist in the dive.

Why the same dive has different difficulty in each position

A forward two and a half in tuck and a forward two and a half in pike are the same number of rotations, but they are not the same dive to perform.

Tuck spins fast, so it is regarded as easier to complete. Pike spins slower, so your takeoff has to be technically better and stronger. Straight is slower still, to the point that some somersault counts simply aren't done in it because it is impossible.

That difficulty gap is baked into the scoring. The full breakdown is on the diving DD chart.

Other things you're probably wondering

• What do diving numbers mean? The full decode of codes like 105B.
• What are the six groups of dives? Forward, back, reverse, inward, twisting, and armstand.
• Why are divers' swimsuits so small? Because judges are scoring exactly these shapes.

- DG