Fellow millennials will be familiar with the common parenting chastisement, ‘If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?’ But I don’t recall my mum ever asking me this, probably because she knew the answer would be ‘yes’. I often find myself caught in the middle ground between ‘You only have one body, look after it’ and ‘You only have one body, let’s see what it can do’. So, when Red Bull invited me to train with one of its athletes, Aidan Heslop, on the Montreal stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, I jumped at the chance – pun fully intended. Just don’t tell my mum.
An extreme sports competition, the World Series sees elite athletes from across the globe leap from cliffs or platforms, performing acrobatic manoeuvres before they plunge into the water. Judges score the dives on technical performance, execution and artistry. In true Red Bull style, the annual event is known for pushing the limits of the sport.
My first meeting with Aidan takes place at the aquatics centre in Jean Drapeau Park on a small island in the Saint Lawrence River, off the shores of Old Montreal. As I cross the bridge that joins the island to the mainland, I lean out, looking down on to the river, 50m below. I’ve always had a good head for heights, but as I gaze at the wash left by a passing boat, I begin to worry that I’ve travelled 3,000 miles for the first Men’s Health assignment I’ll bottle out of.
Aidan, now 22, dived for Wales at the 2018 and 2022 Commonwealth Games. He was also the youngest diver ever to compete in the World Series, aged 16 at his debut. Training for this sport isn’t easy, in any sense. While 10m training boards are fairly accessible, finding something the height of an eight-storey building to throw yourself off of is a little bit tougher. Fortunately, when Aidan was searching for sponsors early in his career, Adrenalin Quarry, a Cornish tourist attraction 40 minutes from his Plymouth home, offered to erect purpose-made boards 24m above the waters there.
As we make our introductions, a dozen or so athletes appear by the pool, limbering up with foam rollers, massage balls, elaborate stretches and various holds and rolls. It occurs to me, perhaps for the first time, that this is actually an intensely physical pursuit. It’s not, to borrow some Disney IP, simply ‘falling with style’.
DEAN TREML//Red Bull Content Pool
I ask Aidan how big a part strength and conditioning play in his training. He tells me that he’s ‘dry training’ for up to 90 minutes each day, which includes plyometrics, core exercises, tumbling and trampoline work. Two or three times a week, the athletes will also hit the gym, combining traditional exercises such as the bench press with explosive squat jumps and single-leg work. He confesses that he finds it difficult to motivate himself to lift weights. It must be hard to get a rush from split squats when your day job is hurtling through the air at 90km/h.
It’s easy to overlook, but building strength is about more than just lifting heavier weights and growing bigger muscles, it’s also essential for damage limitation. The most common injuries in the sport, as I was soon to find out for myself, are bruises and muscle strains, but tears, breaks, neck injuries, being knocked unconscious, and even internal bleeding aren’t unheard of. Aidan tells me that he suffers with niggles in his lower back, knees, and neck, and that he had fractured his tailbone hitting the water badly on his Red Bull debut years earlier. A grim nod to the rigours of the sport.
After some time discussing the demands, history and technicalities of the sport, the chat turns to my own objectives. I tell Aidan I’m not uncomfortable with heights, am a reasonably strong swimmer and I can do a backflip on a trampoline. From this résumé, he surmises that I should be able to jump from the highest (10m) training board, perform a backwards somersault – and walk with him to the edge of the 27m competition platform.
High expectations
Each dive begins from a graceful position, standing tall, hands above your head. From there, you step off the board, allowing your arms to come down until parallel with the water. Then, just before you enter the water, you bring your arms down, flexing hard to create a rigid structure. Hit the water limp and you risk getting injured. This shouldn’t be too hard, I think. Flexing at the pool is what I was born to do.
After a few attempts from the poolside, we head up to the 3m board, then the 5m. Aidan assures me I’ve nailed the technique and suggests we head to the 10m board. While I’ve been grimacing and flexing harder than Arnie in his prime, the lithe athletes around me have been plunging into the pool via a series of twists, flips and spins, sometimes beginning from a handstand position. The complexity of the dives is a stark (and annoying) contrast to their casual demeanour.
Aidan walks me to the edge of the board. He tells me he’s going to jump first and I’m to follow. He plummets gracefully and gives me the thumbs up. I can see a lot of the park from the top of the board. As I look down, I catch Dean Treml, a Red Bull photographer, snapping pictures of me. Dean tells me later that he refers to the bravery the sight of a camera bestows as ‘Kodak courage’.
As I step off the board, I feel the rush of a sudden drop. I don’t waste time trying to score points for presentation and immediately adopt the flexed ‘braced for entry’ position. In later jumps, I try to determine the mental speed at which divers must operate in order to perform their acrobatic displays; I barely have time to clench my fists.
DEAN TREML//Red Bull Content Pool
I enter the water leaning back a touch too far. This minor mistake means I’m pulled almost upside down by the sudden deceleration. I feel the pressure of deep water against my temples as I begin kicking my legs. My head breaks the surface, and the athletes and coaches by the poolside break out into applause. I want to go again.
On my fourth dive, I decide to loosen up a bit and jump with a little more grace. This time, however, when I hit the water, my legs are forcefully pulled apart into what feels like full splits. I don’t mention this to Aidan, though, who – seemingly confident in my abilities – tells me it’s time to move on to objective two: the somersault.
We begin with a simple tuck technique, jumping backwards in a sort of pike hold, entering the water arse-first. Next, we head on to the springboards, the closest approximation to a trampoline. I make two or three attempts at a backflip; after each attempt, I hear the poolside team cheering. Watching the videos back later, there’s also a lot of laughter. Fair. On my final practice flip, I land badly. It hurts instantly and the inside of my right thigh is left ruby red. Aidan assures me that I’ll make it look easier from one of the higher boards.
DEAN TREML
Morgane Herculano, a Swiss diver, kindly films my dives. A Harvard University graduate, she also works as a researcher. Speaking later to the event’s sports director, Orlando Duque, I ask if it’s necessary for the divers to supplement their income. He tells me it’s not: the prize purse for each of the eight stops in the series is about $200,000, a decent wedge that’s split among 24 athletes. And there are further bonuses to be earned at the end of the series, as well as sponsorship opportunities. I suggest that social media has made it easier than ever to be a full-time professional athlete, but that it has changed what it means to be one on a fundamental level. Orlando agrees. I ask Aidan if he enjoys the social media obligations; he tells me that it’s not his favourite aspect of the job, but he doesn’t begrudge it. And he’s very good at it. I often wonder if Gen Z come out of the womb with an innate talent for TikTok. Aidan’s girlfriend, Molly Carlson, is the unofficial face of the sport, with millions of followers. If you’ll excuse the dated reference, they’re the Posh and Becks of high-diving – if Posh could also score a 25-yard free kick in stoppage time.
Short drops, belly flops
We make our way up to the 3m board. Previously, jumping from this height didn’t give me much pause for thought, but now, with my back facing towards the pool, my hesitance is paralysing. I joke that I keep having an intrusive thought about flipping on the spot, not getting enough clearance from the board and then smashing my head on the edge. Aidan tells me that there’s zero chance of that happening, but if he suspects it might, he’ll push me away from the board. ‘Fuck it,’ I think, as I throw myself backwards into the pool. I watch my legs sail over my head – but don’t quite have enough time to be able to straighten my body as I hit the water. Imagine a belly flop with the added inertia of a backwards somersault from 12ft in the air. My entire torso makes hard contact with the water. I doggy-paddle my way over to the steps to get out, receiving my loudest applause of the day.
DEAN TREML//Red Bull Content Pool
By now, I’m feeling much more fatigued than I would have predicted. Later, I ask Aidan if he has to limit the number of dives he performs in a session, especially when jumping from the 27m board. He says that he doesn’t like to do more than four in a day: the accumulative impacts stack up and fatigue dramatically increases his chances of making a costly mistake. He once took part in a campaign in which he made seven 27m dives over one long day. For the week following, he was completely out of action.
Walking the plank
When I wake up the next morning, I let out a groan, and my hand moves instinctively to my ribcage, where a throbbing ache is commandeering my attention. I peel back the covers to see the extent of the damage: dark blotches of a large bruise forming on my leg, from my knee to my groin. This is not a sport that tolerates amateurs gladly. I get dressed and hobble across downtown Montreal towards the port.
The Grand Quay was once one of the city’s primary docks, and although it’s now more of a tourist trap, its industrial history still looms large. It takes me a second to realise that one of the monolithic structures protruding from the waterside is not a disused crane, but the competition platform. From some perspectives, the tall ladder-like structure appears to tower above Montreal’s skyscrapers, which provide a hazy backdrop.
Aidan had mentioned the day before that every platform is different, from clifftops in Thailand to man-made structures in urban settings. This one for him, though, is special. He lives in Montreal with Molly, a Canadian native; this is his adoptive home town and he’s keen to do its people proud. Squinting up at the highest board, I’m reminded that I’m headed up there, imminently. My stomach does a far more impressive backflip than I had managed the day before.
When someone from the Red Bull team appears, I ask what the likelihood is of me being allowed to jump from the top board, now fully invested. Zero, I am told. Plus, I also have to wear a harness. I don’t know if this is the standard safety procedure or if it’s my question that’s prompted it. In fairness, I only asked because I knew the answer would be no. Aidan joins me, and we begin making our way up the inside of the tower.
The platform has a notable amount of sway as well as bounce. I shuffle towards the edge, where Aidan is standing on the balls of his feet, his heels dropping off the side, pointing towards the Saint Lawrence River. Aidan isn’t wearing a harness. He later reflects that he does get a bit nervous when he’s up here ‘without his trunks’.
DEAN TREML//Red Bull Content Pool
I’m leaning forward over the edge of the board as we discuss the safety divers below when a member of the crew checks the retractable line that I’m attached to, manoeuvring it slightly. I must have been leaning on the line too hard, as the sudden adjustment causes me to topple forwards. For a split second, I think I’m going over the edge and my entire body rattles from the sudden surge of adrenaline. There’s a tense moment as I right myself, and we all look at one another. ‘Fuck me!’ I blurt out before bursting into laughter.
Show time
Across the three-day event, each of the 24 athletes completes four dives. Competitors submit their proposed dives ahead of time so the judges can mark it for execution. The judges have a long list of criteria, including a confident take-off, perfect position during the dive and entry into the water (clean, vertical, minimal splash). These scores are added together and multiplied by the degree of difficulty of the dive. Safety is of the highest priority; four divers in the river splash the water so that the athletes have a better perception of how close they are to the surface. Immediately upon entry, the divers follow them down. Orlando had told me the day before that safety protocols are drilled and double-drilled. Complacency kills and, as a veteran diver himself, he knows the risks.
On the morning of the final day, Aidan sits somewhere in the middle of the top of the pack, but it’s all to play for. He still has his most challenging dive in hand. It’s the riskiest of the four, with little margin for error, but it’s also the dive that could score him serious points. Dramatically, a thunderstorm rolls in just ahead of the men’s dives, calling for a brief pause. A 90ft metal platform is the last place you want to be standing when lightning strikes. Aidan is now head-to-head with the defending World Series champion, Constantin Popovici. Whether it’s the humidity or the tension, the air is thick.
DEAN TREML//Red Bull Content Pool
Aidan launches into a dazzling combination of somersaults, twists and pikes. Within seconds, he rips into the river below. The scorecards go up. His rival is yet to dive, but the thousands-strong crowd erupt into raucous applause. It’s hard to see exactly how Popovici is going to top this and, sure enough, despite an incredible showing on his end, Aidan secures the top spot. His Instagram caption later reads, ‘I promise it wasn’t scripted’, as he celebrates alongside Molly, who also bags a win of her own on the day. A home-town hero, then, and Aidan, an adopted son. This part of the story has already written itself. Lucky me.
The biggest misconception I had before taking this trip was that cliff diving, despite requiring proverbial balls of steel, was mostly an artistic, skill-based pursuit. But this belies the fact that the amount of strength necessary to put that skill to use, as well as to safely weather its execution, is beyond measure.
I’m a sucker for a metaphor and, feeling inspired by Aidan Heslop and what I’ve learned from throwing myself off a 30ft platform, I scrawl large in my diary on the flight home, ‘Life isn’t about how far or how fast you fall, it’s about how gracefully you land.’ And maybe, I’d add, how many sick flips you can get in while on the way down.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
