Our First Pool Session

[JoeyU]

Hi Everyone,

My wife and I started our certification class on Wednesday. Chapter 1 was Friday, and our first pool dive was today.

We both did ok, but not as well as I had hoped to be. we both had trouble completing the mask clearing task. We kept getting water up our noses, and felt very uncomfortable doing this task. Other tasks completed today included shairing air with the instructor, helping the instructor with a lost mask, finding our regulator, donning/doffing our BCD and weight belt under water (at depth).

The mask thing is a serious issue for both of us. I tried to prepare myself for this by breathing with a snorkel only in our pool. Our instructor said that we both were exhaling out of our mouths too much when we tried to clear our masks. He told us to stick our tongue in our regulator, forcing us to exhale out of our noses. This helped a little and I'm getting better at the whole task. My wife is too, but we're both still freaked with the flooded mask thing.

Any pointers, or ways to practice this without a tank and gear? It really feels to both of us that if we can get through this task, certification should be a breeze.

Thanks

Joe

 

[don Francisco]

This is one of the few exercises you can practice at home. Stand in the tub, fill your mask with water, put it on and blow the water out by exhaling through your nose. Keep doing this until you could do it in your sleep. You want it to become second nature.

BTW- don't try this while wearing silk.

 

[Auralyte]

Joe:
I just got my C Card a few weeks ago and I, too had trouble clearing my mask at first. To keep the water out of your nose, try exhaling JUST A LITTLE BIT. And I mean the teeniest bit - more like try to keep air pressure in your nose. I also swam around for 10 or 15 minutes with a half full mask, just getting used to having water there. After the panic feeling of water sort of in the nose went away I didn't have any problems with the clearing.
The bathtub practice sounds good, too - just keep working at it. Believe me, you're so hypersensitive on your first pool session that just keeping upright is a chore. Relax, practice, (anyone you know have a pool you can borrow this weekend?) and know that it really DOES become the most natural thing to do. You will learn to deal with having water in your mask by your own method of compensation (and having water there really will become more tollerable) and when you get to doing other things you will feel more comfy with the clearing.
Our first pool session we had to do the 15 minute tread water, the 100 yard swim, and 50' underwater swim and 10' free dive to pick up a weight. TORTURE! We didn't even get into gear until our second pool session - and I nearly croaked during the 50' underwater - guess we had a tough instructor! THANKS DAVID!
Chris

 

[JoeyU]

This is one of the few exercises you can practice at home. Stand in the tub, fill your mask with water, put it on and blow the water out by exhaling through your nose. Keep doing this until you could do it in your sleep. You want it to become second nature.

BTW- don't try this while wearing silk.

Thanks don, this sounds like a great idea. I might just do this in the shower every morning this week before work. 5-10 times should get me started.

And I'll try to stay away from the silk.

Joe

 

[JoeyU]

Joe:
I just got my C Card a few weeks ago and I, too had trouble clearing my mask at first. To keep the water out of your nose, try exhaling JUST A LITTLE BIT. And I mean the teeniest bit - more like try to keep air pressure in your nose. I also swam around for 10 or 15 minutes with a half full mask, just getting used to having water there. After the panic feeling of water sort of in the nose went away I didn't have any problems with the clearing.
The bathtub practice sounds good, too - just keep working at it. Believe me, you're so hypersensitive on your first pool session that just keeping upright is a chore. Relax, practice, (anyone you know have a pool you can borrow this weekend?) and know that it really DOES become the most natural thing to do. You will learn to deal with having water in your mask by your own method of compensation (and having water there really will become more tollerable) and when you get to doing other things you will feel more comfy with the clearing.
Our first pool session we had to do the 15 minute tread water, the 100 yard swim, and 50' underwater swim and 10' free dive to pick up a weight. TORTURE! We didn't even get into gear until our second pool session - and I nearly croaked during the 50' underwater - guess we had a tough instructor! THANKS DAVID!
Chris

Chris,

Congrats on your C card, and thanks for the pointers and words of encouragement. My wife and I were the only ones that had trouble with the mask in the entire class (10 people). we felt like idiots. We stayed after with the instructor and he said that just the two of us having trouble in the class was very unusual. Usually, in a class that size, you have more students having difficulty grasping certain skills. He said we definitely shouldn't give up, and, we would do pool work with our instructors to get it right prior to any open water dive.

As for borrowing a pool to do this, I know exactly where I can go.......my backyard. I'm planning on keeping the pool open a few more weeks just so I can practice these skills. Even if I have to rent equipment and "dive" in my above ground pool. I tried to prepare myself for this task by breathing in my pool with a snorkel and no mask, but I guess I didn't practice it enough. I do like the suggestion of just slightly exhaling out of your nose to keep air in the nostrils. I'll give this a try too.

Thanks again for everyone's help here. This community is great, and the resources here are exactly what a new diver needs.

BTW, my wife kicked A$$ with the 10 minute float. She's positively buoyant (they had to add weight to her 3 times), so the float was a piece of cake for her. She could have done that all day!

Thanks again to everyone. Please keep the suggestions coming.

Joe

 

[fisheater]

Check out other threads on this. They are many and lots of those are full of very helpful advice. This is a skill that is a major hurdle for many divers.

With practice, you WILL get past this.

 

[davidbaraff]

If you have a pool (only need 3' deep), then take your snorkel and mask, and see if you can borrow a weight belt. Put the weight belt on, and kneel in the pool so your mask is under water but you snorkel tip is above water. Flood the mask, and then clear it. You've got an infinite air supply as long as your snorkel is above the water. Practice it a couple of times.

(Actually see instructions in the link below for an even more specific description.)

Once you can do that, it's actually *easier* with a regulator, because you don't need to worry about the snorkel submerging. If you do it yourself in a pool, you can do it really slow. You can flood the mask and not even bother to clear it at first, just keep breathing through the snorkel, etc.

I followed a thread on this board advising that, and found that clearing my mask in class was really easy once i got the (harder) task of doing it with just a snorkel down. In fact, go to this link and look for the instructions by "Walter." That's basically what I did, and I was quite happy to have practiced it.

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/new-divers-those-considering-diving/171-mask-clearing.html

 

[FishOutUvH2O]

My wife and I just finished our check-out dives today. We are now officially C-card holding (well, we will be holding, as soon as they send them to us) novice divers. And I can say without a doubt that mask clearing, in the beginning, caused a massive problem for me. When we first did it in the shallow area I had no problems. On the second pool dive in the deep end I made 2 mistakes that caused me to, for first time in my life (and I've been in and around water all of my life) to feel panic. It took every ounce of my self-control not to just bolt for the surface. My first mistake was that I got in a hurry. Second, instead of letting the water slowly (very slowly) fill my mask, I just popped it open in 12 ft of water. This had the unfortunate effect of ramming water up my nose and causing my body to instantly close-off my airways giving me the sensation of suffocating. For the next few times I would feel panicked at just the thought of having to clear my mask and my instructor knew this. It wasn't hard for him to tell. Each time that he would point to me to do it, my breathing would become extremely rapid. Unfortunately, the only way to get past the panicked feeling is to fight through it and keep doing it until you're comfortable with it. During our check-out dives my instructor had me do a full mask removal and clear a total of 20 times. He did this to make sure that I was finally comfortable doing it. The last time he kept my mask for around 3 minutes just to make sure that I was breathing normally and not beginning to feel panic. Now I still feel a minor uneasiness with it, but it really isn't bad at all. So my advice from one newbie to another is. . .

1. No that you can do it.
2. Fill your mask as slowly as possible so that the water displacing the mask's air, doesn't displace the air in your nose.
3. Take the advice you got in the thread, that is some good stuff.
4. Don't give-up. I got just a tiny bit of the diving experience in my check-out dives, but that little bit made fighting through mask clearing well worth it.

 

[TSandM]

Find one of Walter's posts on how to work on this. If you have a pool, you have the best possible resource! You have the opportunity to practice with just standing in the water, and swimming with a snorkel but no mask, and flooding a mask and swimming around with a flooded mask (this was the hardest thing for me to deal with -- somehow, it's claustrophobic), and clearing a mask.

Just one tip that Walter doesn't mention. If you are sitting on the bottom of the pool in an upright position, do NOT tilt your head back to clear your mask. That will align the bottom of your nose in perfect position for the water in your mask to run down into your throat and make you choke. Tilting the head back is something you need to do when you are actually DIVING, and in a more horizontal position. Then, to get the bottom of the mask to be the lowest point in it, you have to tilt your head. But in a sitting position, the bottom of the mask is already the lowest point, and you don't have to move your head at all.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Do not put your tongue in the reg. It is too awkward and you risk gagging yourself. It works much better if you go slowly. Many instructors will rush through the motions for this skill and as a result you don't see what's going on. Once you have the motion right as to holding the mask in place place the tip of your tongue against the back of your upper front teeth. Try it just sitting at the computer. Now exhale. Where does the air come out? Unless you are somewhat deformed I'm betting it comes out your nose. Voila! There you have it. Now take the mask. tilt the head back SLIGHTLY, hold it in place, Do NOT lift it, inhale, place the tongue against the back of the front teeth and exhale. Mask is now clear. Do not try to rush the motions. Do it slow and purposely. Speed will come with practice. Right now it everything you do should appear to be done in slow motion with those motions highly exaggerated. Get the correct motions down and the skills will come easily. Miss a step or overlook a critcial point and you'll have a very hard time.