Practice buddy breathing. It amazes me that DM's are asked to do this after the skill has been removed from the OW class so they have never been exposed to it. By the time you reach DM this skill should be no more difficult than any other. I teach it in my OW classes and it's also a required AOW skill. If you are not ready to multitask to this degree I suggest you rethink the DM class altogether. Since the DM class as I guess you are taking it doesn't seem to teach you new skills you should have those skills down before you start it. Tell the instructor you want him to stop talking about marketing, selling con ed, and any other extraneous BS and that he needs to do some remedial work on skills and diving with you. Specifically task loading exercises as this seems to have not been part of your training to this point.
I'm not sure I agree with your approach. PADI IM states the following:
Exercise 5 — Equipment Exchange
In confined water, demonstrate the ability to effectively respond to an unusual circumstance underwater by exchanging all scuba equipment (except exposure suits and weights) with a buddy while sharing a single regulator second stage.
It seems to me that the intent of such an exercise is for the candidate to experience
an unusual situation and deal with it
. This helps the candidate build up confidence in his own capability in responding to an unusual situation that might crop up during the dive.
To me the exercise loses its valve after performing it a few times. If one were to practice this exercises over and over again such that it becomes just like any other skill, the intent of letting the candidate experience high task loading in an unfamiliar situation is lost.
---------- Post added May 28th, 2013 at 12:28 AM ----------
I subject all diving Students to progressive task loading (anxiety). Anxiety will grow if it's not directed into some positive action, so the trick is to relax. Stop, think, understand what has to be done and do it... relax... Progressively increasing the difficulty of a task helps tremendously in dealing with stress caused by anxiety.
Agreed! Remember to "Stop, Breath, Think, Act"!
Other exercises including black-out drills, harassment (mask/reg removal, loosen weight belt, etc.) and other exercises help the Diver increase confidence. To avoid panic having confidence in your ability (and those of your Buddy) will go a long way to believing that 'I can do this.' Similar training is used to train military and commercial divers (and has been for over 50 years). This was also typical of many recreational diver training programs prior to 1990.
Awesome drills! haha! My favourite drill is the one whereby we leave all the equipment (mask, fin, snorkel, everything) at the bottom, and we have to free dive down to the equipment, rig up underwater, and ascend safely.
