Teaching nothing

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I could be wrong, but it seems that most of the comments on this thread are from experienced or professional divers. I'd like to contribute a [relatively] new diver's thoughts, if I may.

First, some background: I received my PADI OW certification in May 2019. Since that time I have been able to put in about 150 dives totally approximately 135 hours in the water. In that three-and-a-half years, I have gone on to expand my skillset through practice as well as through official training including the PADI AOW and Fundies.

Someone upstream mentioned that the appreciated the idea of teaching the entire course while neutrally buoyant so that by the end of the confined water portion the student would have had hours of time in water neutrally buoyant.

The confined water part of my OW course took place over two nights, two hours each night. That included time to load gear into the local school's pool area, set up gear, tear down gear, load it out again, and the swim test. (Was there a water treading component, also? It feels like we did less swimming and more just floating on the surface.)

Granted, there were only four of us in the class, but we did every skill on our knees at the bottom of the pool. We might have spent a total of two hours working on those skills. Maybe.

Additionally, I would have been lumped into that group who was wearing rented gear. A one-size fits most BCD is exactly what I had. It was at least a size too large, but I deferred to those who were supposed to know better (i.e., the professionals at the dive shop) who insisted that it was fine if the BCD was a little loose.

Also, we never did a weight check. Our instructors all seem to repeat the mantra of, "It's better to be overweighted so you don't fly up to the surface in an uncontrolled ascent."

We seemed to rush through the confined water portion of the OW class. We also seemed to rush through the open water checkout dives. There were a myriad of reasons for this. From the school's pool only being available for a certain number of hours a night to the open water portion taking place in 38 °F waters. (I hated the 7mm Farmer John and Jacket wetsuit.)

Why all this background? Because after three years and 150 dives, I can absolutely point to that rush, that unwillingness to take the time to help this particular student (me) learn what it means to be properly weighted, neutrally buoyant, and in good trim [whichever definition you use] contributed to a ton of in-water problems for me.

I spent my first year as an open water diver with terrible buoyancy and gas consumption. I seemed to need to ride my low pressure inflator like an elevator. First I was too high, then I was sinking too quickly. My feet never stopped moving, and when I did stop finning my entire body would rotate through my hips so my head would roll up and my knees would roll down.

While I didn't walk away from Fundies being capable of maintaining a steady position for the purposes of deco (we only went for the Recreational pass), I learned quite a few things from my Fundies instructor.

The first was that I arched my back and clenched my glutes too much in the water. In my mind, that was the only way to put my torso into a horizontal position. Turns out, I was just using muscles I didn't need to use, which put me in an arched back, but head down position to compensate for that rolling effect I mentioned earlier. Redistributing my weight and having someone (my instructor) physically manipulate my body in the water so I could feel what horizontal trim should feel like was a tremendous help.

The second was that did (and still do, likely) dive more negatively than I should. I'm properly weighted, and the weight is now properly distributed, but when I stop moving, I start to sink. I think this is because I'm afraid of an uncontrolled ascent and, because I have a very large tidal volume so that "little bit of rise and fall through breath" seems extreme to me, so I typically don't put enough gas in my wing.

This is something I still need to work on and learning how to do nothing in the water would certainly help with that.

Now, do I think every open water student needs this? Probably not. Most don't care, but, those like me who do care and would pay more to better understand how to reduce activity and gas consumption, it would be worthwhile.

So, @wetb4igetinthewater do you want to come to Minnesota and teach me to do nothing?
 
@Ryan Neely

Thanks for the tag, as I had abandoned this thread in preference for the thread of the same title that I restarted in Basic Scuba, as this topic is an open water topic (not much more basic than that), and people have repeatedly tried to derail this (and the other), so I gave up here.

The intentional and/or unintentional misunderstanding of my intent has been disappointing to say the least.

How about this? I'm going to DM you my number. Text me tomorrow to see when we can chat. I'd be happy to chat with you to hopefully steer you in a direction that will work for you. I'm not familiar with your environment, but I have some ideas that if you have some things available, may help you achieve your goal here.

As always, my conversations in DM and on the phone I do not consider private. You may share anything (just not my phone number, I can imagine what some of my "biggest fans" here on SB would do with it) that we discuss with anyone you wish, publicly and privately.
 
Yep! Rather than just kneeling and watching others take their turns dong skills, you are working on your buoyancy.

I also learned to be patient. I thought about this once while waiting for students on CW #2 to get into position to watch me demonstrate a skill. One of the students was a bit behind the others, and I watched him as I waited to begin the demonstration. He was above the others and got down to them by exhaling and drifting down. It took a while, but that was CW #2, and he was already more skilled in buoyancy than many traditional students are at the end of the confined water session.
I was wondering if it were just me thinking it's being neutral all the time that really helps. In my head, being neutral all the time during a 4-5 hour pool session seems far more important than being able to do the appropriate pool skills neutrally-- though that would be a plus too. Would you agree here as well?
 
Yet Padi CW4 says:
"With a buddy, perform a weight check and adjust for proper weighing and trim.
When the trim weight requirements came in and our pool BCDs did not have trim pockets, we first used bungee cords to put weights on the cam band and then put weight pockets on the cam bands. Worked fine. Sadly, lots of people simply ignore that requirement.
 
I could be wrong, but it seems that most of the comments on this thread are from experienced or professional divers. I'd like to contribute a [relatively] new diver's thoughts, if I may.

First, some background: I received my PADI OW certification in May 2019. Since that time I have been able to put in about 150 dives totally approximately 135 hours in the water. In that three-and-a-half years, I have gone on to expand my skillset through practice as well as through official training including the PADI AOW and Fundies.

Someone upstream mentioned that the appreciated the idea of teaching the entire course while neutrally buoyant so that by the end of the confined water portion the student would have had hours of time in water neutrally buoyant.

The confined water part of my OW course took place over two nights, two hours each night. That included time to load gear into the local school's pool area, set up gear, tear down gear, load it out again, and the swim test. (Was there a water treading component, also? It feels like we did less swimming and more just floating on the surface.)

Granted, there were only four of us in the class, but we did every skill on our knees at the bottom of the pool. We might have spent a total of two hours working on those skills. Maybe.

Additionally, I would have been lumped into that group who was wearing rented gear. A one-size fits most BCD is exactly what I had. It was at least a size too large, but I deferred to those who were supposed to know better (i.e., the professionals at the dive shop) who insisted that it was fine if the BCD was a little loose.

Also, we never did a weight check. Our instructors all seem to repeat the mantra of, "It's better to be overweighted so you don't fly up to the surface in an uncontrolled ascent."

We seemed to rush through the confined water portion of the OW class. We also seemed to rush through the open water checkout dives. There were a myriad of reasons for this. From the school's pool only being available for a certain number of hours a night to the open water portion taking place in 38 °F waters. (I hated the 7mm Farmer John and Jacket wetsuit.)

Why all this background? Because after three years and 150 dives, I can absolutely point to that rush, that unwillingness to take the time to help this particular student (me) learn what it means to be properly weighted, neutrally buoyant, and in good trim [whichever definition you use] contributed to a ton of in-water problems for me.

I spent my first year as an open water diver with terrible buoyancy and gas consumption. I seemed to need to ride my low pressure inflator like an elevator. First I was too high, then I was sinking too quickly. My feet never stopped moving, and when I did stop finning my entire body would rotate through my hips so my head would roll up and my knees would roll down.

While I didn't walk away from Fundies being capable of maintaining a steady position for the purposes of deco (we only went for the Recreational pass), I learned quite a few things from my Fundies instructor.

The first was that I arched my back and clenched my glutes too much in the water. In my mind, that was the only way to put my torso into a horizontal position. Turns out, I was just using muscles I didn't need to use, which put me in an arched back, but head down position to compensate for that rolling effect I mentioned earlier. Redistributing my weight and having someone (my instructor) physically manipulate my body in the water so I could feel what horizontal trim should feel like was a tremendous help.

The second was that did (and still do, likely) dive more negatively than I should. I'm properly weighted, and the weight is now properly distributed, but when I stop moving, I start to sink. I think this is because I'm afraid of an uncontrolled ascent and, because I have a very large tidal volume so that "little bit of rise and fall through breath" seems extreme to me, so I typically don't put enough gas in my wing.

This is something I still need to work on and learning how to do nothing in the water would certainly help with that.

Now, do I think every open water student needs this? Probably not. Most don't care, but, those like me who do care and would pay more to better understand how to reduce activity and gas consumption, it would be worthwhile.

So, @wetb4igetinthewater do you want to come to Minnesota and teach me to do nothing?
What you describe is a course that grossly violated standards. You should report them to PADI. Seriously.
 
I was wondering if it were just me thinking it's being neutral all the time that really helps. In my head, being neutral all the time during a 4-5 hour pool session seems far more important than being able to do the appropriate pool skills neutrally-- though that would be a plus too. Would you agree here as well?
What you just wrote was what got me rethinking instruction roughly 15 years ago. I was teaching scuba classes for a dive shop, and that included doing a bunch of discover scuba classes (pool only).

I taught the OW pool sessions as I had been taught to do them, with students doing all their learning on the knees. We had our own pool on site, so we had all the time we needed for the classes, and we taught every skill thoroughly. At the end of each pool class, I felt I had done all I could as an instructor, but I still felt like the students needed more.

As for the Discover Scuba classes, the goal was to have the students have a good time. Some of the classes were youth birthday parties, and some were more formal DS experiences. In each case, we wanted the students to have fun and want to do it again, maybe get certified later. We did a short classroom session followed by shallow water skills designed to make sure they would be OK going into the deep end and having fun. In the deep end, they did indeed have fun. After the academic and shallow water sessions, they would have a half hour or so, maybe more, to just screw around and enjoy themselves. We played games and really just messed around.

What got me started on changing my instructional practice was the realization that the Discover Scuba students looked like far, far better divers after that brief fun session than the OW students did after their far more prolonged formal education. The Discover Scuba students looked like they were ready to dive, far more so than the OW students.

That is what got me started on the road to having them spend as much time as possible neutrally buoyant.
 
What you just wrote was what got me rethinking instruction roughly 15 years ago. I was teaching scuba classes for a dive shop, and that included doing a bunch of discover scuba classes (pool only).

I taught the OW pool sessions as I had been taught to do them, with students doing all their learning on the knees. We had our own pool on site, so we had all the time we needed for the classes, and we taught every skill thoroughly. At the end of each pool class, I felt I had done all I could as an instructor, but I still felt like the students needed more.

As for the Discover Scuba classes, the goal was to have the students have a good time. Some of the classes were youth birthday parties, and some were more formal DS experiences. In each case, we wanted the students to have fun and want to do it again, maybe get certified later. We did a short classroom session followed by shallow water skills designed to make sure they would be OK going into the deep end and having fun. In the deep end, they did indeed have fun. After the academic and shallow water sessions, they would have a half hour or so, maybe more, to just screw around and enjoy themselves. We played games and really just messed around.

What got me started on changing my instructional practice was the realization that the Discover Scuba students looked like far, far better divers after that brief fun session than the OW students did after their far more prolonged formal education. The Discover Scuba students looked like they were ready to dive, far more so than the OW students.

That is what got me started on the road to having them spend as much time as possible neutrally buoyant.
I can see that. During my last year assisting (2015) I saw that PADI was moving in the direction of more importance on good buoyancy. They also added the "Mini Dive" then. I think these were moves in the right direction.
 
I think that’s exactly backwards. Being able to hover effortlessly is the end goal, not the starting point. Fundies is not an entry-level class, btw.
I disagree. Fundies is not entry level only because the prerequisite is some OW cert from another agency. Yet the Fundies student isn’t assumed to know much of anything; they teach almost every aspect of diving again from scratch. GUE also offers Rec 1, which is their full OW course, which is like Fundies for people who have not taken an OW course. The FIRST thing taught in Fundies (at least as I recall) is to plant yourself in one spot above the bottom, get yourself into horizontal trim, and do nothing more until you’ve got the hang of that. Now, it may be the “end goal,” as you put it, to truly master that skill, but the first thing they do is teach you that skill. I’d say that by the end of Fundies class I had mastered it. Not guru level, but I could hang out just above the bottom without moving.

Once they teach you how to NOT move, then they can teach you how to move yourself, with precision control. Some may say they don’t care about precision—they just want to have fun. I think many divers who can control themselves more precisely will say it enables them to have more fun.
 
So, buoyancy check & I see the comparison.
 
While I agree that an OW course taught neutrally buoyant is best, it is puzzling that someone could spend an entire year with terrible buoyancy, as well despite how many standards were violated in the OW course.
You do a weight check then get used to doing short bursts with the inflator. Takes maybe 5 dives to dial it in? Rocket science?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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