6 Tips to improve Buoyancy & Trim

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Let's remember one thing here. GUE fundies is focused on recreational dive skills not technical dive skills. Fundies is simply a gatekeeper course to ensure that students in GUE technical courses have the proper foundation in recreational skills before starting technical dive training.

That's it.

The problem is the low performance bar that became the norm. I think I know the point at which this occured.

 

[Celt]

It’s great if you have nothing to do and you’re going no place, a bit like plankton.

 

[Wibble]

It’s great if you have nothing to do and you’re going no place, a bit like plankton.

That’s the point, diving is relaxing where most of the dive is spent observing ‘stuff’, be that a boiler, porthole, propeller, conger, blennie or a nudibranch. Or just hanging out in the aquarium watching the world go about its business.

Unless you’re being lead around a dive site at breakneck speed by some ignorant dive “guide” to get the gas-hogs out of gas so they can prematurely end the dive. The obvious answer to that is refuse to play that game and move very slowly regardless of the "leader" and his incessant rattling to make you move along.

 

[Celt]

That’s the point, diving is relaxing where most of the dive is spent observing ‘stuff’, be that a boiler, porthole, propeller, conger, blennie or a nudibranch. Or just hanging out in the aquarium watching the world go about its business.

Unless you’re being lead around a dive site at breakneck speed by some ignorant dive “guide” to get the gas-hogs out of gas so they can prematurely end the dive. The obvious answer to that is refuse to play that game and move very slowly regardless of the "leader" and his incessant rattling to make you move along.

They’d have to be all in the same spot for the diver in the video as he’s going no place. I like to swim in order to see stuff and get places. Make the best of the time underwater searching for interesting things.

 

[Wibble]

I think a lot of the SB crowd (especially the people that call themselves 'tec' divers) like to think of themselves as better or have special knowlege because they can do a basic skill.

Core skills: buoyancy, trim and finning. The first two are straightforward, hover at a depth and in flat trim (the most efficient for finning).

However, finning takes time to master. Scissor kick (aka Flutter kick to some) is THE recreational finning technique found all over the world. It is pretty easy to do and is fairly efficient.

But…. It directs a wake upwards and downwards which will disturb anything within a couple of metres (a few feet) that is below or above the diver. Silt, reef dwellers, corals, sand, etc., are all affected especially if close in. Scissor kick cannot turn you around within your own length, nor can it back you out of a hole or away from a delicate coral/bitey animal.

This is where ADVANCED finning techniques are used. Frog kick and (bent knee) flutter kick direct the wash behind you. Helicopter turns for rotating around your centre point. Backfinning to reverse.

Those are not taught in a basic Open Water or Advanced(!) Open Water class. GUE Fundamentals teach this. Technical instructors may teach this. Most AOW instructors won’t teach this as they are recreational instructors who’ve normally not experienced the ADVANCED finning techniques.

If you, @berndo, have learned those skills then good on you as you are an ADVANCED diver. The vast majority of divers are holiday divers diving a few times per year who’ve "dun my PADDY" and learned sufficient basic skills in order to follow the leader around the benign dive site in buddy pairs.

 

[Ayisha]

This is where ADVANCED finning techniques are used. Frog kick and (bent knee) flutter kick direct the wash behind you. Helicopter turns for rotating around your centre point. Backfinning to reverse.

Those are not taught in a basic Open Water or Advanced(!) Open Water class. GUE Fundamentals teach this.

Those propulsion techniques are also taught in GUE Recreational Diver 1, which is an O/W certification course.

 

[BlueTrin]

In my previous club, one of the instructors made the people start their try dive in the shallow end of the pool belly against the ground in flattish position then made them go neutrally buoyant, before to kick to the deeper end.


They all stayed flat during the session.

 

[Wibble]

Those propulsion techniques are also taught in GUE Recreational Diver 1, which is an O/W certification course.

1% — at the very most — of all divers do GUE.
PADI is 80%(?)

 

[ginti]

1% — at the very most — of all divers do GUE.
PADI is 80%(?)

I don't think the point here is about agency. Others are trying to say that those techniques are not intrinsically advanced and any good instructor (independently from the agency) can teach them at the OW level.

On top of that, the skills level of divers you meet strongly depends on where you use to dive.

In my experience, for example, the average level of recreational divers is far lower than that of tech divers, but it isn't **that bad** (while, in the past, it was definitely worse, at least where I used to dive). I have seen "sea horse" or "kneeling" divers making a mess underwater a couple of times, but it is absolutely not the norm.

I think the skills of most professional divers I met are not enough in my opinion - but, again, not a disaster. For tech divers, I am biased, diving mostly with GUE people - so I really cannot say what is the average level outside my bubble.

 

[boulderjohn]

In my previous club, one of the instructors made the people start their try dive in the shallow end of the pool belly against the ground in flattish position then made them go neutrally buoyant, before to kick to the deeper end.


They all stayed flat during the session.

This is a very common way to begin instruction that focuses on buoyancy and trim. Students should not just be neutrally buoyant for this--they need to be in horizontal trim. Students do the first confined water skills in shallow water in horizontal trim on the bottom, and they must be reasonably buoyant to do the skills. (How else do they do the sweep regulator recovery?) Done properly, they will be rising and falling with each breath, staying close to the bottom. (You do not want them at a 45° angle.) When they do the alternate air exercise, the divers should be able to swim toward each other, as would be done in a real situation.