Any tips for staying relaxed and avoid tunnel vision while laying the line?

[kensuf]

Thanks for all the tips, I’ll try to put this in practice and plan ahead rather than swim and look at a spot while swimming.

Will tell you tomorrow how it went

As an aside, there's some physiological magic to what I told you in post #2. CO2 is without a doubt the worst gas you'll ever encounter in diving - it's extremely narcotic, it increases your respiration rate, and can lead to tunnel vision.

Stopping, pausing and taking a deep breath or two will help flush the CO2 out of your lungs, oxygenate your blood, calm you down and get you back on track. I find this technique frequently works in almost all aspects of life where you may encounter excessive stress, not just running a reel while in a cave class.

Best of luck to you on the class!

 

[BlueTrin]

Today my line laying went ok, was way better although I missed that the line was run for a bit too long and not following a contour.

Instructor added a tie off.

So room for improvement, but made some progress.

Thanks for all the tips, I didn’t see the cave line until I paused after a tie off, and after waiting and painting the cave found the line right in front of me: it was white line on the top of limestone so missed it at first …

 

[halocline]

The most helpful thing for me in the beginning was simply slowing way down. It's easy to want to get tied into the mainline quickly in an effort to save gas just to get there, but in reality it tends to have the opposite effect. So I had to consciously slow myself down, still do actually.

Keeping your head up is very useful; not only do you see where you're going, but its better for your trim and position. And lots of slow practice in the water, you could easily make a half day of just running line, retrieving it, repeat, etc...

As far as finding the mainline, your teammate(s) can be helpful. It's kind of their job, actually, to light up the route and help you identify good tie off points. And it's not the end of the world if it takes you some extra line and a few extra tie offs. It might be a little humbling but it will still get you out.

 

[LiteHedded]

practice

 

[mr_v]

following on that, land drills, land drills, land drills. Part of this is perceptual narrowing because you are having to focus on the actual laying line bit in terms of tie offs and placements. @cerich uses a great analogy where every diver has a dollar to spend which amounts to your total focus ability. Someone like Chris, @mer, or @kensuf are using maybe a penny on things like buoyancy/trim/propulsion, at this point in their diving careers it is natural but someone new to Cave 1 may be having to spend say 20 cents on fundamental skills just due to experience because they're trying to read the cave, adjust their trim to match the profile, keep their buoyancy spot on so they can lay the line, etc etc.
You now have another dime added in of just new environment jitters which are completely normal, another dime allocated to paying attention to your buddy, and if you have a half dollar allocated to placement of the line then you have over 3/4 of your attention allocated and that doesn't leave a whole lot of room left. With time and experience this allocation will come down, but know that you are not alone and that this is completely normal in the start of a cave class.
One thing that we teach that applies to all aspects of life is that if the world starts to feel like it is spinning it's your job to put the brakes on and make the world move at your pace, there is exactly a 0% chance that when it starts spinning that you can keep up so don't try. This ties exactly into what Ken said, an instructor isn't going to brow beat you for taking 5-10mins to put a line in if it is put in properly and comfortably but when you start to huff and puff your judgement gets clouded by increased CO2 and you are probably making mistakes in terms of your placements and that will come back to you in debrief.

Slow and relaxed with good technique, be quick but never hurry

Someone ought to remove the cave references from the post above and make it a sticky in every sub-forum. Love the dollar analogy. The advice applies on every dive (and in life).

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

Task loading and awareness are like Boyles' Law. As task loading increases, awareness decreases, they are inversely proportional. Good advice was given above for moving slowly, stopping and keeping buoyancy/ posture/breathing under control while reading the cave to know where your next tie-off or placement should be and the general route you need to take.

The key is to move slowly and deliberately.

 

[BlueTrin]

I still suck at laying the line but improved massively. A few things that I found particularly useful (they were all mentioned in this thread)

1. Trust your compass and lay the line more or less without zig zags
2. Hold the reel low and far on side, opening on the outside
3. Let go the reel when you kick and stop it when you slow to keep the line under tension but not slowing down your kicks
4. Pause before moving to the next spot, look at where the person behind you is pointing his torch at, in fact pause before to do anything to make sure you are stopping and neutral before to do any tie off

I think #3 was my biggest problem, I was pressing against the reel when kicking and literally working against the reel

Thanks all for all these tips.

 

[LiteHedded]

I still suck at laying the line but improved massively. A few things that I found particularly useful (they were all mentioned in this thread)

1. Trust your compass and lay the line more or less without zig zags
2. Hold the reel low and far on side, opening on the outside
3. Let go the reel when you kick and stop it when you slow to keep the line under tension but not slowing down your kicks
4. Pause before moving to the next spot, look at where the person behind you is pointing his torch at, in fact pause before to do anything to make sure you are stopping and neutral before to do any tie off

I think #3 was my biggest problem, I was pressing against the reel when kicking and literally working against the reel

Thanks all for all these tips.

I wouldn't let my finger off the reel all the way if I were you. just let up on the pressure since it sounds like you might be pressing too hard