Beating Bad Habits in SCUBA

[Bubblesong]

What Bad Habit have you beaten and how?

I have family members that Bicycle kick and that is one we need to beat!

 

[TripleAech]

Take a video of them first to show them how they are doing it, then practice on the beach or in a pool until they get the different kicks, when they do dive with them and video them again on their improvements and discuss how they felt in the water

 

[tilikum]

I have none, though I wish I were diving enough to pick up a few.

 

[Vicko]

I stopped relying only on my computer and have a written down deco procedure for all the dives I normally do in my wetnotes.
I learned to thumb a dive and show another finger if they refuse.

 

[WantSomeScuba?]

This is a small potatoes problem, in terms of severity, but improper trim and weighting.

And I beat it by biting the bullet and getting all my own gear, so I could tinker--makes diving way more enjoyable. I know where all my weight needs to be to be trim and comfortable in the water.

 

[idocsteve]

I stopped buying cheap used dive gear on Ebay and diving with it without testing it first because dive shops charge too much money.

 

[Diver0001]

What Bad Habit have you beaten and how?

I have family members that Bicycle kick and that is one we need to beat!

Becoming an instructor was very good for me because I had been diving for a great many years before I started instructing and I had learned many bad habits.

My course director literally told me that my biggest challenge (and I had heard this from my instructor for DM before him) was to "unlearn" more than I had to learn. What can I say? I'm a late bloomer.

When I took my DM I was already a (new) technical diver -- and this was somewhat before any old diver could "go tech" for no good reason -- and I had so many so SO SO many preconceptions about what it was to be a diver or what it meant to give scuba lessons that I virtually needed an epiphany to understand what I was actually doing or to bring up enough empathy to put myself in the position of the novice diver.

Two things changed this. First of all a number of "incidents", culminating with the full scale rescue of a diver who had run out of air, "drowned" and was left for dead in 18m/60ft of water by his dive team. He was not one of my students... it happened in a group run by another instructor from another shop. We saved the man's life but this changed EVERYTHING about how I saw teaching because while this instructor was not my colleague, he COULD have been.

I changed shops, I changes attitudes and I changed my teaching method. I'm a much MUCH better instructor than I was then and a better instructor than I would have ever become.

The second thing was the realization of how constant repetition perfects skills. Teaching is good for that. I've seen many times how even highly advanced divers deal with stress and how my instincts as an instructor -- my "radar" for problems -- allows me to anticipate issues well in advance. What it has made me realize is that even highly advanced divers, if they do not constantly practice skills, are at risk of making "beginners mistakes".

R..

 

[Nianne]

I have a really strong kick and rigid fins, so when I kick, I'm fast. I have to remember it when I guide and put less strengh.
When I fun dive with my usual buddy, we don't care, he has a good kick too.

 

[idocsteve]

Going deep just to hear my regulator more and because it's dark and creepy but for no other better reason.

 

[DiverDownD3]

Using my hands. But a lot of things were playing into that. Overweighted and out of trim. I worked with my mentor to get that straightened out and I would interlock my fingers to prevent hand flailing