Buoyancy skills

[Diver0001]

The reason I teach NASE is that we don't do the CESA in OW. I hear that's the case for RAID as well. CESAs are a horrible example for students as they watch their instructors put their health at rish doing multiple bounce dives, with RAPID ascents. Truly a stupid thing to do over and over and over again. Instructors are the best divers out there and yet we get bent at an alarming rate compared to most other divers. Why? The CESA. I hate it and I won't do it. My health is too important.

I don't like it either. I have some doubts about the utility of it, but I have seen a CESA being performed in a real world emergency. I'm not sure the diver in question would have needed any real training to make the decision to swim to the surface but I guess it couldn't hurt. I think when the system was created it was a much more important skill because the SPG wasn't widely used yet.

R..

 

[The Chairman]

I have seen a CESA being performed in a real world emergency.

Before I discovered the SPG, I used a j-valve. I ran out of air all the time. My first instructor failed to teach me the CESA and yet, I had no problem figuring that out when the time came. FWIW, we do teach CESAs horizontally in the pool. No instructors are harmed doing this.

 

[Diver0001]

Thanks to several for the in depth descriptions on how they run courses. Especially Diver0001 with the explanations of saving time doing some skills while all are swimming. Perhaps my questionable view of how important neutral training is from the start is rooted in myself having been a "water" person my whole life before taking OW--so a kneeling course 12 years ago didn't cause me any grief after I started diving. Or perhaps I was just skeptical about getting a class of 10 all comfortable swimming around before skills--time-wise. Having seen a wide variety of "water" vs. "non-water" students I just assumed this presents a problem--like having 10 beginner clarinet players in 6th grade with 2 of them having fingers too small to easily cover the holes. But, what you guys say makes good sense to me. I'm sorry I'm out of DMing and won't ever see this approach in action.
RoT.--Just curious. You said that even with a large class you can use MOST of what you wrote. What would be an example of something you couldn't do with a large class?

First of all, doing an open water course with 10 students is, quite frankly, stupid. At the very least it should be broken up into two groups of 5. When we have groups bigger than 4 we break them up.

I occasionally hear people say, "we have to because of blah blah blah" but all I hear are excuses from instructors who are not able or willing to simply say the following word: NO.

I've done it in the past but I quite simply won't teach a regular OW class that big anymore. That said, I do participate in the college class the shop runs once a year where they train between 20 and 25 divers from the sports faculty in a week long all-day-every-day workshop. It's done by breaking the group up into buddy pairs who stay with one another throughout the course and the under water training is done like circuit training. I don't like it because they do corral the students and limit their movements in order to keep the chaos to a minimum and I can't apply my own method to it because I'm only involved in doing one part of a circuit.... It's a big team teaching exercise involving something like 10 instructors so there's no getting around the necessity to exactly follow the plan.

The reason I said that you can do "most" of what I was talking about is because when you get too many instructors and/or too many students in the water and all moving around at the time you start to have logistical issues in remembering who has done what. You can still do everything neutrally buoyant but you need extraordinarily "tight" logistics with a large group or you end up forgetting things (or at least I do).

Also, it's still hard to find good help at the moment because while the standards have been changed to encourage neutral training, there are still a tremendous number of instructors who have not yet made the paradigm shift. I like to work with a DM in a 2 person team but I still have trouble working with another instructor on this approach because I do things so differently to some of my colleagues that team teaching is still difficult. Up to now the only solution I have to this is to not team teach and to keep the groups small.

R..

 

[NorCalDM]

I got a question for the instructors that have responded to this thread and are teaching neutral which I like the shift towards this I get tired of seeing divers crop dusting the bottom. I don't like the shift to shorter more condensed classes. My question is what type of conditions are you teaching your open water portion in "lake, ocean, good vis, bad vis, swell etc". I'm asking mainly because I work several OW classes a year in Monterey CA and most still teach kneeling not sure if it is a conditions thing or just can't break old habits. Typical conditions for us are ocean shore entry with waves vis is 5 to 15 foot on a good day if I can see my fins consider it good swell and kelp in the summer. Also temperature is 52F - 55F.

 

[The Chairman]

I'm in the Florida Keys. The first two dives are from the shore and the last two are from a boat.

I work several OW classes a year in Monterey CA and most still teach kneeling not sure if it is a conditions thing or just can't break old habits.

That's where kneeling originated. Go figure.

 

[TMHeimer]

R., Our shop has apparently tried to limit class sizes to 6 or so recently. In the past, a group of 10 or more may have had more than one instructor and of course a DM. That's just the way it was (and maybe still is at times). It is the only shop really for maybe 100 miles or more and most people opt for the weekend courses, which run from April (sometimes MARCH, including ocean checkout dives, unbelievably) through early December--every weekend. As instructors get paid per student, a class of 6 would mean they make only 33% more than the DM, so that may be something they are debating. I guess that's all the "blah blah blah". So, I don't at all think we disagree on anything here. With a class of 4 I can very easily see how logistics allow for immediate neutral training taking relatively little time. And, I have witnessed first hand getting mixed up with who completed what skill, even when all are kneeling. As well, like you say, sometimes there are also too many instructors or DMs and it could get confusing as to who has done what. I also found teaching a band lesson to 4 trumpets much easier than 14. I applaud your keeping courses to 4 and hope some of your colleagues will come around to your method.
I can also see NorCal's point about conditions. Our OW conditions were not usually as bad--not the surge in the bay here.
But viz can be that low and I'm not sure how doing skills other than planted in the sand would work. Certainly would be a mess with a group of 6. I recall a few times bringing up the rear on our way out to the training buoy when I could not see the fins of the two flanking students on each side in front of me at the same time.

 

[NAM001]

Thanks for posting Sander, this should be an interesting discussion.

I think a lot of the concerns you described could be obviated if the students spent more time in confined water before going to open water. I do not allow my students to touch the bottom at any time, not even the first session (although I am empathetic). We start with a solid foundation of skin diving skills, and buoyancy work using a long hose/snuba off the side of the pool so they can achieve neutral buoyancy without even wearing scuba gear. After that it's repetition, repetition, repetition, lots of confined water time. I do not take my students into open water until I feel they are comfortable doing the basic skills while neutrally buoyant.


It's the Law of Primacy. What is done first is often best remembered. If students learn on their knees, on the bottom, that is how they will internalize comfort and doing the skill. Better to have them get comfortable in the water while achieving neutral buoyancy first, and then incorporate the skill. If you work backwards, it's not as effective in my opinion.

I agree with you, however the premis assumes the student has the time to master the skill prior to moving on. There are problems with this.

1. They are using rented gear. poor fitting, not rigged to promote good trim. Face it look at a BPW and a jacket vest. the bp has the tank centered on the back and the jacket has the tank way too low.
2. It takes time to adjust and then learn to breath with a good trimmed system. That time is so often not available in a group training environment.
3. The priority of good trim is not high enough compared to the combined priority of the other skills. Beter to master 10 skills and not just one.
4. So much of maintaining good trim and buoyancy is dependant on comfort in the water. Students are not inthat phase for some time after the class is over and they have their own gear.
5. Training group size negates the time per student needed to get a good buoyoant ant trimmed diver.
6. Many classes are only 3 days,, most in class often with no local pool to allow extended pool time to master ( not just pass) skills.

This is not to say that it can not be done. Just that will the learning curve on a new diver can turn to overload as the student works on the basic skills. I do believe that buoyancy should be a major part of advanced OW as all the skills should be second nature after a few dozen dives, which leaves a diver to more fully concentrate on buoyancy in AOW. From the students perspective. you can fail OW but not AOW as its an exposure course and not a new skills course.

 

[NAM001]

The order things should be taught is:
-Buoyancy
-then Trim
-then All the other skills


Clearing a mask is not more valuable than buoyancy control, neither is reg recovery.

The only reason some new students struggle with it is because their instructors:
-tell them it's very difficult
-are mediocre at it
-or don't care


Source: my experience with beginners and doing a few discover diving sessions.

I disagree. OW is a survival course, no matter how you want to look at it. can you maintain a balanced dive / surface counter. Or one submergence for each surface. Can you conduct a dive with out spazzing out if your mask gets knocked off, or regulator gets knocked out of your mouth by another divers fin? Can you get to the surface with out blowing a lung? Compared to driving good trim and buoyancy is parallel parking. Its just not that important compared to staying in your own lane and controlled breaking and use of signals. I see buoyancy trim shooting buoys and such as advanced skills. Granted is some areas one does not have the luxury to look at things like that. There is a major difference in open ocean diving and lake diving where no motors are allowed. The very aspect of inflator hose control takes time to learn to effectively use without draining a tank. Most people learn the skill in class but use follow dives to attempt to master the skills. For most, it just doesn't happen with rental costs and access fees to dive sites. Add to that when you can afford the dive day once a month you want to have some fun and not sit and do training on a platform, or your follow up dive is on a cruise and the cert card means nothing more than a permit to get a tank of gas. Ands still people say new OWs are good to go to 130' right out of the box.

 

[NAM001]

Amen bro! Putting this skill first allows the student to really master it by the end of the class.

Less baby sitting means more teaching.

If you just want to just issue cards, then keep doing it the old way. If you want to teach Scuba that makes it fun for your students and turns them into divers, then doing it neutral is the way to go. Your choice.

This is the main driving force in teaching. Either minimum qualify to issue a card or making quality divers. The latter is not easy and does take time. I enjoy diving with the latter much more than the former. Its too bad the first so greatly outnumbers the latter.

 

[NAM001]

Before I discovered the SPG, I used a j-valve. I ran out of air all the time. My first instructor failed to teach me the CESA and yet, I had no problem figuring that out when the time came. FWIW, we do teach CESAs horizontally in the pool. No instructors are harmed doing this.

We also had CO2 inflated horse collars as our J valve victim savior to take us to the surface.