confined water / club pool sessions

[craigowen89]

All of the local dive clubs to me have weekly pool sessions. what do all you guys get upto during these? i am looking to improve my skills but wonder if its possible to perfect buoyancy etc in such a small body of water! on my OW confined water dives we just knelt on the bottom for most of it!

Do experienced divers not just find it it bit boring after a wile when there is nowhere to explore! (please excuse my ignorance!)

 

[tstormdiver]

I'm not in the UK, nor part of any club or such,.... but will say, the best place I've found to perfect buoyancy control (horizontal trim) is in about 3ft (1m) of water. To hover off the bottom, but not break the surface takes real skill & concentration. As long as there is something to work on in a pool (& there is ALWAYS room for improvement), I never get bored.

 

[Insta-Gator]

I agree with tstormdiver. I enjoy pool work when it's not too crowded. It allows you to work on buoyancy, propulsion technique, and experiment with different equipment configurations in a relatively safe environment. You can focus on the task at hand and not so much on survival skills, as you might in the open water.

Think of it as time to play with your toys (scuba kit) and hone your skills so you can enjoy that "exploration" you seek in the open water and not have to focus excessively on your survival skills.

 

[cloudflint]

Over the winter i do pool training once a week. I find it very useful for getting skills absolutely perfected to the point you can do them in any situation at all and by training less experienced divers alot of the skills become second nature. Its also good for learning new skills like search patterns. We also do fun stuff sometimes like underwater rope work, dismantling and reassembling devices e.t.c

Its also good for building up muscle memory with the kit and doing really silly things like taking off your tank without taking off your BC

 

[birdwrasse]

pool is a great place to practice skills... if you remember in your lessons, the first atmosphere there is the greatest pressure change... with that said, if you can master buoyancy in the shallows, it should get easier the deeper you go...


--c

 

[dbulmer]

To the OP,
The pool is a great place for practicing skills as everyone has said but it is true that it can get boring after a while. As has been said theres aways something you can practice but sometimes all you want to do is just lounge around and talk - that's part of being in a club

When it starts to get boring best thing to do is .. swim ! You do need to be a bit fitter to dive in the UK because of the conditions and heavier gear and swimming is a great way to get fitter and become more comfortable in the water.

The pool is also a meeting point for club activities (apart from the pub ) and it's here you often hear of little tips from other divers that can help you as a diver.

As a newbie, one of the hardest things that you'll find when starting out is finding a good reliable buddy. Clubs are a great way of getting a buddy by and large and most importantly it's a place where you can get feedback from someone else on your diving.

 

[TartanFrog]

I was at the pool yesterday practicing skills. I brought a camera and worked on taking shots as well as my buoyancy. I also got to role play as a new OW student for an instructor candidate that is taking her exam in a few days. There was also a discover scuba class and an additional OW class in the pool at the same time. It is also fun to sit back and observe the other divers, especially the instructors. Watching the other divers gives me things to check in my own mechanics to make sure I am more efficient.

The bottom line for me is that when I can't get to another location to try new gear, work on buoyancy, or I don't have a dive buddy available, or if I just plain want to get in the water I can easily go to the pool with a group of divers from my local dive shop. And in addition to that, I often enjoy being in the water and using the time to let the hectic nature of my usual days float away with my bubbles.