“Demonstration skills”

[ofg-1]

Listening you guys snipe about buoyancy makes me think:

 

[happy-diver]

Try some shore dives in inclement conditions a sure cure for any long held ailments both physical and mental

 

[boulderjohn]

I was taught on my knees in May. The one defense to that approach is that it would take a lot longer for people to get comfortably neutrally buoyant to start doing skills.. Plus, neutral buoyancy as a brand new diver is pretty hard in the first 15 feet(pool depths). Just sayin

Nope.

What this illustrates is the greatest frustration I hear from the debates. People who insist on instructing on the knees say things like this, but they are basing it on what they imagine what must be true. When people like me say that did it on the knees for many years and then did it neutrally buoyant, so we know those things aren't true, they still cling to the myths, in effect insisting that their powerful imaginations give them a better picture of the way things must be than my personal experience.

When starting the first class sessions in the shallow end of the pool (about 4 feet deep), I first had them swim on the surface with BCD inflated for a while, then I showed them how to deflate the BCD until they were swimming neutrally. It took a couple minutes, during which time I corrected weighting issues. Then we began skill training by having the students deflate and lie on the bottom facing me, with legs comfortably spread. They then inflated the BCDs until they were just off the floor, with legs barely touching. Their chests would rise and fall as they breathed. They were much more comfortable and stable than students were on the knees.

One advantage that is rarely mentioned is that when instructing on the knees, the students who are not demonstrating the skill are accomplishing nothing as they wait their turn or they wait for the next skill to start. With neutrally buoyant instruction, those students are constantly practicing buoyancy without realizing it. By the time we reach the point in the class where we are supposed to introduce the neutral buoyancy skills, they are pretty much already there.

From about the middle of CW dive #2, students rarely touch the floor again.

 

[boulderjohn]

I posted this on a long ago thread about being fine after learning on my knees. Funny, I too had trouble with the doff & don. Anyway, I think the neutral idea would probably benefit most those who signed up for OW and weren't comfortable in water to begin with. Otherwise, it's just my opinion that it doesn't matter much which way you were trained.

Yep, pretty much what everyone with such powerful minds that they can imagine what it must be like without having seen it says.

 

[DivingLane]

I was taught on my knees in May. The one defense to that approach is that it would take a lot longer for people to get comfortably neutrally buoyant to start doing skills.. Plus, neutral buoyancy as a brand new diver is pretty hard in the first 15 feet(pool depths). Just sayin

How much time would it take to teach the students proper buoyancy to avoid the whole class either not popping up to the surface, or not touching the ground? A LONG F'ING TIME. These are Open Water students for pete's sake. What should be mentioned, is that the buoyancy will keep getting better, and not too worry too much about it during this first or second friggin day. Have all of you forgotten how hard those first days were? Maybe some of you are instructors, and can teach decent buoyancy those first few days, enough to have the whole class (the whole class), not bobbing up and down like corks.

 

[Cthippo]

I wasm't trained on my knees, but also my imstructpr could have done a little more work with getting my trim right. That said, I have dealt with it for two years now and am still diving (when I can convince myself that I will not die of the cold).

 

[boulderjohn]

Two friends and I were doing a dive in Akumal, where they do one-tank dives to the nearby reef. When we came in, the DM, who had just met us that day, said that we were the only 3 divers signed up for the next dive, and he wanted to know if we wanted to go to a more challenging site, one more fitting our experience. We happily agreed.

Unfortunately, another couple signed up, and when we got to that site, their buoyancy, particularly the wife's, was terrible. The DM gave her a 5 minute buoyancy lesson before going to the reef. The site, filled with tight canyons and swim-throughs, was obviously beyond them, and we just swam over the top.

After the dive, the DM apologized. He said the other couple only had about 25 logged dives, in contrast to our obvious great experience. I pointed to my two friends and said, "I just certified them yesterday. You just saw their first dives as certified divers."

So I do think it makes a difference.

 

[crofrog]

Two friends and I were doing a dive in Akumal, where they do one-tank dives to the nearby reef. When we came in, the DM, who had just met us that day, said that we were the only 3 divers signed up for the next dive, and he wanted to know if we wanted to go to a more challenging site, one more fitting our experience. We happily agreed.

Unfortunately, another couple signed up, and when we got to that site, their buoyancy, particularly the wife's, was terrible. The DM gave her a 5 minute buoyancy lesson before going to the reef. the site, filled with tight canyons and swim-throughs, was obviously beyond them, and we just swam over the top.

After the dive, the DM apologized. He said the other coup0le only had about 25 logged dives, in contrast to our obvious great experience. I pointed to my two friends and said, "I just certified them yesterday. You just saw their first dives as certified divers."

So I do think it makes a difference.

You mentioning Akumal made me go look for some quick little clips I shot a few years ago.






I didn't put any effort into editing these. The single tank divers have about 15 and 5 dive post certification dives. They're not perfect, but they were taught neutrally buoyant and in trim from the get-go, and because of that, we were comfortable taking them into a cavern in Mexico. Still, they had the fundamentals of light communication down, knew the basic 5, and were capable of maintaining good control. We surrounded them with guides and other double tank divers with much more experience to insulate them from risk. Both where taught under UTD instructors, one via UTD and one via SSI

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

@tursiops The counterpoint to this is that you're paying for an instructors time, and generally speaking, most scuba classes are large group, rushed affairs aiming for minimum cost and maximum profit. Is that the way it should be? No, but that's the way it is. Besides, I was trained on my skills in kneeling, and thus far have been able to use all of them in actual dive situations without trouble (except doff/don, which I still have trouble with, but this is largely because I have too many things on my arms that can easily snag my BCD straps.

These university classes are one semester long.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I was taught on my knees too. I’ll bet 99.9% of PADI divers in 1998 were taught on their knees before NB became a thing. Interestingly, when we did our open ocean check out dives, the DM in charge of setting up the float and line couldn’t find a spot that wasn’t covered in urchins so the instructor told us we needed to stay off the bottom when we did our skills otherwise we’d be picking urchin spines out of our knees, and we did. Everybody just added some air to their BC’s and did it.
Anyway, throughout the following years of my diving adventures I ran into other divers who mentored me, showed me stuff, and learned on my own about NB and proper weighting etc.
Later, I got into vintage diving. I got a chance to use a pool to do doff and dons like they outlined in the New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving. All I had on was a pair of swim trunks, a steel 72 on a harness only (no plate and no BC) and a double hose reg, and mask and fins of course.
When I jumped into the pool I didn’t know what to expect, I thought I might plunge straight to the bottom. But amazingly I was exactly neutrally buoyant at any depth. The excercise included swimming to the deep end, removing everything, swimming up whilst blowing out, taking a breath and diving down to put everything back on. Not really that hard once you do it about 3 or 4 times.
A fun skill but utterly useless in the real world. More of a confidence and comfort builder if anything.
I don’t think it would be a big deal to teach students to be neutral in the water before skills. An extra hour maybe if that at the very beginning and they would be doing very well. When we got our crash course in the ocean we had no prior time to learn it but plenty of very sudden incentive, so we did it.