“Demonstration skills”

[boulderjohn]

At the cost of being severely beaten I learned to clear on a knee in a pool, demonstrated on a knee in the ocean and never felt the need to descend to take a knee and clear my mask on an actual dive. You just get to a position that works and clear it

This was almost exactly the argument that was made when our article was first presented--we don't have to teach things that way in the class, because after they are certified they go out and learn to do it on their own.

The counter argument is that if you teach them to do things correctly in the class, then they don't have to go out and learn it on their own later on.

 

[MacDuyver]

Yes, many of us learned and were certified on our knees, and have not felt any need to be on our knees since. But the question is, would we have been better off if we had NOT learned on our knees?

This was almost exactly the argument that was made when our article was first presented--we don't have to teach things that way in the class, because after they are certified they go out and learn to do it on their own.

The counter argument is that if you teach them to do things correctly in the class, then they don't have to go out and learn it on their own later on.

Yah, I understand, I don’t see much benefit to a “train as you fight” approach for a skill like mask clearing in particular. Just teach them how to do the skill in an efficient way without distraction, test, move them on their way to more important things without letting perfection get in the way of “good enough.”

Has the additional plus of keeping them all in one place at the bottom instead of being not good at buoyancy and floating off or to the surface.

 

[steinbil]

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.

Something that is often missed in these discussions is weighting. To be able to be stable on your knees, you have to be over-weighted, which in turn makes buoyancy much harder, especially in the shallows. If the students are properly weighted and learn to be horizontal from the beginning (law of primacy), it makes buoyancy easier, not harder.

Yes, many of us learned and were certified on our knees, and have not felt any need to be on our knees since. But the question is, would we have been better off if we had NOT learned on our knees?

I don't think that is the most important question. Obviously there's a whole slew of great divers who were once taught on their knees - those divers would probably excel regardless of how they were taught. Here are some more important questions:

Out of 1000 brand new divers, if taught neutrally buoyant vs on the knees...
- how many would continue diving long term?
- how many would have a loss of buoyancy control incident within their first 100 dives?
- how many would feel comfortable diving unsupervised after their OW cert?

 

[wlecyt40]

Something that is often missed in these discussions is weighting. To be able to be stable on your knees, you have to be over-weighted, which in turn makes buoyancy much harder, especially in the shallows. If the students are properly weighted and learn to be horizontal from the beginning (law of primacy), it makes buoyancy easier, not harder.


I don't think that is the most important question. Obviously there's a whole slew of great divers who were once taught on their knees - those divers would probably excel regardless of how they were taught. Here are some more important questions:

Out of 1000 brand new divers, if taught neutrally buoyant vs on the knees...
- how many would continue diving long term?
- how many would have a loss of buoyancy control incident within their first 100 dives?
- how many would feel comfortable diving unsupervised after their OW cert?

I have learned over the last few years, through the certs I have received and the classes I have helped teach (AI), buoyancy is an art form of sorts. I have been n dive trips where my buoyancy is spot on for five of the six dives. Dive one through four, my buoyancy is excellent. But the Buoyancy Gods rear their heads and I'm either a freighter anchor or a damn cork. Then dive six, back to normal.

That being said, talking with the master instructor at the shop I support and teach with, it is easier to learn it in the pool, on your knees because you can focus on the task and not trying to stay off the bottom or floating to the surface. In the confined open water dives, we want them to work on the buoyancy while doing the skills. His opinion is that this is better environment for them to learn to do both at the same time. I agree with it. When you are on a dive, you are not going to sink to the bottom, which may be on a few feet or several hundred feet, to rest on your knees to clear your mask. You will do it on the fly. And while neutrally buoyant.

 

[boulderjohn]

Yah, I understand, I don’t see much benefit to a “train as you fight” approach for a skill like mask clearing in particular. Just teach them how to do the skill in an efficient way without distraction, test, move them on their way to more important things without letting perfection get in the way of “good enough.”

Has the additional plus of keeping them all in one place at the bottom instead of being not good at buoyancy and floating off or to the surface.

As explained earlier, clearing a mask while kneeling is done differently than while diving.

You are imagining what it must look like when teaching students while they are neutral. You are flat out wrong.

 

[boulderjohn]

Something that is often missed in these discussions is weighting. To be able to be stable on your knees, you have to be over-weighted, which in turn makes buoyancy much harder, especially in the shallows. If the students are properly weighted and learn to be horizontal from the beginning (law of primacy), it makes buoyancy easier, not harder.

This is very true. To be taught on the knees, students must be significantly overweighted, and that affects every aspect of instruction. To be taught effectively while neutrally buoyant, students should be correctly weighted, or close to it.

When I posed for pictures for the PADI article, I at first used the same amount of weight I usually used for instruction--6 pounds. That wasn't ideal (which would have been no weight at all), but I wanted it for a variety of reasons related instruction. When I had to do the contrast pictures showing the same skills while kneeling, I had not done those skills while kneeling for years, and I was surprised to see that I had to wear 12 pounds to be comfortable kneeling.

One of the problems with teaching while neutral is that in a fresh water pool, many students need little to no weight whatsoever, which means you have to put weight on them to teach the weight skills. When the standards changed to require students to learn about weighting for trim, I had trouble because they weren't wearing enough weight to distribute it. In contrast, the kneeling instructors in our shop were wearing about 20 pounds themselves, and they were frequently putting 16 pounds and more on their students.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

It is my opinion that neutral buoyancy should be one of the very first things they learn even before all the rest if the skills are taught.
Weighting and proper buoyancy are so fundamental and core to diving that I don’t see how it can be skipped and saved for a future class.
When I used to DM for classes, the first thing we did after a quick rundown was to let the students just get used to using the gear underwater and breathing off the SCUBA to let them acclimate. This would have been a perfect opportunity to get their weighting adjusted and explain the concept of hovering. After that and when some comfort is developed, then start with skills/circus tricks. Nothing worse than seeing students flailing around AND trying to do skills.
The stress level builds and they have all sorts of issues. What happens on a real dive when they don’t get out if that mode and still flail because they never learned control of their position?

We were teaching at a high school where we had a lot of teenagers and their parents. One of the teachers was a diver and so that’s how it got setup. The teenagers always did fine, many of them were already on swim team or on the polo team and were naturals. It was the parents that were generally the challenge.

In the case of the first Instagram video I posted, the “demonstration quality” skills shown were probably demonstration quality as defined by the current popular training methods industry wide.
It’s not the students fault and it’s not even the instructing staffs fault since it seems to be the industry standard and therefore no standards have been violated.
However, there is another video posted of those same students doing what looks like a fin pivot and holding clip boards. This is obviously training to observe and record data while they hover above their subject matter, but their fin tips are still in contact with the bottom.
IMO They should be training them to be completely contactless. Fin tips still do damage to sensitive sea life and these scientists should be setting an impeccable example of how not to do that.

 

[boulderjohn]

When I was beginning my instructor training, I did a dive in Key Largo, and soon after I reached the bottom, I saw a young woman who I knew from discussions on the boat to be newly certified. She was grossly overweighted, literally crawling on the sand on her knees. The look on her face was painful. She was not having fun. I swore then that I would never have a student go out in the world looking like that.

Several years later, I was diving in Ste. Maarten, and I got to know the staff of the operation I was using. On one dive, I passed by an instructor who I knew was working with an AOW student, but they were doing basic buoyancy skills. I later asked about it, and the instructor said the woman had asked for an unreal amount of weight, which they had cut back, and she had no buoyancy skills whatsoever. By incredible luck, that woman sat next to me on the flight home. She told me that in her OW class pool sessions, they had put 20 pounds on her 100 pound body, and they had used more in the OW dives. She said their policy was to use 20% of body weight for pool session weighting. I said I could not imagine they could do the buoyancy exercises like that. She said they were told they were excused from the buoyancy skills because buoyancy is an advanced skill they would learn later.

So for those who say it is OK to learn to do skills correctly after you get certified, what if the students have such miserable experiences as new divers that they decide not to go on and learn them later?

 

[NW Dive Dawg]

So for Northwest diving maybe they should teach all skills neutrally buoyant while blindfolded by a blacked out mask.

But seriously......what's really the downside of doing the first run through of initial skills in the pool on the knees and then moving to neutral for the rest of the course?

 

[boulderjohn]

But seriously......what's really the downside of doing the first run through of initial skills in the pool on the knees and then moving to neutral for the rest of the course?

Aside from the weighting and the fact that you are teaching those skills incorrectly that way?

So what is the upside of doing it that way?