Descents and Ascents while practicing skills. Is this ok?

[ScubaPolishPete]

Heading out to practice some skills with the fiance.

We're going to head back to the quarry where we did our OW, and want to basically practice all the skills we learned during the OW cert.

With that said, we descended and surfaced several times during OW, and it was never an issue I guess...but wanted to confirm.

If we go down to a depth of 20', practice skills, come back up, talk about them, go back down, practice some more, and repeat this...are there issues to be aware of?

Is the # of ascents/descents in a short period of time at these depths a concern? I could always ask the dive shop I did the cert at, but it's 9:00 pm and had this thought in my brain!

 

[dumpsterDiver]

I would not worry about 5 -6 ascents. As long as your practice involves slow ascents, this should not present a problem. You are more likely to experience ear equalization problems, if you are not used to diving like that. In all honestly, you might be better off practicing from 30 to 10 feet and then going back down and practicing your underwater communication skills.

 

[spectrum]

I would limit the full ascents. DD's suggestion to make partial ascents is a good idea. Whatever you do make them slow.

If you do too many and flub them up (go fast) you can find yourself with sub clinical DCS. You (probably) won't be bent or anything but you will find your self profounfly tired afterwards.

Other than that caution the plan to return to the scene of the crime to revist the skills is an outstanding follow-up.

Pete

 

[TMHeimer]

Yeah good advice above. Instructors do a lot of this when checking out students doing CESAs from 20 feet or so. Of course, the idea is a slow safe rate of ascent. I don't think there is any real problem if equalizing goes OK, though I have heard the odd comment like "Man that's rough going up & down all those times".

 

[tplyons]

I would try to avoid getting in the habit of surfacing every time you need to communicate. Try using hand signals or a slate to communicate with your buddy.

Practicing skills is a great thing to be doing, just try to avoid the habit of discussing everything after every skill.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

If you're limiting your depth to 20 feet, a series of slow ascents won't hurt you ... I do it regularly during my skills workshops. But they must be slow ... and you must equalize often. Don't wait till you feel pressure, or it starts to become painful. Equalize frequently ... and not too forcefully. This is also a good time to work on your descent/ascent skills ... descending while facing each other, maintaining visual contact, and stopping without touching the bottom ... ascending holding a stop every few feet for 10-20 seconds at a time. These are part of our static drills ... meaning you should be able to achieve them with little to no motion of arms and legs (especially no arm movements, except for equalization purposes). It's great buoyancy control practice.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[BluewaterSail]

If discussion is very important to you for some of what you want to do, could you do those skills in less than 10 feet? In water just over your heads? A side benefit is that in really shallow water, the gas lasts almost forever.

Then go to the deeper area (20 feet) with a plan of adding ascent practice to your routine, after the main discussions are over.

 

[beanojones]

If you think discussion is part of doing skills, then it's a fair guess that you did them kneeling and kept standing up to take your mask off and listen to a long brief between skills in the pool.

Break that habit/belief now, while you can. All skills should be done swimming because that's how you will need them diving. And they should be done neutral, in good trim. Work on them in swimming and you will be actually working on the skill that matters: swimming, in trim, neutrally buoyanct (that is the one skill you really need to be working on.)

Plus you will break the belief that diving is somehow a talking activity (and your fiance will like you better for it, to boot).

 

[dbulmer]

Beano,
Disagree slightly - skills should be done without feet/leg movement ie in a stop/freeze position while neutrally buoyant. (off the bottom of course )
In conjunction with what Bob does the diving comfort which results can be very rewarding.

Swimming alone can hide weighting and buoyancy issues in some people.
Sorry to nitpick as I think you agree but quite a few people don't sort out their weighting issues until they learn that stopping in the water column is a great way to practice buoyancy control.

 

[doctorwhodiver]

Just to reiterate what you everyone else has said- try to learn to communicate underwater. Of all the stuff I learned in my OW class we only surfaced once and that was because of the CESA.

Everything else we discussed before the dive in our dive plan: first we're gonna practice removing our masks, then hovering, then.... and we went over it so many times we knew the order so we didn't have to talk about it. If you think you're gonna have trouble remembering then bring a slate down....you can always write notes to your buddy on the slate as well!