Diver Control: Hand Swimming

Should swimming with the hands result in open water diver course failure?

  • Yes

    Votes: 19 14.3%
  • No

    Votes: 114 85.7%

  • Total voters
    133
  • Poll closed .

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Most training agencies use words like "control" in standards regarding the quality of student performance. The problem is that "control" often means different things to different people. For example, it is impossible to pass the written standards of the TDI Intro to Tech class. NO BUOYANCY SHIFT. NO SCULLING OF THE HANDS OR FEET. For how long? 30 seconds? 1 minute? An hour? At every moment in the course over how ever many days it is conducted? Time isn't specified. No GUE instructor could do that. Every diver will eventually move a fin for a slight correction or change buoyancy by inches or a foot in a breathing cycle. What TDI is relying upon is the sound sensible judgement of its instructors to evaluate buoyancy control and sculling with fins that is reasonable for skills that would be proficient or even exceptional.

While technical diving demands greater control, control is also a very important part of recreational and entry level diving. It is often difficult for new technical divers to learn to hover at the same depth as a team and perform emergency drills or tasks with exceptional control while remaining in a horizontal position that makes a team look like they are skydiving and doing RW (relative work: skydiving term) underwater.

In the past, my experience as a diver was that most divers did very little hand swimming or sculling. Control was fins only. Buoyancy among open water divers was good. Trim was a skill that seemed to be maintained while swimming, but would fall off or become vertical when the diver stopped moving. If a diver can maintain a neutral position in the water and stay off the bottom or coral and hang vertically in a controlled, relaxed manner, then begin moving by fluid and efficient kicking skills and swim in a graceful horizontal manner, I do not believe that is unacceptable.

Those of us who can ascend horizontally know the benefits, but as long as divers can slowly ascend while sharing gas and hold safety stops by controlling rate of ascent and buoyancy, I think that is acceptable for open water.

Presently, I'm getting students who are swimming with their hands as much as their feet. Worse, I see instructors doing it. "Control" seems to be the same sort of control that drivers have on snowy and icy roads. Divers seem to counter-steer through their slips, slides, and slop.

My question is should hand swimming be an absolute standards violation of all agencies across the board resulting in open water course failure?

If not, how much hand swimming or sculling is acceptable?

How do you define control?
Of course not. One, its not against standards, and two, most ow students cant change that behavior within the timeframe of an average OW class. I do tell my students constantly not to use their hands to move forward. I have them clasp their hands on their chest. But as soon as the dont think about it, they start doing it again.

Once in the real world, since swimming with their hands doesnt actually negatively impact their dive, its up to them to remember that is more efficient and to build up the muscle memory.

I define control according to my agency standards,which is being able to hover without moving for 30 seconds, and being able to swim in a straight line maintaining direction and depth.
 
*dave*:
Walter to hand sculling student: "Don't do that."
Hand sculling student: "Okay, but how do I back up or hold position in current?"

How do you answer?

I guess I don't see any way to eliminate hand sculling without a solid back kick and I don't see any way in hell I can teach a back kick to OW students in split fins. But, I'd love to learn how I could.

I teach the back kick. I don't teach them in split fins. If a student uses their hands to back up, I'm not really concerned with it. When their hands are moving to hold position, there's a problem.

TSandM:
I don't think the majority of the hand use in new divers is trying to back up.

BINGO!

SailNaked:
you can not enforce a standard in the US that does not allow someone with a handicap to participate if it is reasonable that they could.

You totally missed the point. No one has suggested not teaching people with diabilities.

Go back to sleep.
 
Do you really need a study?

I don't know about any studies on this particular issue but I do notice what I believe to be a link between people who are restless in their bodies and who are restless in their minds. R..

There seem to be two distinct issues being discussed in this thread. One is sculling - the use of hand movements to compensate for poor buoyancy and trim control. The other is the efficiency of propulsion using hand/arm movements versus finning. To me, at least, there is a big difference.

I agree with the consensus that sculling is bad, because it is compensation for a lack of control. Use of hands for this task is obviously wasted motion, prevents the use of hands for other needed tasks, and may lead to inadvertent accidents, silting, etc.

However, I have never seen any evidence - or heard any plausible explanation - for why purposeful hand/arm movement for propulsion is inefficient. If instructors are going to present this as a fact, they ought to cite the study that establishes that fact.
 
However, I have never seen any evidence - or heard any plausible explanation - for why purposeful hand/arm movement for propulsion is inefficient. If instructors are going to present this as a fact, they ought to cite the study that establishes that fact.

Are we still discussing scuba? You would have to define inefficient, it is certainly far less efficient than using fins. For scuba this is really a no brainer, for swimming perform the following...

Using fins only, swim 100 meters for time, keep track of you heart rate and your rateof perceived exertion. Once you have recovered, swim the same 100 meters using just your upper body. If you can cover the distance with all other parameters being equal, or even close, I would be shocked.
 
Are we still discussing scuba? You would have to define inefficient, it is certainly far less efficient than using fins. For scuba this is really a no brainer, for swimming perform the following...

Using fins only, swim 100 meters for time, keep track of you heart rate and your rateof perceived exertion. Once you have recovered, swim the same 100 meters using just your upper body. If you can cover the distance with all other parameters being equal, or even close, I would be shocked.

I don't know how "efficiency" is being defined by those making the claim, and I agree they need to define it.

If it were up to me, I would define efficiency in terms of work done per kilocalorie of energy expended. Maybe you would try to measure that indirectly by measuring O2 consumption.

While it is likely that the large muscles in the back/buttocks/legs will propel you much faster than the muscles in your chest/arms, they will also likely consume much more energy in the process.

It is therefore not obvious to me that using one's arms for propulsion is "inefficient" when compared to using one's legs.
 
My question is should hand swimming be an absolute standards violation of all agencies across the board resulting in open water course failure?


I think you have to define failure, Trace.

To my mind there is only one thing that would cause a student to "fail" a scuba course - and that is a blatantly unsafe attitude and a disregard for both their and their buddy's safety.

Arm swimming may mean they haven't "passed yet", but it's not a failure. On that distinction I have answered "NO" to the poll - though I do believe that a diver who is swimming with their arms does need more remedial training to become comfortable and competent.
 
While it is likely that the large muscles in the back/buttocks/legs will propel you much faster than the muscles in your chest/arms, they will also likely consume much more energy in the process.

It is therefore not obvious to me that using one's arms for propulsion is "inefficient" when compared to using one's legs.

During the course of my public education in the decadent USA, the two typical sports claiming to "exercise" the most muscles were/are said to be swimming and wrestling. Proponents of those sports are often claiming that their sport exercises "all" the muscles. The best athletes in the world at each of those sports have probably learned to rest muscles when they are not needed, so they have better endurance and more power when they do need to use those muscles.

Bipedal humans under the effects of gravity for their entire life/evolution have developed large efficient muscles in the leg group, to provide the most efficient locomotion. With dive fins on the feet, those large efficient muscle groups accomplish locomotion with similar efficiency, especially compared to the stock human hands.

Backing up to the claim that swimming exercises "every" muscle, that would mean using the arms for propulsion in water must exercise "all" the remaining muscles in the body. The arm flailing, wing flapping, hand motion of a diver in rototiller body position, running "too" negatively buoyant to more than compensate for the upward component of the fin thrust is not much different than the breast stroke-ish motion of a horizontal diver using arms to supplement the forward motion of finning. When you reach forward with arms/hands and stroke down/back to provide propulsion/thrust, you are flexing "all" the muscles in the upper body, to move a small amount of water with your tiny little hands; ab's, pecks, lat's, shoulders, neck, etc. And for what gain; a little bit of extra propulsion compared to the energy/o2 expended.

For the "wing flapper" there is usually a significant improvement in air consumption when the flapping is significantly eliminated. That requires learning proper body position, buoyancy control and fin propulsion; they are all interrelated.

Starting in the first session in the pool, I tell my students (even intro's) that; I will be telling them when they "flap," telling them not to "flap" and then demonstrating how to not do what I am telling them to not do. The same goes for bending knees to "kick" rather than "finning" with mostly straight knees, and for when their body position is a rototiller body position rather than a formula 1 race car body position (head slightly lower than fins, straight back).

If they are not properly buoyant I demonstrate letting some air out while moving forwards or adding some air while moving forwards. In briefings from the get go they know if I point at them and then demonstrate something I am expecting them to copy me; monkey see monkey do, I'm the lead monkey. They are also told over and over that this is all so easy that any half wit, half fit 10 year old can do it well.

Most are diving while gently holding a wrist before the turn of the first OW dive; the slow learners get it by OW dive 2. Stubborn know-it-all's have made it to dive 5; a couple +20,000' "alpinists" took completely full inhalations/exhalations, every breath, for all 4 dives (Everest mentality?). I made them pay for a 5th training dive where I told them if their profile was as sawtooth as on those previous 4 dives I would not certify them. They breathed like divers on that dive and thanked me afterwards.

It would seem that not all scuba instructors can teach. :idk:
 
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I think you have to define failure, Trace.

To my mind there is only one thing that would cause a student to "fail" a scuba course - and that is a blatantly unsafe attitude and a disregard for both their and their buddy's safety.

Arm swimming may mean they haven't "passed yet", but it's not a failure. On that distinction I have answered "NO" to the poll - though I do believe that a diver who is swimming with their arms does need more remedial training to become comfortable and competent.

"Failure" to meet the standard of "control" for a given class in a given time frame and should not be issued an OW certification card at that time.
 
Wow. Which is it? (the following quotes from halemanō's last post)

It would seem that not all scuba instructors can teach.

OR

Many SB members seem to think recreational scuba instructors are as important as NASA instructors


It shouldn't be that important, IMHO. This seems kinda extreme. Arm "flapping" may not be advanced dive technique, but it shouldn't be grounds for failing OW.
They are also told over and over that this is all so easy that any half wit, half fit 10 year old can do it well.
 
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