Hovering

[MikeFerrara]

MikeFerrara,

I am in total agreement with you. Horizontal is definately the preferred and in my estimation safer way to ascend and descend. I also believe that it is the preferred way to teach/learn skills. It takes some getting used to after being indoctrinated to perform all skills kneeling on the bottom, but I have yet to come across a diver that stops his dive, kneels on the bottom to clear his mask. But they are probably out there.

Hi Jerry, nice to see (read) you.

I haven't seen divers lighting on the bottom to clear a mask either. What I do see though is just about as bad. Whenever they need to do anything whether it's clearing a mask or something more involved, they want to go vertical. When they do that, they often lose control of their buoyancy especially if they were in a bit of a head up attitude in the first place (meaning that they were diving negative rather than neutral)

We all want to go vertical because we spend our whole non diving lives vertical except when we are sleeping.

Perfoming skills while in a "real world scenario" seems to make the most sense. Teach in an attitude that you will most likely be in while diving.

Sure, maybe present the skills in shallow water kneeling for the first time, but once in the deeper water, horizontally hovering seems more productive and real.

I don't think that how the skill is introduce is as important as how it's being done at the end. Personally, I found it worked better for me to try to keep students horizontal from the beginning even if they need to start out in contact with the bottom. Not to mention that some students actually have trouble getting the hang of kneeling (they fall over, especially the big floaty ones) and are often given extra weight to make kneeling easier. I just let them lay down.

I wish we could get the training agencies to see the validity of this and implement this as SOP.

I don't know that it will ever happen. My change of thinking came the hard way. First I had problems...then I was an instructor and my students had problems and then I started putting together the connections between the way I learned and was teaching and all the problems I had and saw others have. I was way too slow about it for it to be anything to be proud of. LOL

I think that practicing skills in a realistic diving situation before the course is over is the key. My wife who is now a very accomplished diver will tell you that the most afraid she has ever been under water was a night dive in a local quarry as an AOW diver when she had trouble with a leaky mask and ended up alone on the surface. The scary part was the uncontrolled up and down she went through before landing on the surface. I had a similar incident on a wall. I think I was a DM at the time. I don't remember if it was a leaky mask or an itchy nose but I decided that there wasn't any reason that I couldn't take the mask off to fix the problem. When I put it back on, I took a big breath to clear it, started rising and felt a pain in my chest. I promptly blew out all my air and plumited. Once on the bottom I decided to just stay there until I could see again and when I cleared my mask my wife was nowhere to be seen. Once I started doing the up and down dance she did her best to stay with me but apparently went up while I was going down. LOL

It occured to us that those dives could have turned out much worse with all the ups and downs and buddy seperations and we spent the next few dives in shallow water teaching ourselves all the normal skills midwater. We weren't going to do any kind of a dive in any environment untill we had reason to believe those things weren't going to happen to us again.

One thing that we quickly learned is that you do not take a deep breath in preperation for clearing a mask A deep breath works ok if your planted on the bottom with lots of weight but it can be a disaster otherwise. You don't need to look up at the stars either. Breath normally (except for exhaling out your nose) while still using your breath to control buoyancy and giving buoyancy/position control and buddy contact the priority as apposed to placing all your energy into clearing the mask. A diver won't learn those things if they are always on the bottom and they could be in trouble when things have to be done midwater...unless of course, they have trouble and sit down and reinvent the round weel on their own like we did because they were given a square on in class.

Once I started teaching I was still pretty stuborn about sticking with the book until I just couldn't justify it anymore. I don't think there is any of this that doesn't make quit a bit of sense when one gives it some objective thought. Once you let go of the idea that the guy who wrote the book must know what's best things move along pretty quick.

 

[Thalassamania]

Good stuff, esp. the bit about no deep breath before mask clear. We've had a students off their knees and the bottom for a while now, and it works. We try to have the same attitude toward the bottom that we had toward the side of the pool.

Best advice I've heard on the board: "Once you let go of the idea that the guy who wrote the book must know what's best ..."

 

[jbichsel]

MikeFerrara,
Great post #71. It gives insight as to what personal experience lead you to "the promised land".

Given your comments regarding mask clearing vs. teaching the "approved method", can you still teach the realistic method or do you still need to teach the "stargazer" approach to stay in standards?

For myself when I need to clear, I do NOT use two hands and I do NOT try to find Pluto in the heavens. Simple pressure at the top of the mask (sometimes) and exhale through my nose. Done.

I don't know why this over-elaborate procedure that takes your eyes off your buddy, visual reference point, to get water out, is the standard.

Also, I find a contradiction in at least PADI's "approved" method of skills teaching by having students kneel on the bottom. So much is made about not touching marine life, not stirring up the silt/sand to impare visibility, yet as soon as we hit the lake or ocean, we want to put students on the bottom. Not only does this potentially damage or kill some living thing(s), but we can all attest to what it does for visibility.

Additionally, there is stress put on moving horizontally through the water column for many reasons: reduce fatigue, keep fins away from the bottom, reduce risk of damaging marine life, etc., yet skills are taught vertically. Why not teach horizontally from the beginning and be done?

Seems like someone forgot to look at how stupid this is.

Too many times I see divers, all different experience levels, that slam into the bottom then start filling their BC's in order to become neutral. I even saw it at my IE. We had a couple of candidates hit bottom so hard they became stuck 12-16" in the mud. Guess what their solution was to get un-stuck? Over-inflate the BC! Can you say "breaching"?

Worst of all, they passed and are probably teaching these same "skills".

 

[MikeFerrara]

MikeFerrara,

Given your comments regarding mask clearing vs. teaching the "approved method", can you still teach the realistic method or do you still need to teach the "stargazer" approach to stay in standards?

Oh...the standards, I almost forgot about those.

I was a PADI instructor first so there were some things about the required sequence that was a pain in the neck...like having to teach finning and UW swimming in mod 1 before introducing neutral buoyancy until mod 3...figure out how that makes any sense. that's just one example but there are others.

When it comes to putting things together after the pieces have been introduced though I don't see a problem. the standards encourage time for fun and pratice. They also do not forbid the combining of skills in practice. As an example, there's nothing in the standards that says you can't have students practice hovering and mask replacement at the same time as far as I know as long as they were each introduced at the specified time.


Set the example...
I did a couple of other things to make getting along with standards easier. Right from the beginning students NEVER saw me or my assistants using the bottom. The acception, of course, is the skills where the standards do require use of the bottom like UW scuba unit remove and replace. Even in 3 feet of water skills were demonstrated neutral and horizontal. Of course you have to find assistants who can do that or train your own. Some might be amazed at how many students (not overweighted of course) would just get off the bottom on their own because they could. Not all do but some. The standards say that I can't require a student to be off the bottom until mod 3 but they do not say that I have to add more lead if they get off on their own. In my class they already got the information in class and doing it really isn't all that hard as long as we don't mess them up.

On the other hand, if the example is kneeling the student will naturally aspire to be a good kneeler. Conbine that with the natural desire to be vertical and the student doen't have a chance.

I think there's more latitude in the standards than what many instructors think but I'd still like to see them changed. A good example of how instructors come to misunderstand the standards from the beginning is the instructors who have weighed in on this thread with the opinion that the lotus hover is required. They've seen it taught that way, it's on the video that way and they assume that it's what the standards must be calling for even though it's never mentioned. If you forget what you've seen for a minute and read the bold type to see what it actually says you don't always end up with the same stuff. Most of us start out by going out and doing it the way we've seen it done. We don't do it because it's the best. We do it because it's what we know.

 

[Jasonmh]

On the other hand, if the example is kneeling the student will naturally aspire to be a good kneeler. Conbine that with the natural desire to be vertical and the student doen't have a chance.

Mike, it must frustrate the heck out of some people that you are right so often

 

[dherbman]

...

 

[jbichsel]

I'm probably going to get even further into PADI's "bad boy" list, but I just emailed them with some questions sort of relating to this. It has specificcally to do with the order things are taught in.

Mainly, why does PADI require student divers to be taught to swim correctly underwater while maintaining proper depth BEFORE we teach them neutral buoyancy.

Kind of putting the cart before the horse. It will be interesting to see what the response from on high is.

 

[jbichsel]

I think there's more latitude in the standards than what many instructors think but I'd still like to see them changed. A good example of how instructors come to misunderstand the standards from the beginning is the instructors who have weighed in on this thread with the opinion that the lotus hover is required. They've seen it taught that way, it's on the video that way and they assume that it's what the standards must be calling for even though it's never mentioned. If you forget what you've seen for a minute and read the bold type to see what it actually says you don't always end up with the same stuff. Most of us start out by going out and doing it the way we've seen it done. We don't do it because it's the best. We do it because it's what we know.

I'm beginning to see more latitude as I re-read the requirements with a new view. I think you are exactly right, Mike.

We tend generally to take the way we were taught, emulate that because we are creatures of habit, thought that since we were taught that way it must be right, and don't read the manual with an eye for improvising and combining skills.

PADI is going to hate me soon.

 

[scubatexastony]

"I think there's more latitude in the standards than what many instructors think but I'd still like to see them changed. A good example of how instructors come to misunderstand the standards from the beginning is the instructors who have weighed in on this thread with the opinion that the lotus hover is required." Mike Ferrara

It's ashame a new instructor with agency "X" thinks (and is taught) there's only one way to teach. I was told something quite the contrary.

As far as me being included in "weighing in" on the lotus being required for a DM canidate; personally, said canidate had better be able to hold any posistion comfortably, effortlessly, joyfully, whateverfickinfully, if he wants to move on to DM. This is not a "licences to learn" card they are obtaining.

 

[jbichsel]

"I think there's more latitude in the standards than what many instructors think but I'd still like to see them changed. A good example of how instructors come to misunderstand the standards from the beginning is the instructors who have weighed in on this thread with the opinion that the lotus hover is required." Mike Ferrara

It's ashame a new instructor with agency "X" thinks (and is taught) there's only one way to teach. I was told something quite the contrary.

As far as me being included in "weighing in" on the lotus being required for a DM canidate; personally, said canidate had better be able to hold any posistion comfortably, effortlessly, joyfully, whateverfickinfully, if he wants to move on to DM. This is not a "licences to learn" card they are obtaining.

Righto! Even though divers should ALWAYS be learning, DM is the point where in becomes incumbent on you to start passing knowledge and skills on to others. Lead by example is pertinent and should be taken seriously.