How do you feel about PADI bashing on this thread??

[cerich]

About the only things left to drop is the entry and exit. They won't get anyplace if divers can't get in the water and it won't go much better for them if they don't let them back out.

they did? Dang...guess I'll be waiting longer for the day no standards are dropped.

 

[ScubaRandy]

That just means that they don't have to make the full 30 seconds...which used to be a FULL minute BTW. I always though of a minute as a fairly small time period but I've been wrong before.

The standards should read that any time the student isn't swimming, they should be hovering.

BTW, do you remember when the change came that allowed hovering rather than a fin pivot or why?

But the way that I read this is that if they did it for 30 seconds in CW4, then when in Open Water they should be able to do it at LEAST that long... And by the time they get to OW4, they should be able to hold it for quie a while.

As to when the change came out allowing hovering as an alternative to fin pivot, I'll have to go back thru my Training Bulletins and manuals... What is your most recent Instructor Manual Mike?

Stimulating thread by the way everyone....

Randy

 

[MikeFerrara]

But the way that I read this is that if they did it for 30 seconds in CW4, then when in Open Water they should be able to do it at LEAST that long... And by the time they get to OW4, they should be able to hold it for quie a while.

As to when the change came out allowing hovering as an alternative to fin pivot, I'll have to go back thru my Training Bulletins and manuals... What is your most recent Instructor Manual Mike?

Stimulating thread by the way everyone....

Randy

My manual should be current through 04 when I dropped my PADI membership. The fin pivot thing was the second quarter of 99 according to my records. I have the bulletin but there's ni discussion on the reasoning in it.

The point is that the OW dive 4 standards essentially say that the student must get neutral sometime during dive 4. Dive 4 is their last dive. Certianly by now, if they aren't swimming, they should be hovering. There's only a couple of possibilities here and resting on the bottom shouldn't be one of them.

 

[Buoyant1]

My manual should be current through 04 when I dropped my PADI membership. The fin pivot thing was the second quarter of 99 according to my records. I have the bulletin but there's ni discussion on the reasoning in it.

The point is that the OW dive 4 standards essentially say that the student must get neutral sometime during dive 4. Dive 4 is their last dive. Certianly by now, if they aren't swimming, they should be hovering. There's only a couple of possibilities here and resting on the bottom shouldn't be one of them.

I never DID get the whole fin pivot thing?!?!? Why teach that as a means to get buoyant, if you NEVER USE IT WHILE DIVING?

I just HOPE I never dive somewhere, and see someone hit the bottom, then go into a fin pivot before starting the dive...I'd spit out my regulator!

 

[ScubaRandy]

BTW, do you remember when the change came that allowed hovering rather than a fin pivot or why?

The change was in the 1999 2nd Quarter Training Bulletin. Here's the text:

Please modify Performance Requirement 7 of Open Water Dive Two to read:

7. Achieve neutral buoyancy by inflating the BCD (or dry suit if used) with the
low pressure inflator.

And Performance Requirement 7 of Open Water Training Dive Three to read:

7. Achieve and maintain neutral buoyancy underwater by inflating the BCD
orally.

Hope this helps....

Randy

 

[MikeFerrara]

The change was in the 1999 2nd Quarter Training Bulletin. Here's the text:

Please modify Performance Requirement 7 of Open Water Dive Two to read:

7. Achieve neutral buoyancy by inflating the BCD (or dry suit if used) with the
low pressure inflator.

And Performance Requirement 7 of Open Water Training Dive Three to read:

7. Achieve and maintain neutral buoyancy underwater by inflating the BCD
orally.

Hope this helps....

Randy

Yes, the 2nd quarter of 99. I thought I said that. I have the bulletin. I just thought I remembered there being some discussion about the reasoning at the time. I thought it had been in the bulletin but it isn't there.

 

[MikeFerrara]

I never DID get the whole fin pivot thing?!?!? Why teach that as a means to get buoyant, if you NEVER USE IT WHILE DIVING?

I just HOPE I never dive somewhere, and see someone hit the bottom, then go into a fin pivot before starting the dive...I'd spit out my regulator!

I can explain the reasoning but it isn't the way that I prefer to teach it.

True, when you dive you obviously shouldn't drop to the bottom and then get neutral. However, most OW classes take students through quit a bit of CW training with students pretty well planted on the bottom and then they need to try to get them off the bottom. That's where the fin pivot comes in. It's just getting them off the bottom one piece at a time.

Unfortunately I have actually seen certified divers do it...drop to the bottom and then fin pivot (or something close) to get neutral. It's common enough. This association with the bottom (standing or sitting on solid ground) needs to go. It's already ingrained from the many years we spend on dry land and it's ingrained in a diving context by learning all our skills while kneeling on the bottom. The other "bad" component of that is the natural desire to be vertical. Icksnay on that too.

Sorry, I got off track there. Lets go back to buoyancy control and descents. Descents are taught in CW 2. Buoyancy control (fin pivots and neutral swimming) is introduced on CW 3. First off, you can't do a descent worth crap without being able to control your buoyancy so this is completely backwards. We start teaching descents by teaching students to do them wrong. However, you can still pull it off IF after teaching buoyancy control we go back and do our descents again. ok, that means that we pretty much wasted the time we spent on it the first time and we may even have a few students running around with plugged up ears but whatever. Now that we've taught buoyancy control we can take students to the surface, have tem get neutral and descend using buoyancy control...NOT FINS.

But wait. This is done. It's done in OW...only their vertical and using their fins and when they get to the bottom they're usually going to be kneeling down to do other skills anyway. Now, we're also at 20 or 30 ft. What do we have. Now we get the famous, the infamous butt first plumit...in OW. If I had a nickel for every one I've seen, I would be a wealthy man. Even if they don't plumit, they're dropping to the bottom using their fins and then sitting down. They aren't getting neutral and stopping before hitting the bottom. At least standards don't require it. Anyway, the problem here is that the two seperate skills buoyancy control and descents weren't tied together in confined water. One could argue that they are being combined now in OW BUT skills are demonstrated by the instructor in CW and according to PADI diving is learned in CW. OW is for gaining experienced. CW is the place to be tieing it all together.

I suppose there are a lot of ways to introduce individual concepts but if they aren't tied together at some point, they're pretty useless. On a real dive, the place to get control of your buoyancy is on the surface. You descend by controlling your buoyancy and simply stop where you please. Actually this approach works pretty well for someone just starting out too. Why would you want to descend at all if you can't control it? The best place for a diver who can't control their position is at the surface.

The many divers who do continue to use the bottom haven't had it all tied together. That's why I harp on midwater skills. If you really have to have your students plastered to the bottom the first time they do mask R&R...whatever. I'm not going to argue with you but you had damn well beter have them doing it midwater before you turn them lose. Sitting on the bottom is a secure place to try it for the first time but it's a DIVING SKILL we need to be able to do it while we are diving and we are spposed to be diving midwater. We therefor must be able to do a simple thing like replace a mask MIDWATER.

Now combine buddy skills. While a student does mask R&R, it's his buddies responsibility to be close by to provide a reference, depth cues or whatever. But...NO, we see OW classes on OW dive 4 with the student kneeling and the instructor kneeling in front of them holding onto the students BC. They're worried that they're going to panic you see. Well, they do panic but it's because they never really learned the skill in confined water. If they can't get a mask on and off midwater, they just shouldn't be in OW yet and it's just creating problems to have them there.

Should we make this a real long post and talk about other skills that are taught WRONG? Lets go back to the simple mask clear. Students kneel look up and blow. They take a big deep breath to blow. That's ok because they are solidly planted on the bottom. They can look up because they are already vertical.

The right way to clear a mask is to barely look up (really you don't have to at all) and to breath normally only exhale out your nose. This is critical. Why? Because when we are midwater actually diving, we're conrolling our buoyancy with our breathing and if we take a great big breath we hose it all up. If we go vertical to look up while we take that big deep breath, so much the worse because both the breath and the change of orientation hose up our position control. Being able to manage your diving while being able to execute another task like replacing or clearing a mask is what diving is and too many courses NEVER require a diver to do it and don't teach them how.

No place in any of the PADI courses will you ever be asked to do any of this midwater, not even at the instructor level.

Do you think this stuff doesn't CREATE problems for divers? Just go out and watch some divers.

This can all be dramatically cleaned up without making the course much longer or more expensive or harder. We don't need to do any 50 mile swims or marathon runs wearing our equipment. All we need to do is apply some common sense to skill sequence and methods and 90% of the problems just go away and it's a lot easier on the students.

Why teach this in an entry level class and not some later class? Because this is diving. It's the minimum. There isn't any sense in going deep or messing with search and recovery or whatever before the student can do this. Flounding around at 60+ feet isn not an accomplishment.

You know, we're not talking about going back to the old days with training. Back before the bc, divers probably had to be on the bottom if they weren't swimming. So, they taught some skills kneeling. We have BC's now. It's time to integrate buoyancy control into training. I don't mean spending a few minutes on it at the end like it was an after thought. I mean integrate into all phases of dive training. Buoyancy control is the foundation, on which, all the other skills need to be built. Right now, diving is still taught as though kneeling was the foundational skill.

We could similarly go through just about ALL the other skills in a similar manor but I'll spare you that.

Now, PADI isn't going to agree with me on this stuff and I doubt many avid PADI instructors will either but I've taught it both ways and I know which way worked better for us.

Well, that's my monster rant for the day. I'll now go off and check the weather to see if I can get some work done today.

 

[fisherdvm]

I can explain the reasoning but it isn't the way that I prefer to teach it.

True, when you dive you obviously shouldn't drop to the bottom and then get neutral. However, most OW classes take students through quit a bit of CW training with students pretty well planted on the bottom and then they need to try to get them off the bottom. That's where the fin pivot comes in. It's just getting them off the bottom one piece at a time.

Unfortunately I have actually seen certified divers do it...drop to the bottom and then fin pivot (or something close) to get neutral. It's common enough. This association with the bottom (standing or sitting on solid ground) needs to go. It's already ingrained from the many years we spend on dry land and it's ingrained in a diving context by learning all our skills while kneeling on the bottom. The other "bad" component of that is the natural desire to be vertical. Icksnay on that too.

Sorry, I got off track there. Lets go back to buoyancy control and descents. Descents are taught in CW 2. Buoyancy control (fin pivots and neutral swimming) is introduced on CW 3. First off, you can't do a descent worth crap without being able to control your buoyancy so this is completely backwards. We start teaching descents by teaching students to do them wrong. However, you can still pull it off IF after teaching buoyancy control we go back and do our descents again. ok, that means that we pretty much wasted the time we spent on it the first time and we may even have a few students running around with plugged up ears but whatever. Now that we've taught buoyancy control we can take students to the surface, have tem get neutral and descend using buoyancy control...NOT FINS.

But wait. This is done. It's done in OW...only their vertical and using their fins and when they get to the bottom they're usually going to be kneeling down to do other skills anyway. Now, we're also at 20 or 30 ft. What do we have. Now we get the famous, the infamous butt first plumit...in OW. If I had a nickel for every one I've seen, I would be a wealthy man. Even if they don't plumit, they're dropping to the bottom using their fins and then sitting down. They aren't getting neutral and stopping before hitting the bottom. At least standards don't require it. Anyway, the problem here is that the two seperate skills buoyancy control and descents weren't tied together in confined water. One could argue that they are being combined now in OW BUT skills are demonstrated by the instructor in CW and according to PADI diving is learned in CW. OW is for gaining experienced. CW is the place to be tieing it all together.

I suppose there are a lot of ways to introduce individual concepts but if they aren't tied together at some point, they're pretty useless. On a real dive, the place to get control of your buoyancy is on the surface. You descend by controlling your buoyancy and simply stop where you please. Actually this approach works pretty well for someone just starting out too. Why would you want to descend at all if you can't control it? The best place for a diver who can't control their position is at the surface.

The many divers who do continue to use the bottom haven't had it all tied together. That's why I harp on midwater skills. If you really have to have your students plastered to the bottom the first time they do mask R&R...whatever. I'm not going to argue with you but you had damn well beter have them doing it midwater before you turn them lose. Sitting on the bottom is a secure place to try it for the first time but it's a DIVING SKILL we need to be able to do it while we are diving and we are spposed to be diving midwater. We therefor must be able to do a simple thing like replace a mask MIDWATER.

Now combine buddy skills. While a student does mask R&R, it's his buddies responsibility to be close by to provide a reference, depth cues or whatever. But...NO, we see OW classes on OW dive 4 with the student kneeling and the instructor kneeling in front of them holding onto the students BC. They're worried that they're going to panic you see. Well, they do panic but it's because they never really learned the skill in confined water. If they can't get a mask on and off midwater, they just shouldn't be in OW yet and it's just creating problems to have them there.

Should we make this a real long post and talk about other skills that are taught WRONG? Lets go back to the simple mask clear. Students kneel look up and blow. They take a big deep breath to blow. That's ok because they are solidly planted on the bottom. They can look up because they are already vertical.

The right way to clear a mask is to barely look up (really you don't have to at all) and to breath normally only exhale out your nose. This is critical. Why? Because when we are midwater actually diving, we're conrolling our buoyancy with our breathing and if we take a great big breath we hose it all up. If we go vertical to look up while we take that big deep breath, so much the worse because both the breath and the change of orientation hose up our position control. Being able to manage your diving while being able to execute another task like replacing or clearing a mask is what diving is and too many courses NEVER require a diver to do it and don't teach them how.

No place in any of the PADI courses will you ever be asked to do any of this midwater, not even at the instructor level.

Do you think this stuff doesn't CREATE problems for divers? Just go out and watch some divers.

This can all be dramatically cleaned up without making the course much longer or more expensive or harder. We don't need to do any 50 mile swims or marathon runs wearing our equipment. All we need to do is apply some common sense to skill sequence and methods and 90% of the problems just go away and it's a lot easier on the students.

Why teach this in an entry level class and not some later class? Because this is diving. It's the minimum. There isn't any sense in going deep or messing with search and recovery or whatever before the student can do this. Flounding around at 60+ feet isn not an accomplishment.

You know, we're not talking about going back to the old days with training. Back before the bc, divers probably had to be on the bottom if they weren't swimming. So, they taught some skills kneeling. We have BC's now. It's time to integrate buoyancy control into training. I don't mean spending a few minutes on it at the end like it was an after thought. I mean integrate into all phases of dive training. Buoyancy control is the foundation, on which, all the other skills need to be built. Right now, diving is still taught as though kneeling was the foundational skill.

We could similarly go through just about ALL the other skills in a similar manor but I'll spare you that.

Now, PADI isn't going to agree with me on this stuff and I doubt many avid PADI instructors will either but I've taught it both ways and I know which way worked better for us.

Well, that's my monster rant for the day. I'll now go off and check the weather to see if I can get some work done today.

Hey Mikey, you and I might have OCD....

The phrase "obsessive-compulsive" has worked its way into the wider English lexicon, and is often used in an offhand manner to describe someone who is meticulous or absorbed in a cause (see also "anal-retentive"). Such casual references should not be confused with obsessive-compulsive disorder; see clinomorphism. It is also important to distinguish OCD from other types of anxiety, including the routine tension and stress that appear throughout life. A person who shows signs of infatuation or fixation with a subject/object, or displays traits such as perfectionism, does not necessarily have OCD, a specific and well-defined condition.

 

[MikeFerrara]

On the midwater skills, here's an incident a student posted about today. It's pretty much exactly what I was talking about and I think Bob gave the diver some really sound advice. Check it out.

http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=177456