How do you incorporate focused practice into your diving?

[RJP]

I think the OP is asking sort of an odd question, in that he's put two things out there as if they are somehow mutually exclusive. Further, the question assumes that making the proper choice between the two is not only necessary, but also sufficient, to develop good skills.

My issue with the "just go diving" crowd is that such advice is most often proffered as an acceptable alternative to TRAINING.

Suppose the amateur violinist in Steve's example above has only had one or two lessons? I don't care if they can resurrect Pyotr Tchaikovsky himself... simply hanging out and practicing with him will not do very much to improve his/her skills.

Good dive skills are built and refined on a three-legged platform: Training - Practice - Experience

You're asking for trouble if you remove or weaken any of those legs.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I think we hear the refrain of "just go diving" most often in response to the question from newly certified OW divers. Unless a new diver arranges his next training course with considerably more care than the typical new diver, I think just going diving will have a greater benefit than, say, just taking the stereotypical AOW course.

Speaking from the non-technical realm, so far what seems to be working for me is a repeating cycle: gaining experience by "just going diving" (that is, without doing skills solely for the sake of practice), then getting some more training, and then doing "focused practice" on what I learned in my training so that I can add the newly acquired skills to my toolkit for use in the next "experience" phase of the cycle.

 

[kr2y5]

I think the OP is asking sort of an odd question, in that he's put two things out there as if they are somehow mutually exclusive. Further, the question assumes that making the proper choice between the two is not only necessary, but also sufficient, to develop good skills.

Not really. As already stated earlier, I don't think focused practice and going out to have fun are mutually exclusive. Think of them as colors. Red and blue aren't mutually exclusive, neither are black and white. They are opposite ends of a spectrum, along which many possibilities exist to blend one with the other. I'm asking you here about your favorite shade of gray. Most people find some way to combine fun with practice, as indicated in the many good examples in this thread (and for many of us, practice is fun).

Let me restate here the questions:
- Do you engage in a focused, targeted practice?
- What kind of practice?
- How do you find balance between focused practice and just getting out more often?
- Did you abandon focused practice after reaching some level of proficiency?
- How much practice you feel is optimal for you right now, given where you are in your progression as a diver?
- How you blend whatever amount practice you choose into your regular diving?

So, what's our approach?

Good dive skills are built and refined on a three-legged platform: Training - Practice - Experience You're asking for trouble if you remove or weaken any of those legs.

I take it that your answer to my first question is yes, you do practice regularly... what about the others? Tell me more...

---------- Post added June 12th, 2015 at 11:12 AM ----------

Correlation vs causation. There are plenty of people with lots of experience... and crap skills.

I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to argue with, Ray. Are you trying to say that experience alone has absolutely no impact whatsoever on skills? You know, there are a lot of people, who wash their teeth, but end up in a dentist's office... or who eat a lot of lettuce, but end up with a heart disease. Surely, you are not going to tell me there is absolutely no causal relationship between one's dental hygiene and the amount of plaque in their mouth. Just because two things are causally related, it doesn't mean one (brushing teeth) deterministically causes the other (no dental issues, ever) in absolute terms.

Anyhow, in this thread we all seem to be on the same page with respect to the need for focused practice. I'd be interested to know how you find your sweet spot and balance...

 

[RJP]

I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to argue with, Ray. Are you trying to say that experience alone has absolutely no impact whatsoever on skills?

A.) I'm not sure why you think I'm "arguing"
B.) Yes.

"Experience alone" - has no impact whatsoever on skills. I say this for two reasons:

1. Because no one can ever have experience "alone" in reality; experience must follow training, even if that training is minimal and/or informal
2. If their experience is truly "alone" in that they have had ZERO training (formal or informal) then yes, there will be no benefit

 

[kr2y5]

A.) I'm not sure why you think I'm "arguing" B.) Yes. "Experience alone" - has no impact whatsoever on skills. I say this for two reasons:

1. Because no one can ever have experience "alone" in reality; experience must follow training, even if that training is minimal and/or informal
2. If their experience is truly "alone" in that they have had ZERO training (formal or informal) then yes, there will be no benefit

There appears to be a misunderstanding, since I do not think anyone here is advocating the sort of radical position that you are referring to. If you consider the things that have been written in context, in which they had appeared, you will find that they are not so extreme... I would refer you back to my violin analogy in the OP... I am, in fact, a huge believer in focused practice. I do acknowledge that focused practice is not the only way to improve, though. And, my intention in starting this thread is to understand, how other people incorporate various flavors of focused practice into their regular diving.

As for improving by "just diving"...

As pointed out earlier, at least in my experience, even if you do not begin a dive with a very deliberate, focused, targeted practice as a goal, I believe some of your skills will improve, because, again in my experience, at least, even if you do not plan on practice, unless you always go to the same spot, and follow the same boring routine, many dives will end up challenging you in some way. Perhaps you will have a small equipment issue, or perhaps you will have a cramp, or someone will kick your mask off your face, or you will have to swim in between pillars and that will force you to bring your knees closer together, or the water might push you against an obstacle, and you will find yourself having to find a way to back out, or you will drift apart from your buddy, and you will realize you have not paid enough attention, or whatever... and, of course, there are things like buoyancy that you have to manage on every dive, and where you're getting constant feedback.

So, regardless of whether you started the dive with a specific plan to practice something, or not, there WILL be small challenges along the way, and there WILL be those small, focused moments, when you have to think about what you're doing... and as you encounter more of such situations, your skills will likely improve to some extent. Or at least, that has been my experience.

Note that I write here "improve", not "master" or "perfect"... and I don't think anyone claims that everyone will deterministically improve all their skills with experience to reach a high level of proficiency.

When I wrote "focused" practice, I was referring to practice that, as in the violin analogy, is a very deliberate process, in which you have a goal, and fix your attention on either a small detail or on a very concrete aspect of the activity that you're trying to master. I do believe that to truly master something, and make it perfect, focused practice is essential. Hence my questions...

So, RJP... how do YOU practice?

 

[boulderjohn]

I did not learn to ski until I was in my early 20s. I was first a poor graduate student and then a poor beginning teacher. I got some instructions from friends at first, and then I just went skiing, learning from the advice of others and from watching what other skiers were doing on the slopes. And I skied and skied and skied, ingraining those habits. By the time I could finally afford to take lessons, the bad habits I had picked up by practicing incorrect skills over and over had become so ingrained that I could never fully recover from it, even when I was taking lessons for citizen racing. If I had had a few good lessons early on, I would have been practicing the correct skills rather than the incorrect ones.

The same things is true of my golf experience. Decades of just playing golf has made me an instructor's worst nightmare.

Why would scuba be any different?

Last fall I had a brand new student sign up for AOW the week after getting OW certified. He was hooked and took a whole bunch of classes. He is now well into his tech training, and he looks like an experienced tech diver when he is diving, even though he does not yet have 70 dives. He never had a period of time in which he was diving with those basic OW skills, ingraining bad habits.

What I love is the people who go on ScubaBoard and write something like the following: "New divers don't learn crap in their OW classes. They look terrible in the water, with bad trim, incorrect weighting, and poor kicking technique. They should not waste time on more advanced instruction, though. They should instead go out and dive with that bad trim, incorrect weighting, and poor kicking technique until they have it mastered."

 

[ajduplessis]

You sure make diving sound like a lot of fun...

Yes, the most fun activities are always the well planned events.....

 

[victorzamora]

"Experience alone" - has no impact whatsoever on skills. I say this for two reasons:

1. Because no one can ever have experience "alone" in reality; experience must follow training, even if that training is minimal and/or informal
2. If their experience is truly "alone" in that they have had ZERO training (formal or informal) then yes, there will be no benefit

I agree with your general sentiment, but certainly believe that experience alone can have some benefit. It's through training, mentorship, and diving with very competent buddies that increases the realm of your capacity. "Just doing fun dives" won't make you better in the water if you're not working towards things. You can get more comfortable, but without working on things you'll never improve. If I get in the water with 40lbs around my ankles and jump from coral head to coral head....1000 times....will I get any better at what "we" consider to be a "good" diver? No. It requires being around true experience, along with feedback from buddies/mentors/instructors, to get us there.

There appears to be a misunderstanding, since I do not think anyone here is advocating the sort of radical position that you are referring to. If you consider the things that have been written in context, in which they had appeared, you will find that they are not so extreme... I would refer you back to my violin analogy in the OP... I am, in fact, a huge believer in focused practice.

I'm a fan of the violin analogy. I was taught the basics of how to play a piano, like one is with scuba diving. Nothing fancy (OW), but I could drum out a little tune. I went off and heard Rachmananov, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Beethoven, etc....and have worked towards it. I can play most of Tocatta and Fugue and a few other fun favorites, with little formal training. Formal training would've gotten me there sooner, but my ear knows what the music is and isn't supposed to sound like. I know what good is. I didn't know what a good diver was until I saw one. I was playing chopsticks poorly and thought of myself as nearing mastery, until I saw some great divers. Not so in music...I could hear it, I just knew. This way, you have a "known good" to shoot for.

I did not learn to ski until I was in my early 20s. I was first a poor graduate student and then a poor beginning teacher. I got some instructions from friends at first, and then I just went skiing, learning from the advice of others and from watching what other skiers were doing on the slopes. And I skied and skied and skied, ingraining those habits. By the time I could finally afford to take lessons, the bad habits I had picked up by practicing incorrect skills over and over had become so ingrained that I could never fully recover from it, even when I was taking lessons for citizen racing. If I had had a few good lessons early on, I would have been practicing the correct skills rather than the incorrect ones.

The same things is true of my golf experience. Decades of just playing golf has made me an instructor's worst nightmare.

Why would scuba be any different?

I think this goes back to what I was saying above. You know good skiiers can survive down black diamonds, and know that good skiiers carve down the slopes. A good instructor (or buddy or mentor) will get you there quicker, but you have something to refer back to. In golf, you have a score you measure yourself by objectively. You know the pros do it well under par in tougher conditions. Play golf every day for 1000 years and you'll get that good (probably). You know how good you can get. In scuba diving, until you dive with someone that's spectacular....you never know how you're doing.

Yes, the most fun activities are always the well planned events.....

I think the most fun activities are the most rewarding ones, and executing a well-planned activity is about as rewarding as it gets.

 

[danvolker]

I did not learn to ski until I was in my early 20s. I was first a poor graduate student and then a poor beginning teacher. I got some instructions from friends at first, and then I just went skiing, learning from the advice of others and from watching what other skiers were doing on the slopes. And I skied and skied and skied, ingraining those habits. By the time I could finally afford to take lessons, the bad habits I had picked up by practicing incorrect skills over and over had become so ingrained that I could never fully recover from it, even when I was taking lessons for citizen racing. If I had had a few good lessons early on, I would have been practicing the correct skills rather than the incorrect ones.

The same things is true of my golf experience. Decades of just playing golf has made me an instructor's worst nightmare.

Why would scuba be any different?

Last fall I had a brand new student sign up for AOW the week after getting OW certified. He was hooked and took a whole bunch of classes. He is now well into his tech training, and he looks like an experienced tech diver when he is diving, even though he does not yet have 70 dives. He never had a period of time in which he was diving with those basic OW skills, ingraining bad habits.

What I love is the people who go on ScubaBoard and write something like the following: "New divers don't learn crap in their OW classes. They look terrible in the water, with bad trim, incorrect weighting, and poor kicking technique. They should not waste time on more advanced instruction, though. They should instead go out and dive with that bad trim, incorrect weighting, and poor kicking technique until they have it mastered."

Totally agree with your skiing comparison....
And while I do agree that just graduated, OW divers with horrific trim, buoyancy and even worse kicking skills....will NOT be likely to develop better skills after the class on their own....I hesitate to suggest that the same instructor that certified them, should be trusted to make them "more" of what he has already accomplished

Maybe in some cases, the instructor could agree to pass them, with the understanding that they have terrible kicking and buoyancy skills....and that their cert is provisional with them having to take a followup course with the bad skills will be addressed. However, it would be much better to NOT pass them until they were kicking properly, and had their buoyancy dialed in.

I have seen some instructors at the BHB that just NEVER seem to complete a class with poor diver results....and there are others always blaming poor results in their certed divers, on poor coordination of "some"....

 

[victorzamora]

Totally agree with your skiing comparison....
And while I do agree that just graduated, OW divers with horrific trim, buoyancy and even worse kicking skills....will NOT be likely to develop better skills after the class on their own....I hesitate to suggest that the same instructor that certified them, should be trusted to make them "more" of what he has already accomplished

Maybe in some cases, the instructor could agree to pass them, with the understanding that they have terrible kicking and buoyancy skills....and that their cert is provisional with them having to take a followup course with the bad skills will be addressed. However, it would be much better to NOT pass them until they were kicking properly, and had their buoyancy dialed in.

I have seen some instructors at the BHB that just NEVER seem to complete a class with poor diver results....and there are others always blaming poor results in their certed divers, on poor coordination of "some"....

Oh crap, I'm agreeing with Dan. This thread is going straight downhill from here