How do you teach new divers to stay horizontal?

[Tigerman]

Yeah, but first prize is a ride in a big red helicopter!

COOL! Ive only tried those in green!

 

[Merchant.r]

*Raising Hand*

I fully admit to going vertical during dives.

I am newly certified, just 2 dives since I got my card.

I am still learning.

In those 2 dives, I have dropped about 10# of weight and am starting to get the hang of the bouyancy thing. While I realize horizontal is the way to be, if I am trying to slow down or stop, I still tend to "stand up" in the water. I have been lucky enough to have my OW instructor as my dive buddy both times. She has been a great visual example for me and I am actively working on my form.

I also use my hands a lot. But I am working on that too

 

[danvolker]

I was diving with 4 new divers (2-jr ow) and kept trying to get them to stay horizontal, with their fins out of the sand. Inevitably, they turned head up when not swimming to "talk" underwater or just to rest.

How do I break them of this habit? On the debriefing, they said it just felt normal. I've tried to adjust their tank higher on their back, and they were diving weight integrated (too heavy, IMO) rental BC's.

Comments on BP/W are not necessary.

If all scuba divers had to learn freediving skills first, they would have perfect trim feeling normal...they would move through the water far more efficiently, and they would learn all the motion dynamics much faster, without all the mass on their backs that overwhelms so many new divers.
Part of this is actually getting feedback on your kicking, and how it effects you--freedivers get exponentially more than scuba divers do.
Part of it is learning what a natural feeling is in the water, almost immediately. If a freediver gets vertical, they have to work very hard, and their is an rapid penalty for this ( some of that negative reinforcement another poster suggested ...
Part of this is mandatory PERFECT weighting...this being one of the huge keys to freediving. Being absolutely neutral on the surface ( though some freedivers who dive deep and have a buddy watching may go with a pound or two negative..which you do not feel with freediving fins as long as you are slowly moving forward--you plane in a horizontal position, with more lift than the tiny weight). For scuba they would be back to dead neutral though.

The hardest part of this, is that most scuba instructors do not have freedivng skills..so teaching this will not work.....but hey guys, you could EASILY LEARN THE skills!
Regards,
Dan

 

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

You tube has some good video showing how good trim is supposed to look. Try searching Frog Kick, helicopter turn, trim and even DIR diving. When you find the ones you like save them. Then you go and find "run of the mill" scuba diving videos and save a few of them. If these guys (or girls) see this it will help make sense to them. They will grasp the "why's" and not just the "whats". FWIW I dive bp/w and / or a transpac, but I can dive the same in a stab jacket. It is the skills, not the clothing. The cleaning ad streamlining will come when they are ready for the next step. Hope it helps.

Here are a few links

YouTube - Technical Diving - Helicopter Turn
YouTube - Propulsion Techniques - Scuba
YouTube - Buoyancy Control And Trim - Scuba

 

[Charlie99]

Weighting isn't as important as being neutrally buoyant at all times.

Several times I've had insta-buddies question why I have way more than half a tank left when they are running low. On the next dive I get them to stop finning now and then and adjust their buoyancy.

If they stay neutral, then they HAVE to get horizontal when finning, otherwise they start ascending.

The most common response is for the instabuddy to end the dive gushing about how easy and natural the dive felt when they didn't have to keep finning continously to maintain depth. Both their overall exertion level and their SAC drop signficantly.

Teach someone what being neutrally buoyant feels like and they'll figure out trim on their own.

Charlie Allen

 

[scubajcf]

*Raising Hand*

I fully admit to going vertical during dives.

I am newly certified, just 2 dives since I got my card.

I am still learning.

In those 2 dives, I have dropped about 10# of weight and am starting to get the hang of the bouyancy thing. While I realize horizontal is the way to be, if I am trying to slow down or stop, I still tend to "stand up" in the water. I have been lucky enough to have my OW instructor as my dive buddy both times. She has been a great visual example for me and I am actively working on my form.

I also use my hands a lot. But I am working on that too

Go back to your LDS. Throw your gear on and jump in the pool. Drop down in the deep end. Get neutrally buoyant. Horizontal. Note time and Fold your arms in underneath you. Stay motionless for as long as possible. Repeat over and over again. By the end of night one, you will have a much better grasp on buoyancy. You will go from a couple of minutes on the first attempt to tens of minutes by the end of the night. Do this several nights over the course of a month or two and you will have great command over your buoyancy.

Once you have this down, PM me and I will give you another skill. Kinda like elearning, eh?

jcf

 

[TSandM]

hrow your gear on and jump in the pool. Drop down in the deep end. Get neutrally buoyant. Horizontal. Note time and Fold your arms in underneath you. Stay motionless for as long as possible.

It's worth mentioning here that, if your weight is distributed improperly, it may be impossible to remain horizontal AND motionless. If you find that you are consistently tipping head down or feet down, you may need to move some weight around to get balanced.

 

[SteveAD]

Introduce them to the game "how little weight can you dive with". The winner is the person who can subtract the most from the weight they're diving now and still complete a dive.

That is in my opinion the worst advice Ive ever heard.
Weighting is not about how little weight you can dive with (and ending up not being able to keep a safety stop because you dont have enough), its about having the right ammount of weight - What you need and not more, nor less. Not enough is just as bad as too much and in some cases worse..

You obviously chose to disregard the last four words of my post "still complete a dive" would include any required safety stop. I do many beach dives with many of my students post certification to help them get dialed in just right. Several of our popular sites never get deeper than 30 feet and all allow divers to swim in along the bottom until we are in "stand up" depths. Completing a dive with me means staying down until you reach stand up depth (maintaining bouyancy control in 5 feet of water is just a tad trickier than in 15). Weight adjustments are made in increments of 1-2 pounds per dive. The how little weight game is played over the course of months.

 

[24940]

Weighting isn't as important as being neutrally buoyant at all times.

If your weighting is off, it can be a real fight to get and stay neutral. Not so much unmanageable if you are experienced, but it can really complicate the learning process for new divers.

Proper weighting>Buoyancy control>Trim

 

[Charlie99]

If your weighting is off, it can be a real fight to get and stay neutral. Not so much unmanageable if you are experienced, but it can really complicate the learning process for new divers.

Proper weighting>Buoyancy control>Trim

Your will still have to manage an air bubble in the BCD even when perfectly weighted if:

1. you have more than 500psi in your tank, or
2. you are wearing at wetsuit and you are deeper than surface/10'/15' or wherever you chose to weight yourself for the final stop

The heavier your wetsuit, the more air you will need in your BCD at depth. Having 4 extra pounds of lead is roughly equivalent to adding a couple of mm of wetsuit thickness. Rather than stripping lead off of new divers, maybe we should be working on stripping off all their neoprene.

====================

Yes, getting weighting correct makes life bit easier, but it is not a cure-all.

I've found that the real key starting point is teaching people to stay neutrally buoyant. Only then does it make sense to worry about trim.

It's worth mentioning here that, if your weight is distributed improperly, it may be impossible to remain horizontal AND motionless. If you find that you are consistently tipping head down or feet down, you may need to move some weight around to get balanced.

True. But step one is to get neutral and still, and find out what happens.

My experience with a variety of insta-buddies is that the big eye-opening event is learning what being neutral feels like. They have always gone around at a 45 degree angle constantly finning to keep from dropping into the abyss and think that's how diving is done.

Getting them to hover without much depth change is a big improvement, whether or not they rotate or roll a bit while motionless. Once they get the feeling of an effortless hover, then they are ready to work on the finer details.

==============================

/slight hijack --- in a similar sort of way of getting underlying skills down first, I think that rather than horizontal ascents as a first level skill, that the key thing to initially work on is the ability to hover at the safety stop. I find that it is an easy transition from hovering at safety stop to doing a controlled horizontal ascent.