How often do you practice skills?

[noreastDIVER84]

What else do people do during the safety stop?

I count down the time until the stop is over, I roll over on my back remove my reg and blow "water rings", take a look at my catch and see if they are legit to keep before I surface, and more fin things. I do practice, but in the pool. I have all winter long that I am not getting any good dives in, so it is an opportunity to get in and practice where there is nothing to see.

 

[SoccerJeni]

I train every Wednesday in a pool over the winter. Sometimes when im diving with other club members we will suddenly pretend to go unconscious or be out of air or something like that just to keep each other sharp and to make sure we don't get complacent. Ive done that many unexpected rescues and air shares and stuff that on the few times ive had to do them for real ive found it rather boring since the excitement of suddenly being thrust into an emergency situation has long since faded

I like that idea of unexpectantly practicing skills. I need to find a buddy to just go and practice with in the pool. I really would like to simulate a more true out of air scenario so I would understand what it truly feels like. I really don't know how I would respond if it were to happen to me for real underwater. Practicing out of air we usually just hold our breath for a second and do the signals and complete the drill.

Or I'd like to have an obstruction rip the reg out of my mouth so I can make sure I will respond correctly. I just want to be more prepared, you know?

I do skils twice a week during the winter, The only diving I get to do during the winter is in the pool untill febuary

That is exactly what it will be like for me too. How deep is your pool? I think ours is 10 feet, possibly 12. I wish it were deeper.

 

[iztok]

That is exactly what it will be like for me too. How deep is your pool? I think ours is 10 feet, possibly 12. I wish it were deeper.

If you can keep buoyancy and trim in such shallow water you should be good at depth too

 

[Jim Lapenta]

every dive is a skills dive. I get in the pool about twice a month if not teaching. January starts a new dive season and I need to get some more drysuit practice in before end of Jan for ice classes and dives.

 

[oldogre]

Cloudflint trains me, so ditto. I am a coward & dive in Tenerife, he dives in Scotland!

 

[leabre]

What else do people do during the safety stop?

On my deco stops (what you call a safety stop, except every 10' from half the max depth for a minute each on no-deco dives)... if I'm just doing a 30 second stop 30 second ascent to next, I'll just hang around.

Sometimes we'll call for a 3-2-1 minute stops starting with 30'. On those, I'll try to squeeze something in on the 3 or 2 minute portion. Sometimes an ascending air-share, shooting a bag if there's no line (assuming where in sand and decide to do an ascent from 30' instead of kick back to sand at 5' and ascend there ... else you shoot a bag whenever you decide to ascend if there isn't already an up-line)... valve drill, mask replace, mod-S...

If there's a 3rd person familiar with the excercise, we might opt for a toxing diver rescue or a maskless ascent.

Since I'm always taking a class I'm always refining. It started with Essentials, then to UTD Rec2, then to UTD DM, then next is UTD T1 and shortly after T2 and hopefully followed by UTD overhead protocols onto Wreck 1 by this time next year. All just a few months apart from each other. So I'm always getting ready for something. And yes, 90% of my dives are fun dives where the objective is not practice.

For longer than 1 minute deco stops if discussed in advance, we'll throw something in and if the surge isn't too bad that holding position is an ordeal.

 

[cloudflint]

Cloudflint trains me, so ditto. I am a coward & dive in Tenerife, he dives in Scotland!

Hey didn't expect to run into you here!

 

[1davey]

I get to practice skills as an aquarium diver about every 3 weeks. Boyancey skills in paticular. One of the reasons I became one among several others. Keeps me sharp between my open water dives.

 

[CamG]

Greetings Jeni to be totally honest skills are a part of everyone of our dives.
Air sharing is always built into the dive but not planned only by the person who has the emergency. We do it that way to purposely pop a drill at the most difficult time so we keep each other sharp.

Diving in mixed teams require good pre-dive briefing but these drills have become quite fun and paid off huge when real emergencies arise.
We work a lot on buddy awareness and communication ; touch, line, light.
We function as a unit or team and try to encourage and build each other into stronger independent members.

Mastery of skills requires a constant vigilance that must be maintained there is no place for complacency in any dive environment. That is just the simple truth.

CamG Keep diving....Keep training....Keep learning!

 

[fdog]

Our team does a dedicated "practice dive" every two months.

The emphasis during this dive is everything has to be show quality (here is an example of "show quality")

We wear everything for a standard dive: drysuit, dubs, 2 deco bottles, lights, yada yada.

• Descend to 60'
• 4-bottle drill
• Shoot SMB +- 1'
• Ascend in trim +- 2 seconds per stop
• 4-bottle drill @ 20'
• S-drill complete, each as donor
• Valve drill
• Descend
• Recover SMB
• Standard Min deco ascent

Takes about an hour and a half. Worth it.




All the best, James