Hello guys,
My friend is learning OW, and she has an issue that she can't inhale with mouth only. i.e. She can't breath underwater without mask. However, when she practiced that in the air, she had no problem to inhale with mouth only (without 2nd stage). She also can inhale by mouth only with snorkel. The problem is that once she's using 2nd stage, she inhales with both mouth and nose. (weird!)
Is there any tips for her to practice?
She can do it, but it's a matter of learning.
Her problem is very common, actually, and just like learning any skill (say, like rubbing your belly while patting the top of your head) with a little practice, it becomes easy.
The question then becomes, "what kind of practice"?
In a typical open water course the instructor will rush you to get underwater and try clearing the mask right away. However, that's ... well... to put it bluntly.... wrong.
The VERY FIRST skill you need to learn in open water is how to breathe. How I do that is to stand in water waist deep with no mask on and just the regulator in the mouth and to bend over until your face is in the water..... then just breathe. In through the mouth, out through the mouth (and repeat)..... then after we have that nailed, we breathe in through the mouth and out through the nose (and repeat)..... then we mix it up (and repeat)..... and I keep at it until it's literally *mastered*. If they can't do it they lift their head up and try again. I tell them that it's OK.. If this goes on for a while I ask them to pinch the nose shut and then slowly "unpinch" the nose as they start feeling more confident. The approach is designed to reduce (or if possible eliminate) stress. If people find it hard I reassure them that it's common and tell them that I'm not in a hurry and that they can take as long as they need to learn this. (more on this below)
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It's ESSENTIAL if you use this technique (speaking to instructors now) that the student has a feeling that they are absolutely SAFE and absolutely UNRUSHED. It helps if they achieve an early success and you compliment them on it so it reinforces that they can learn things that they find difficult while feeling safe and unrushed. Still speaking to instructors, one of my recent students (who is a manager of other people in real life) told me that while he was taking the course he observed what I do as compared to other instructors he observed during his time with us (both our own instructors and 'random' instructors at the lake) and he told me that my greatest gift was to completely eliminate the feeling of "time pressure" out of the course even though he knew that I must have moments that I thought it was going too slowly. Naturally you are going to feel time pressure at some point(s) but making the student aware of that is often devastating to the results you get and especially with these kinds of fundamental skills.
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The above approach may seem obvious, even trivial, and I guess training agencies think so too or this would be the first skill in the standards, but it isn't. Nevertheless, people with your friend's problem show up immediately and as I said, they are fairly common.
In most cases my own students get through this phase within the timeline of module-1 without complications. For some it doesn't require any effort.... In rare cases (I've had one or two over the years) I've worked on this skill extensively before going on to scuba. In one case I left a student on the surface with the DM to just swim over the surface for a whole lesson (1 hour) with no mask on. You would think this student was "way behind schedule" and so did she.... saying, "I'm lagging" but I assured her that it was necessary, that it was no problem and that *I* wasn't worried at all about it. And I wasn't kidding. due to the efficiency gains of getting this sorted out straight out of the gate, she got back on par with the other students in the very next lesson, although I did spend an hour extra with her in the pool later in the course on her buoyancy and to give her the feeling that the first lesson wasn't "wasted".
The biggest advantage I see to this approach is that the student can experience that they have this issue with no panic and no stress and they can work on sorting it out without any pressure of having to "perform additional tricks" while they are ALSO trying to get their breathing sorted out.
So the good news is that unless your friend is a really hard core case, she should be able to get this down in a matter of 10 or maybe 15 minutes if she connects up with the right instructor. This is the amount of time I normally take for this in OW.
There's more good news too, because if you actually start like this then she won't have any trouble with the mask skills once she goes under water. I've had the odd student who had to pinch the nose shut the first few times but by the time they get into the second module (second hour under water) these problems clear up and melt away like snow to the sun.
.... that is.... if you do it right. If you start with breathing and if you don't rush students in module 1 and if you are smart about getting THIS one VERY fundamental skill sorted out before all others, even if it's not on the "standards" checklist.
R..
