If you could change one thing about dive training...

[TMHeimer]

Don't forget the title of the thread, which tells what you would like to change about OW instruction. One change suggested was to train students to use their hands for propulsion. I asked why you would want to do this, and I am getting answers about the value of propelling yourself with your hands while your legs are crossed.

I'm just trying to figure out why I should include hand propulsion in dive training, and so far the only thing I have seen so far is that it is essential when you are diving with your legs crossed. So, if that is indeed th "one thing you would change about dive training," it is good to know there is a reason.

Yes, I agree 100%. I agree it should not be included in the OW instruction. Just too tiny a % dives where you'd actually use the arms for any movement. Yes, I have used breast stroke with leg cramps several times, but that is something it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, so no need for it in OW course. I did mention it to classes when an instructor asked if I had anything to add as the "cramp" expert....

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Lot's of uses. Does it matter? For having fun it's called fun diving for a reason. I can see much better and look around much easier when like this and away from a wall. Useful for fast drift diving where I get pushed along faster.

It isn't always the best choice. Usually when I see this position, it is an indication that the diver is foot heavy due to improper weight distribution, which unfortunately is a common problem due to a lack of knowledge and skill on the part of many (most?) instructors.

In some areas, in drift dives, being out of trim is actually a really bad idea. If you are lucky enough to dive the Tacoma Narrows on a fast current, you risk hitting your knee on a 3 or 4 inch barnacle that will rip a hole into your dry suit (as happened to a friend of mine when we dived the Narrows together).

If you are far from bottom/wall (the steepness of shore varies) you don't see anything due to poor viz and you have no real indication of how fast you are going. In that particular dive, you'd turn into a flag in the wind if you grabbed a rock to wait for your buddy to catch up.

After open water/buoyancy type courses, if someone wants to do a Buddha hover, have at it. But please don't pass it off as a skill due to the possible weight distribution problem that it masks.

 

[Blackcrusader]

It isn't always the best choice. Usually when I see this position, it is an indication that the diver is foot heavy due to improper weight distribution, which unfortunately is a common problem due to a lack of knowledge and skill on the part of many (most?) instructors..

After 36 years of diving I'm pretty sure I can do whatever position I like in the water. I can transition from horizontal trim to the Buddha hover or inverted. I do laugh when people come in and say oh this is in indication a diver is foot heavy or doesn't have precise control
of their buoyancy or had a lack of knowledge and skills. I do not have a weight distribution problem either. I simply choose whatever trim I want to be in. I don't dive in your part of the world or in a dry suit in fact I don't even wear a wet suit.

There are good fast drift dives in Asia that have good visibility. So on occasion I may switch to a sitting position and certainly are not drifting close enough to hit myself on the passing corals or barnacles. If your friend got too close and ripped a hole in his dry suit then I guess he will get it patched up or replaced. That has nothing to do with my core skillset and situational awareness in a drift dive.

Out of trim comments also trim is whatever position I need to be in for the diving I am doing. Can't be in horizontal trim at some sited I dive when you need to be vertical to go up or down some shafts. Horizontal is fine for some types of diving but it's not required especially when I may want to be in another position for taking video or photos.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

After 36 years of diving I'm pretty sure I can do whatever position I like in the water. I can transition from horizontal trim to the Buddha hover or inverted. I do laugh when people come in and say oh this is in indication a diver is foot heavy or doesn't have precise control
of their buoyancy or had a lack of knowledge and skills. I do not have a weight distribution problem either. I simply choose whatever trim I want to be in. I don't dive in your part of the world or in a dry suit in fact I don't even wear a wet suit.

There are good fast drift dives in Asia that have good visibility. So on occasion I may switch to a sitting position and certainly are not drifting close enough to hit myself on the passing corals or barnacles. If your friend got too close and ripped a hole in his dry suit then I guess he will get it patched up or replaced. That has nothing to do with my core skillset and situational awareness in a drift dive.

Out of trim comments also trim is whatever position I need to be in for the diving I am doing. Can't be in horizontal trim at some sited I dive when you need to be vertical to go up or down some shafts. Horizontal is fine for some types of diving but it's not required especially when I may want to be in another position for taking video or photos.

But you are missing the point of this thread: what do people think should change in scuba diving instruction?

No one cares if you like to Buddha hover. It doesn't take any skill really and doesn't need to be taught. No one us saying that divers have to be horizontal 100% of the time. It is important that divers can be horizontal when finning across a flat bottom. Surely I don't need to describe why that is the case

 

[Pressurehead]

After 36 years of diving I'm pretty sure I can do whatever position I like in the water. I can transition from horizontal trim to the Buddha hover or inverted. I do laugh when people come in and say oh this is in indication a diver is foot heavy or doesn't have precise control
of their buoyancy or had a lack of knowledge and skills. I do not have a weight distribution problem either. I simply choose whatever trim I want to be in. I don't dive in your part of the world or in a dry suit in fact I don't even wear a wet suit.

There are good fast drift dives in Asia that have good visibility. So on occasion I may switch to a sitting position and certainly are not drifting close enough to hit myself on the passing corals or barnacles. If your friend got too close and ripped a hole in his dry suit then I guess he will get it patched up or replaced. That has nothing to do with my core skillset and situational awareness in a drift dive.

Out of trim comments also trim is whatever position I need to be in for the diving I am doing. Can't be in horizontal trim at some sited I dive when you need to be vertical to go up or down some shafts. Horizontal is fine for some types of diving but it's not required especially when I may want to be in another position for taking video or photos.

Did you post this under the wrong topic? Did you mean to post it here?
THE "PERFECT ( being horizontal ) TRIM" HOAX

 

[SlugLife]

Now that I just took another course, I have some "feedback" fresh in my mind. This applies to SSI, and potentially other agencies:

• When I signed up for the class, SSI never sent me an email that I now had access to the training-program(s).
• The online training is SOOOO BAD! I mean it has content, but it is verbose, time-consuming, boring, and I didn't learn much. I don't think the content has been updated in years. The website itself is VERY slow and buggy It was about as pleasant as eating a plate full of sand.
• The last SSI class I took was only 1.5 years ago, and we did paper-logs. Since then I logged dives in my own software. However, this isn't acceptable now. All dives had to be copied into the SSI Dive Log, and couldn't be on paper, or in another software. So I had to copy everything into the app, even though they had a different standard 1.5 years ago. It took me probably 4-5 hours to copy everything over because....
  
• First, I couldn't import dives from my modern Scubapro dive watch. WTF? Next, I tried the dive-log on the website, which was simply unusable. Next, I tried logging them on my phone, which I hate entering stuff on my phone. Despite the app being tedious and crashing a lot, it was better than the website.
• Once I've entered everything in the dive-log, the app is basically unusable for how I actually use my dive-log. For example, if I wanted to see how much weight to use with a steel backplate and 5mm exposure suit, or whether 5mm wetsuit is enough for a 65f dive at 100ft.
• For the certification-dives, we were forced to populate ALL fields in the dive-log. Including the ones about cloud-conditions, surface-temperature, wildlife, etc. There were also some fields I missed because they were unintuitively hidden under a "scuba" heading, which included start/end PSI and average depth.
• The actual instructors were decent enough, I haven't had a bad (in-person) instructor yet.

TLDR: SSI's online material & dive log is absolute garbage.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

TLDR: SSI's online material & dive log is absolute garbage.

What class was this? As for open water, I'd argue theirs is the best. Note, I don't teach SSI's program now as I'm independent and will never work for someone else again. When it cames to academics, my students understood the material far better. That said, I do hope they have removed the video in the drysuit course of the diver with a twinset, long hose, and .... a .... snorkel.

 

[SlugLife]

What class was this? As for open water, I'd argue theirs is the best. Note, I don't teach SSI's program now as I'm independent and will never work for someone else again. When it cames to academics, my students understood the material far better. That said, I do hope they have removed the video in the drysuit course of the diver with a twinset, long hose, and .... a .... snorkel.

Hah, I suppose my post was entirely focused on the negative (which is mostly what this thread is about). I suppose I should qualify what was good or bad more precisely:

Bad:

• Extremely Boring, Tedious, and Dull, and Time-Consuming for both the Open Water & Advanced Open Water course.
• Website is very buggy
• Likes to sneak in SSI marketing materials
• Showed obvious signs of being dated. While dated, nothing was completely out-of-date or unsafe. (can't remember specifics, just lots of little signs)
• The dive-log stuff mentioned. The only purpose appeared to be to promote and force you into the SSI Dive Log, which is horribly made and I won't repeat the previous critiques.

On the bright-side:

• SSI's material is easy to follow (perhaps too easy), and seemed to cover the majority of basics for each subject.
• When combined with an instructor & dives seems to have very consistent standards. Much better than [some other program].

Don't get me started on the ****ing snorkel. During the most recent class, everybody but me wore a snorkel. I left mine hidden in my save-a-dive kit, just in case the instructor demanded it. However, he never said a word, so I left there until the end of the class and promptly moved it back to the spare-scuba-junk box.

 

[Wibble]

As others have said, probably more than 90% of divers are interested in vacation dives for which the basic flutter kick is perfectly fine. There is no reason for them to be taking valuable class time learning highly advanced kicks. That can come when they take a more advanced class where such kicks will be important.

The scissor kick is inefficient as it directs ‘thrust' downwards — especially when not in horizontal trim — thus disturbing the bottom, kicking up silt and possibly damaging the environment. Anyone who follows a bunch of newbies with their DiveMaster will be well aware of the destruction of visibility behind them.

Everybody needs good cores skills (buoyancy, trim and finning).

BTW 'flutter' kick is not the same as the ‘scissor' kick. Flutter is when you knees are bent and the thrust is aimed backwards — as learned in Fundies.

 

[boulderjohn]

BTW 'flutter' kick is not the same as the ‘scissor' kick. Flutter is when you knees are bent and the thrust is aimed backwards — as learned in Fundies.

So if a different agency comes up with different definitions, which one will we be required to use?

Google the two and see what you find.