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Good catch. There's a right and wrong way to swim backwards. The bad one is on your back looking for your buddy oblivious to where you're going. Instructors and guides do it all the time to keep track of their flock while leading.
While this may be true for some, The Scuba instructor is often deified by their students. They see them swimming backwards, doing the Buddha pose, bopping up and down like an underwater yo-yo doing emergency ascents with their students, and too often they emulate these bad habits. After all, their instructor knows EVERYTHING and they want to dive just like them.
Understood, but dipping your head to see who is behind you doesn’t work so well in OW where folks can be much further spread (horizontally and vertically) - esp when they are above you!
I meant literally swimming backwards. Not just looking behind me. I tend to lead the dive and face the students while I swim in a back kick. It allows me to set the pace and I can see all of them.
I had very few issues with that. But I didn't let them get to OW without truly mastering trim and buoyancy. After 2010ish, all my students learned trim, frog kicking, and anti-silting techniques in the pool. They were never allowed to kneel, sit, or stand on the pool bottom. 4 was my maximum, though I did a 6 student class once (family). Even the Scuba doff and don was done horizontally while neutral.
My point was that, as a recreational diver in open water, my buddy and the rest of the group are rarely right behind me where a simple head dip would allow me to locate them.
