Mask Clearing

[TSandM]

Mayor, for heaven's sake! Yes, that's the goal -- but if this was this fellow's greatest fear, look at how far he has come. He's slow and deliberate in his actions, gets the mask nicely seated and clears it efficiently. This is a huge step forward for someone who was terribly afraid of the skill.

With time and practice, eliassaj, you CAN get this skill to where you can do it while floating gently. Now that you know you CAN do it, don't stop practicing -- because it's really tempting not to do things you don't like to do. As my beloved cave instructor said to me one day, "Just because you aren't good at something, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It means you should do it MORE OFTEN." And he was right. So keep practicing until you can make a mask remove and replace just a normal part of your diving routine.

Congratulations on sticking with it!

 

[Mayor]

I was thinking he found that video of a mask removal on line. Did not realize it was the OP. Sorry if it sounded harsh but it was not meant to be. That's what happens when you have a three year old tugging at you when posting......

Mayor, for heaven's sake! Yes, that's the goal -- but if this was this fellow's greatest fear, look at how far he has come. He's slow and deliberate in his actions, gets the mask nicely seated and clears it efficiently. This is a huge step forward for someone who was terribly afraid of the skill. With time and practice, eliassaj, you CAN get this skill to where you can do it while floating gently. Now that you know you CAN do it, don't stop practicing -- because it's really tempting not to do things you don't like to do. As my beloved cave instructor said to me one day, "Just because you aren't good at something, doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It means you should do it MORE OFTEN." And he was right. So keep practicing until you can make a mask remove and replace just a normal part of your diving routine.Congratulations on sticking with it!

 

[MX727]

I'd be afraid of taking that mask off too.

I got a GoPro just before I saw those masks. Very nice.

 

[anomalydesign]

I know this thread has been around forever, but it seems to be a good resource for what appears to be a fairly common difficulty among new divers. My girlfriend is ok at clearing, for instance, but still struggles with flooding and especially mask removal skills.

As other posters have suggested, practice is the most important thing you can do. We don't have our own regulators (which is important at the exhaust bubbles around her face seemed to be what caused the most discomfort), but our LDS let us have some time in the pool while they had an open water class going on, and even lent us the regs and some tanks. If you've been taking courses through your local LDS and need more work with these skills it's definitely worth asking if you can have some unstructured pool time to work on these (or other) skills without feeling rushed or judged.

The most important thing that helped my girlfriend overcome her difficulties was to slow down. When she would get in trouble, she would try and rush through the next steps, leading her to panic more and bolt to the surface. As long as the reg's in your mouth, you can just stop whatever you're doing, and focus on just breathing (in her case, in through the reg, out through the nose worked best). Only when you're collected do you think about moving on to the next step in the mask replacement or clearing. This video follows the progress that she made with just a little feedback and a lot of trial and error over our few hours in the pool. [video=youtube;LrN5821JK9A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrN5821JK9A[/video]

 

[eliassaj]

Thank you all again , I am removing my mask at the end of each dive before acsent ( last 5 meters ) , I think this is the best Excerise ever.. Doing this will keep me on top of this Drill... I am going to shoot again the drill at major depth 30+ meters that is my next step.

 

[krukster86]

I know the whole mask clearing concept freaked me out in the classroom portion. However, in practice it felt almost natural when I had to do the skills test underwater. It still amazes me when I clear my mask at 100ft underwater

 

[Sparky84]

Had my first pool session yesterday. The mask clearing and taking the mask off thing really didn't bother me too much. However I kept finding myself trying to inhale through the regulator while trying to exhale smoothly through my nose. After a couple times I got over it but it was really odd.

 

[ermaclob]

mask clearing is important and after a while i think should just be something thats second nature. i do it alot, always getting water in my mask, ether by leaks, when equalizing, dive buddies always elbowing me in the face or kicking me :hurt:.

just like most things, practice make perfect