Barbara, you are brand new at this. Don't get too hard on yourself.
When diving with a buddy, it's very useful to position yourself off your buddy's right shoulder. That way, he can see you easily, you can see him, and you are not in his way or on top of him. However, if he stops to look at something, you're going to find yourself at the mercy of the movement of the water. If there is any current, no matter how slight, it will push you in some direction. All too often, it's toward your buddy. When you recognize this, you may need to swim a small circle to avoid bumping into him or going over the top of him. This is where helicopter turns are really handy, but they're a lot to try when you are brand new. Swimming small circles is always an option.
The kicks shown in the videos you have been recommended are awesome kicks, but they are not self-explanatory. You can learn them quite wrong (I was doing the frog kick completely backwards at the beginning of Fundies, until the instructor got behind me and "modelled" the kick with my fins.) What you can learn pretty easily (or at least I did) is the modified flutter kick. It's the flutter kick you were taught in class, only instead of kicking the whole leg from the hip, you keep your knees pretty much together, and just do a flutter from the ankles. It's enough kick to propel you in calm water, without causing your body to be unstable, and without silting up the bottom. NW Grateful Diver taught me this in our first dives together, and it was my standard, and useful, method of propulsion until I took Fundies and got taught some other options.
It takes time to become comfortable in the water, and one of the things I've learned is that, if the water itself is moving, it can be difficult to impossible to be as precise in your movements as you are accustomed to being on land.
When diving with a buddy, it's very useful to position yourself off your buddy's right shoulder. That way, he can see you easily, you can see him, and you are not in his way or on top of him. However, if he stops to look at something, you're going to find yourself at the mercy of the movement of the water. If there is any current, no matter how slight, it will push you in some direction. All too often, it's toward your buddy. When you recognize this, you may need to swim a small circle to avoid bumping into him or going over the top of him. This is where helicopter turns are really handy, but they're a lot to try when you are brand new. Swimming small circles is always an option.
The kicks shown in the videos you have been recommended are awesome kicks, but they are not self-explanatory. You can learn them quite wrong (I was doing the frog kick completely backwards at the beginning of Fundies, until the instructor got behind me and "modelled" the kick with my fins.) What you can learn pretty easily (or at least I did) is the modified flutter kick. It's the flutter kick you were taught in class, only instead of kicking the whole leg from the hip, you keep your knees pretty much together, and just do a flutter from the ankles. It's enough kick to propel you in calm water, without causing your body to be unstable, and without silting up the bottom. NW Grateful Diver taught me this in our first dives together, and it was my standard, and useful, method of propulsion until I took Fundies and got taught some other options.
It takes time to become comfortable in the water, and one of the things I've learned is that, if the water itself is moving, it can be difficult to impossible to be as precise in your movements as you are accustomed to being on land.
