New Divers - training out of the water - suggestions?

[Lizard Leg]

Wife, son and I were all certified last month. Instructor said we were the most studied group she had ever had. We practiced the underwater skills as best we could in the pool at home and read the books and quizzed each other until we knew it backwards and forwards.

A quick side note as to why we take this so seriously - I lost my right leg below the knee as a victim of a violent crime in August 2003. The leg was amputated August 2004 and August 2005 Katrina took everything we owned - so my family and I are very aware of just how fast life can throw random crap your way. Diving is an extreme sport, and in my opinion if you don't know how to handle an emergency situation, then you don't need to dive. I feel that even though we are "certified divers" that we have nowhere near the training or experience to call ourselves divers at this point.


My wife and I have spent years free diving. We are both very comfortable in the water. My son is as well, but not quite as much as us. All three of us have been practicing hand signals and popping random questions out to each other around the house to keep everything fresh in our minds until it almost becomes second nature. Nothing will compensate for practice in the water but I feel that after only 5 hours of bottom time, with nothing going wrong, is where a lot of divers get complacent and I don’t want that to happen. We discuss what to do if X happens. I’ll walk into my sons room with his dive table and a piece of paper with a two dive plan on it – what’s the minimum surface interval required for this and bring me your PG at the end of both dives. Not so much to make sure he knows the math behind it (he does – but we dive computers) but to make sure he understands the significance of it. I don’t want any of us to have to think about it – if your buddy gives you X signal, you’re giving the answer as soon as they’re done, automatically.
I’m landlocked in Baton Rouge. We practice clearing masks, etc. in the pool, but think it might be a little extreme to rent tanks and jump into a 54” deep pool to practice buddy breathing, sharing air, etc.

I don’t want to make it sound like I am an alarmist or scared of diving – quite the opposite. In my mind the danger comes from being
unprepared and I want to ensure that we are all capable and aware of what to do *when* that situation happens, whether it’s out 20^th dive or our 1,000^th dive.

Any suggestions for skills practice out of the water?

 

[Jim Lapenta]

I wish I had you guys as students! IF you were my students and showed such dedication I'd have a couple of things for you to try. It may seem silly to some but how are your nav skills? Have you tried working with a compass on land? Trying out compass use in the back yard can be fun. Try to use just the compass to navigate around your place. Have trees or other articles in your yard that you could tie a line to? Get a spool and work on trying to make small tie offs that are secure yet easy to get loose. Knowing how to get back to where you started is a very nice skill to have. I have students do line tie offs in my back yard to start before doing them in the water. Concentrate on keeping the line snug and not allowing it to snag. A guideline is a nice way to get some dives in when the vis is low!

Don't discount the value of skills in shallow water! A four foot deep pool is deep enough to practice mask drills, reg recovery, weight system drills, and air shares in a horizontal position hovering a foot off the bottom and not floating to the top. If you can do those in that manner doing them in open water at 30 or 40 feet is cake. It is also a good way to work on horizontal trim and weighting. Do all your descents and ascents horizontal and in total control.

I would also encourage you to keep doing the academic learning and perhaps expand it by looking into other sources of info. Go outside your agency manual and pick up some new material for different points of view on the activity. And you are right and I applaud you for recognizing that this is indeed an extreme sport or activity. No matter what others may say. Any physical activity will help your diving. Staying in good shape will help your air consumption and allow you to enjoy it more.



If you want a list of reading material I would start with the following:

SCUBA Diving by Dennis Graver. This is a great text that has no marketing and does not talk down to you. Can be found on Amazon and from SEI Diving instructors

The Six Skills by Steve Lewis. While written with the tech diver in mind,every lesson can be applied to recreational divers as well. Lots of practical things you can do to prepare for diving in the areas of breathing exercises, configuring your gear, and setting your weighting requirements.

Diver Rescue and Accident Management. Scuba Educators International - Based on the original diver rescue course - the YMCA SLAM course- another no non sense no ads text that is laid out instinctually and all lessons can be applied to every new diver. While the skills should be taught in a rescue course the principles of preventing an accident can be applied from one's first day in the pool. The CARE principal is the heart of the program and stands for Cognizance, Awareness, Rescue, and Evacuation. The first two are critical for diver safety and do not require any water practice. Available from SEI and SEI instructors

SDI Solo Diver Manual - Scuba Diving International - This book is a must read for every OW diver in my opinion. A strong buddy team is only as strong as the weakest member and strong individuals make a strong team. Practical and loaded with great information. Dry land exercises could be developed to address tasks and drills in this book. Any SDI shop or instructor should be able to get it for you

The US Navy Dive Manual - free from a number of sites - Technical yes but still a good free resource

NOAA Dive Manual - various sites have it for sale and it's not cheap but at some point serious divers should have this in their library.

I also have a book that you could get through me. It's in my signature line. It has tips on setting your weights in shallow water and more on setting up your gear. More stuff you can do on dry land to prepare for time in the water.


Any mental training you can do on dry land will translate to better prep for the water. Accident analysis is one of the best ways to learn how not to have one.

Finally when you are doing any of these exercises do them as team and work on communication. That is the core foundation of a successful dive with a buddy or buddies and is essential for proper dive planning. Dive planning is perhaps the most valuable skill you can develop and some aspects of that I covered in my own book are not included in many OW classes. Such as the emotional and mental aspects of dive planning and how your own mental and emotional states should be considered when planning a dive.

You have a great start on successful planning of your next dive right now whether you see it that way or not. Eveything you are doing to increase your knowledge and skill now is part of the plan for your next dive. Good on ya for that!

I really do wish I had you for students. You are the dream team for an instructor like me.

 

[tyesai]

I wish I had people to dive with attitudes like yours.

 

[Lizard Leg]

Thanks! As far as compass work, I have been using a compass in the woods my entire life and have taught my son those skills as well - walking a triangle or a square patternin the woods and walking out less than 20 feet where you went in kind of thing. My wife knows her compass skills aren't that great, so I have my hunting compass out on the end table and we have been going over headings, calculating a square course, a triangle course, reciprocal - the whole thing. If she doesn't have to think about it now, then when we do the AOW at the end of September, she'll be much more comfrotable with it.

 

[nimoh]

sounds like your compass skills are quite good, so perhaps this suggestion is moot.

For practicing with a compass, I wear sunglasses in the late evening (insert Corey Hart joke here) to simulate lower visibility. That way, I can only see landmarks 30-40 feet away.

I will also experiment with using kick cycles (step cycles) and time to guage distance.

 

[TSandM]

I'm with Jim -- I wish all our students had your attitude! And I think his post is perfect. Navigation you can practice, and you can learn a TON from the reference materials he lists. I'd add a couple more -- Deco for Divers, by Mark Powell, which will give you a much stronger grip on the ideas behind decompression strategies. The articles at nwgratefuldiver.com, with special emphasis on the one on gas management. And the articles at divedir.com, which have a lot of ideas about mastering trim and buoyancy.

Another suggestion I have is to spend some time going through the "Near Misses" subforum here. Read the original post together, and then talk about what you see as the issues that led to the problem, and how you would avoid or solve them. Then read the answers and see what the SB membership came up with. You can learn a TON that way!

Unfortunately, good buoyancy and good situational awareness only come through actual, in water practice -- but Jim is right, you can do a lot in five feet of water. If you can hover there and manage mask skills and air-sharing, you won't have any trouble deeper in the water column, where buoyancy is less challenging. You can also work on correct weighting and balancing your weights for effortless horizontal trim -- just remember to add 2.5% of your TOTAL weight (usually around five or six pounds) when you go to salt water.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Thanks Lynne for noting the Near Misses forum and sorry to Mark for omitting Deco for Divers. Must have missed it sitting right in front of me on the coffee table.:bonk: And second Bob's (NW gratefuldiver) page. A fair amount of my classroom material was inspired and some downright appropriated (with due credit of course!) from his writings.

 

[Lizard Leg]

Thanks for the info everyone!

 

[emoreira]

I think that you all should take asap the Stress and Rescue course. It´s one of the best courses I ever took. Try to find out who gives the best course. It´s worth the effort and the challenge.

 

[rongoodman]

Get a copy of this DVD, so you can start forming a image of what good trim and propulsion look like. Even if you can't master them by only watching a video, just seeing them in practice will be a step forward.