Me and my buddy got our OWD last year and did a skills update as well as a perfect buoyancy specialty a few weeks ago. Besides that wie did two dives in the carribean right after we got our OWD, so totaling 6 open water dives now.
As we both however felt the need to practice the basic skills a bit more by repetition we now joined a scuba club. Now we can have a free 5m deep confined water session every week where we can practice whatever we want to.
I am looking for some recommendations what we should maybe practice besides clearing masks, free flow reg. breathing, emergency ascent with partner etc.
Maybe even some games ... I saw people throwing underwater frisbees to train bouyancy control while doing other things in parallel.
Feel free tell me everything coming to your mind.
As a general idea you can make any skill more difficult by task loading. Task loading is just doing more than one thing at a time. Some tasks are simple, some are complex and by combining them they can be more challenging together than apart.
For example, take mask clearing: If you clear your mask every time by kneeling on the bottom of the pool then within a short time you will master clearing your mask on the bottom of the pool. If you then try clearing your mask in a fin pivot then you will need to re-learn part of it because you'll find yourself either sinking to the bottom or floating away as you do it. You are combining mask clearing with fin pivot.
If you then try it while swimming it will be different again. If you try it swimming while holding something in your hand, then it's different again, etc etc etc.
.... and it doesn't end there, once you can combine 2 tasks, then try 3. For example, swimming and air sharing while clearing the mask..... or 4 task. swimming, air sharing, clearing the mask while balancing a golf ball on a spoon.
Get the idea?
Just to give an example, a student of mine asked me to demonstrate this idea during AOW because he wanted a challenge so I did a mask clear while swimming upside down and backwards while blowing bubble rings and asked him to replicate that. It was funny as hell but we both came out laughing and had a good time with it. If you're creative there is virtually no limit to how much you can challenge yourself. Of course, you're learning better mask clearing as you go, but more importantly, you're learning how to manage task loading.
One of the super-secret tricks that they never tell you about advanced and technical training is this very thing. I've taken a lot of courses and technical specialties but you seldom (if ever) learn anything fundamentally new in those specialties. All the instructor does is add task loading to a skill you already know. That way they can make it as hard as it needs to be to challenge the student regardless of their level coming in. If you know that, and you know how to manage task loading then you can pass any course.
R..
