Pool exercises with buddy

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

yeahiii

New
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Location
Germany
# of dives
0 - 24
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.
 
All the above and a few other skills like sending up a DSMB while trying to maintain your buoyancy, maintaining a hover at a set distance off the bottom (without finning or sculling with your hands), getting and maintaining good trim (do your feet drop if you stop?)

Might be worth practising your fin kicks as well - see a lot of people bicycle kicking while flutter kicking (the feet going round and round instead of up and down). Also learn how to frogkick, backkick and turn using your fins (and not your hands)
 
I agree with Neilwood, buoyancy skills. I mean you can do reg recovery a billion times and it is still reg recovery and do mask clearing until you are comfortable with it. But buoyancy is an art that only gets better with practice and tweaking and practice, did I say practice?
 
people will come in with all sorts of skills, but the one thing you have to do if the pool doesn't have mirrors on the wall is bring in a gopro or similar so you can actually look at the video after you're done to help you know what you need to work on the following week
 
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..
 
Back-kick (and other propulsion techniques, such as helicopter turns). No other skill improved my comfort as much as this one. It takes time to learn, but with a GoPro and a buddy, it should be easier. Learning to be neutral gives you vertical stability, back-kick helps you stabilize horizontally. Then, the next thing is being able to perform skills while maintaining a certain position and orientation in the water, e.g., drop a weight on the bottom, and make sure that as you do the skill, you don't move forward, backward, up or down, or sideways. This gets more challenging in the ocean, when the current is pushing you in some direction, and you have to constantly compensate, but it can also be good practice in the pool, especially if you never tried. As you do the skills, try to maintain horizontal position, and look your buddy in the eyes. Just having to keep constant position, trim, and body orientation in the water, while looking at your buddy all the time, is already adding a good amount of task loading. You start to notice little things, like the fact that your fins are constantly moving, e.g., because you're compensating for some issue that you were previously not even aware of.
 
I'm jealous. I only wish I had a deep pool to practice in.

Might be worth practising your fin kicks as well - see a lot of people bicycle kicking while flutter kicking (the feet going round and round instead of up and down). Also learn how to frogkick, backkick and turn using your fins (and not your hands)

Thanks for reminding me about the helicopter kick...

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.


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..

Awesome advice!
 
people will come in with all sorts of skills, but the one thing you have to do if the pool doesn't have mirrors on the wall is bring in a gopro or similar so you can actually look at the video after you're done to help you know what you need to work on the following week

Good call on the camera- ideal to be able to review what you think you were doing. Easy to think your trim is great but the camera doesn't lie about it.
 
Just hover at a given depth for a few minutes. At least a couple of feet from the bottom. Don't shift up or down more than a foot while you do this. Try to adjust the air your bcd so you are not having to actively control your depth with your lungs, you are just breathing normally and are neutral.

Once that is working then start doing other things at the same time.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom