Pool practice ahead of my first ever PADI Open Water dive?

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OP, if you literally only had one training day in the pool, my recommendation would be to call your instructor, bump the OW dive to another day, and get at least one more day of training in the pool.
 
Dominek_E suggested that extending the snorkel is not a good idea; in fact, it is a very bad idea. There is a reason that snorkel tubes are the length (and width) they are and not longer (and wider). Not only will it get harder to inhale if you go deeper with a longer snorkel, what you are inhaling will be largely your own exhaled CO2 that did not get eliminated after your last breath.

If you were to lie on the bottom of the pool in 3 feet of water and try to inhale through a tube, you could not do it. Your scuba regulator adjusts the pressure of the air coming out of the cylinder to a pressure a little higher than the pressure of the surrounding water; that is why you can breathe from it.
And the CO2 buildup will be further compounded by the increased WOB. An unpleasant recipe pretty quickly resulting in a CO2 hit I expect.
 
If you only had 1 pool sessions, instruction standards have not been met. Part of learning to dive includes over learning a skill so you don't have to think about it. Like if your mask flood, you should not think to yourself, what did my instructor tell me to do: tilt the mask up or down. You just clear it. In the beginning dives, there might be anxiety especially with that technique but it will get better.
 
If you only had 1 pool sessions, instruction standards have not been met.

But resort style training is not uncommon in 2 days. CW in the morning, 1 OW dive in the afternoon, 3 OW dives the next day, and off you go, you get your participation trop.... ahem ... certification card.
 
Yes, I understand but OP stated :"I had the first pool session".
 
The pool session for my OW cert was an entire Saturday. Not that scary. Only 1 person was not allowed to proceed to the OW dives. They worked with him to do an additional session prior to the OW dives.
 
If the OP feels he needs more pool time, then he ought to focus on that, with an instructor, and not get a boat for OW dives.
Yes, he might have to pay more..
 
New diver ‘session’ is ‘that tme we spent at the pool.’

Standards ‘session’ is one of the 5 parts CW is divided into, a technical definition the new diver is unlikely to be expert on.

It is far more likely the OP means the first. They might have pool class of CW1-3 then later CW4-5. Two ‘sessions’ of which they had only the first so far. (All assuming Padi)
 
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