SCUBA skills enhanced by snorkeling

[divebunnie]

But, also generally, I've seen that good freedivers make great scuba divers. You can see it in every movement in the water.

Should freediving be part of the cirricula? It all depends what the goal is, teaching diving, or making money?

All the best, James

I guess it is also dependent on whether you want to produce good divers or great divers.

Also in reply to Amy, it is a good job you learned this lesson in a pool as it can be potentially harmful to freedive with your lungs empty. The pressure will reduce their volume, and without any air in them, there is a possibility that they can get damaged.

I think I have already mentioned this, but when I started just doing a bit of sitting at the bottom of our pool, and seeing how far I could swim on one breath, it really improved my confidence in the water in general. As far as SCUBA goes, knowing that you can swim a distance without air, or just the general larger comfort zone that you will have can only improve your diving.

As for clashing skills, the more you do of both, the more your body will instinctively get used to the differences and act accordingly.

 

[durian]

so I now think that a big benefit of free diving/ snorkeling may be that it will help me relax and to control my air consupmtion when scuba diving. As a newbie with only 10 dives, I am an air hog. I will use 150 bar and my instructor will have used 60. I think extensive time under water in these other activities can make it seem much more like home in a much quicker way, certainly a less expensive way. I want to dive, but I want use time when not out in a boat to do the other.

 

[Walter]

"so I now think that a big benefit of free diving/ snorkeling may be that it will help me relax and to control my air consupmtion when scuba diving."

More importantly, it will give you confidence in your abilities and less likely to panic when something goes wrong. In that way, skin diving can save your life.

 

[holdingmybreath]

... but if I want twenty minutes or so to examine a wreck at 100 ft. I will feel far more comfortable on scuba than free-diving it. This is not the type of skin diving that we are teaching at the shop that I work with. To me, breath-hold diving has its place. That is normally in about twenty feet of water or less with a snorkel. Much beyond that, I want my tanks and drysuit.

I'm just the opposite, at a 100' or less, I'm far more comfortable holdingmybreath. Deeper than that, my plan is to just keep training. Different fears for different folks I guess.

 

[Walter]

I wish my free diving abilities were as good as yours. I need to get to work.

 

[holdingmybreath]

I wish my free diving abilities were as good as yours. I need to get to work.

and sometimes I wish depending on the mechanics of scuba didn't bother me so much. truthfully, I've been deeper freediving then I've been on scuba.

 

[MikeFerrara]

There's no doubt that comfort in the water is important in scuba. Watermanship skills can translate to survival skills especially whith problems at the surface...or if you just fall off the boat without your kit. Nothing earth shattering there. IMO, one of the biggest problems in dive training isn't that we skip things like free diving (which certainly can help develope comfort in the water) but that we insist on teaching diving to people who aren't already comfortable in the water.

Skin diving is certainly one tool that can be used in scuba training. However, I don't need snorkels around to teach diving and I strongly disagree with statements like this one from Bob3...

It's a crying shame the basic skills are so often blown right past in order to get tanks on the kids.
You can always tell a person who has made the progression through the skin diving ranks, they always handle themselves so much more gracefuly underwater.

The most graceful divers by far that I have ever seen are skilled, experienced cave divers...and it isn't even a close race and I doubt that this skill level can be attributed to a free diving background.

IMO, the most important "scuba" skill and the one most "blown past" in typical training is buoyancy control. The ability to control your position in the water regardless of what you're doing IS diving and free diving doesn't teach it. It also doesn't do anything to teach breath control (even when handling a problem) because you're not breathing.

Also...practice clearing a mask on breath hold may not be all that applicable to the way we do things on scuba. I don't teach divers to look up at the sky so they can clear a mask with a minimum amount of air. I teach them to stay horizontal. A couple short blasts of air clears the mask nicely without changing position in the water or altering breathing pattern. It isn't at all important to do it on one breath either...the last thing we want students doing is taking a monster breath of air to clear a mask like they tend to learn to do when they're kneeling on the bottom looking at the sky.

 

[durian]

uh, what is the difference between free diving and snorkeling?

 

[Walter]

Free diving, snorkeling and skin diving are 3 terms for the same activity.

 

[MikeFerrara]

uh, what is the difference between free diving and snorkeling?

Free diving is "diving" while holding your breath.

Snorkeling doesn't imply that you're actually going below the surface so you can wear floaties if you're afraid of the water.