Teaching contradictions: differing dive training philosophies

[The Chairman]

I've answered it before, but here goes again. Like on the reef, they are only allowed to use a single finger to support themselves for a moment or two. Fins, knees and butts are not allowed and few students really need to use their fingers more than twice. I don't do fin pivots and feel that they teach a bad habit.

As for your article, I thought it was great and a step in the right direction. What I did was take the next logical step and start teaching neutral buoyancy from the top down and not the bottom up. Trim and neutral buoyancy are the hardest and the most important skills a diver needs to master in order to be confident and competent in the water. Ergo, it becomes the primary skill taught while on Scuba. All other skills are added to it.

As for being condescending, that wasn't my intent. There are many ways to take a challenge and I suppose that simply saying it was condescending is one way to deal with it. You've made several comments that you can't believe we can teach like this... what am I to say? To me, that means you haven't tried to teach in this manner. You're an apt instructor, John. I have no doubts that you can do this and that you will love it once you do.

 

[*dave*]

I know a lot of instructors who can't do that. If that is indeed what you are able to do, I salute you, and I hope you will supply the instructional sequence that makes that happen. "Try it and see" isn't giving me the picture.

I've answered it before, but here goes again. Like on the reef, they are only allowed to use a single finger to support themselves for a moment or two. Fins, knees and butts are not allowed and few students really need to use their fingers more than twice. I don't do fin pivots and feel that they teach a bad habit.

Pete, there are some folks who are genuinely interested in the mechanics and technique you use to achieve the results you claim. Why won't you answer? If you can't find the words, how about posting some video of CW1? I think I do a pretty good job with buoyancy and trim, but nowhere near the success you claim. From what you've conveyed in your previous post, it appears that all we need to do is stop teaching fin pivots.

 

[The Chairman]

You know, I want a Hero for this very reason. As soon as I have one, I'll do it. It's just really not that hard when you set your mind to it. Elena picked up on it right away.

 

[boulderjohn]

Pete, there are some folks who are genuinely interested in the mechanics and technique you use to achieve the results you claim. Why won't you answer? If you can't find the words, how about posting some video of CW1? I think I do a pretty good job with buoyancy and trim, but nowhere near the success you claim. From what you've conveyed in your previous post, it appears that all we need to do is stop teaching fin pivots.

I am going to take a guess that weighting is critical. As an instructor working for a shop who is required to use the shop rental equipment (jacket BCDs with no trim pockets), I don't see how I can do it. Maybe if I had students in backplates.....

I have taken to putting a good deal of the student's weight (and mine as well) on the tank strap so that students can get into proper trim more easily, and in my last class one of the students was able to do a true hover in horizontal trim--as would be expected of a tech diver--because I did have her weight well distributed that way. With standard weight belts or pockets, though, my students will have their legs dropping pretty quickly when they try to hover that way.

I will echo Dave's call for details, as I have asked for them before. Instead of providing details, you simply ridiculed those of us who start students buoyant and in trim with their legs lightly touching the floor. Perhaps if you had said something along the lines of the following, things might have gone better:

I realize that many instructors are focusing on buoyancy and trim from the very beginning by having their students do even the initial skills neutrally buoyant in a horizontal position, with their legs lightly touching the floor for balance. I think this is a much better approach than the tradition of having overweighted divers kneeling on the pool floor, and those instructors are to to be commended for doing that. Instructors with such goals might be interested in my approach, which goes a step further and has students in proper trim in mid water from the very start, without any part of the legs or fins touching the floor. Here is how I do it....

Conscientious instructors respond much better to suggestions for improvement than to mocking ridicule with no inkling of what can be done differently.

 

[The Chairman]

Details? How about this: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/in...nique-teach-without-kneeling.html#post6601426