Question Tech Diving Habits for Open Water Students

[johndiver999]

I think that there is so little time in most courses that if you can get the students to actually master the required skills and have ample opportunities to observe and emulate good skills, that is probably the best you can hope for.

If there is time, I think lots of practice with no mask swimming and other similar stress inducing watermanship skills are most beneficial in making confident and somewhat safe students. I also think having the students do underwater sprints in the pool and then recovering underwater is a good lesson in what uncomfortable feels like underwater and why we should avoid overexertion. Swimming backwards, not so much, lol

 

[grantmac]

I think it's important for students to finish a course, any course, with a clear understanding of the areas they need to improve.

 

[J-Vo]

Most important habit that a tech Diver can teach, is how to say: "If you can't do XXXXX our way, you should pick a new hobby."

They say that with such perfect composure. Very impressive. Much condescension.

Crude. But I think you get my point.

I used to read a comical cycling blog, the author says there are three levels of cyclist:

Beginners
Freds/Wilmas
Douches

 

[KevinNM]

I do want to eventually take the GUE course, there are just none available in my area right now. I've heard good things about it though

@mer used to spend a few months a year in Hawaii. Not sure if she still does.

 

[Nassim]

For all the Technical Divers in here, what skills or habits do you think all open water students should be learning?

The context for this question: I'm a fairly new open water scuba instructor, and I've been diving about 10 years. My initial open water class was with a bunch of TDI cave diving instructors, and there were definitely some skills/habits they taught early on that stuck with me. Some random examples (that I don't see taught often in Open Water):

- A greater reliance on frog kicks, helicopter kicks, and finning backward
- Nothing ever dangles (SPGs, secondary reg, etc). Everything is always streamlined and ideally clipped with a bolt snap
- Always attach bolt snaps using cave line or a zip tie (something that can be cut)
- If you're diving a new gear setup, spend the first few minutes of the dive practicing deploying your secondary breathing source to help build some muscle memory
- If you loose a reg and can't find it on the first sweep, go to your secondary. Don't keep doing the same motion hoping for a new result.

So besides making sure open water students have solid fundamentals (like neutral buoyancy, good trim, and good dive plans), what do you think are some early skills or habits that can help set them up for success, reduce risk, and help them as they continue to more advanced training? What bad habits do you see new tech students having to "unlearn" that they could have learned during open water?

Great points! I second your point about using frog kicks, bicycling through dives often tilts the diver up in a standing position and gives them less control over their depth. Also learning how to fin backward is essential to protect fragile environments, especially from photographers.
Speaking of which I wish new divers were urged to establish excellent buoyancy long before ever taking a camera on a dive.
It would be great to not over-weight new divers which leads them to use their BCD as a replacement for good buoyancy control by inflating and deflating through the whole dive, shortening their dives.

 

[LFMarm]

I would add to the list: Keep practicing and perfecting skills. While this is not tech specific, I have not seen many rec divers refresh and practice basic skills (mask removal, s-drill, buoyancy, propulsion, signals with team, lost fin, etc.).

 

[steinbil]

I would add to the list: Keep practicing and perfecting skills. While this is not tech specific, I have not seen many rec divers refresh and practice basic skills (mask removal, s-drill, buoyancy, propulsion, signals with team, lost fin, etc.).

I'm pretty sure this is an industry culture thing. If the big agencies would emphasize the fun and fulfillment of training skills and actually catered to it for vacation divers, I think it would make a difference.

Imagine if:
- skills were always taught while hovering*
- everyone were taught to do 1 skill per dive
- DMs would include just 1 skill per dive

*as long as doing skills on the knees is all you know, it's not practica to practice or use the skills in real dives

 

[ToneNQ]

Its never a race, both in the water and up the course progression chart. Aim to be smooth with every movement and every skill. Get your gear balanced and try to be still in the water. Hard to do in hire gear, harder to do when its all new and exciting. Just enjoy the dive, enjoy the moment. Some instructors do skills with neutral buoyancy rather than on the bottom, there is a lot to be said for that but also respecting the right of instructors to manage their group size and group aptitude. OW divers are never going to be perfect, key requirement is to be safe.

I did a liveaboard two years ago with a mate, just logging CCR hours and practicing drills before mod 2. The OW divers remarked how little we kicked. It led to a discussion that getting yourself into a flat trim and getting your buoyancy right should be something you focus on as you slow your descent. This is something instructors need to role model, its not a race to the sand. We don't fin to stay up, we only fin to move.

 

[Nosmosis]

For all the Technical Divers in here, what skills or habits do you think all open water students should be learning?

The context for this question: I'm a fairly new open water scuba instructor, and I've been diving about 10 years. My initial open water class was with a bunch of TDI cave diving instructors, and there were definitely some skills/habits they taught early on that stuck with me. Some random examples (that I don't see taught often in Open Water):

- A greater reliance on frog kicks, helicopter kicks, and finning backward
- Nothing ever dangles (SPGs, secondary reg, etc). Everything is always streamlined and ideally clipped with a bolt snap
- Always attach bolt snaps using cave line or a zip tie (something that can be cut)
- If you're diving a new gear setup, spend the first few minutes of the dive practicing deploying your secondary breathing source to help build some muscle memory
- If you loose a reg and can't find it on the first sweep, go to your secondary. Don't keep doing the same motion hoping for a new result.

So besides making sure open water students have solid fundamentals (like neutral buoyancy, good trim, and good dive plans), what do you think are some early skills or habits that can help set them up for success, reduce risk, and help them as they continue to more advanced training? What bad habits do you see new tech students having to "unlearn" that they could have learned during open water?

The basic fundamentals + planning + human factors.

1. Buoyancy from confined water and prioritized during all open water dives with enough time spent during OW to get solid with buoyancy basics without the need for an advanced buoyancy specialty add-on.

2. Propulsion with multiple kicks beyond flutter including frog kick, backwards kicks and helicopter turns. May not be perfected, but I see too many divers coming out of OW with no exposure to alternate kicks.

3. Trim has sorta become a buzzword lots of divers talk about (thank you DT) but again few come out of OW with real insights on how to influence this.

4. Balance - again not talked about for many OW divers

5. Breathing - understanding how to breathe is super important to reduce CO2 build up and manage buoyancy (among other things). But usually the extent of breathing is “don’t hold your breathe” and “breathe normally.” There is more too it, I think.

6. Planning - “dive you plan” they say, but they don’t really teach you how to do that. Calculating minimum gas/rock bottom is really important as well as understanding tank volumes and how to plan turn pressures. “Come back to the boat with 500 psi” is a cop-out and sometimes, very bad advice.

7. Human Factors work by Gareth Lock. Understand psychological safety for example and make human factors a part of the plan. For example, what is the teams “no-go” criteria, when do you call a dive, how do you debrief the dive and learn from errors so you don’t fall down the path of accepting small errors and deviation of norms.