Visualization can save your life

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

During cave diver training one of the things that must be discussed are the psychological aspects of cave diving. I have always maintained that safe cave diving involves a 60/40 – maybe 70/30 relationship between the physical and psychological readiness of the diver. By this I mean that it requires 60% or 70% psychological fitness and 30 or 40% physical fitness.

I teach visualization techniques to help prepare the student cave diver for psychological fitness. Visualize the things that can go wrong and then to visualize the defenses we have built against those things. When these visualization techniques are employed the cave diver is better prepared to think and respond appropriately when something goes wrong.

Some of the failures I discuss with my students are as follow.

Let’s talk about a diver who has a blowout disc or a tank O-ring fail and s/he is losing gas very quickly. The diver should visualize this failure and have in muscle memory how to effectively and quickly deal with this problem. With back mounted doubles we isolate the tanks with the isolator valve and exit on the unaffected tank. The diver should also visualize that his buddy has a long hose and can share air with that buddy to help ensure that s/he has enough gas volume between he & his buddy to exit the cave.

If the divers' primary light fails and finds himself in the dark visualize where the backup lights are stored and calmly reach for and deploy one of those lights and begin their exit. The diver should realize and visualize that between him & his buddy there are at least five other lights between the buddy team.

If the diver becomes lost off of the line s/he should STOP immediately and visualize where s/he last saw the line, how was the line configured – whether it was on the bottom, what color it is, along a wall, on the ceiling, on rock, on mud, on silt. The diver must STOP and visualize all of these things and then deploy a safety reel in order to conduct a logical, methodical search. I teach that the best odds are that the line is behind them since they swam off of the line. To play these odds the diver definitely needs to STOP immediately to maintain their position & not get further off of the line.

While swimming in the cave always visualize and reference each directional marker in terms of exit direction and distance. If jumps have been made; visualize the turns to the exit and visualize the system arrows and your own non directional markers that you have placed to assist you in exiting. I teach to place a non directional marker onto the line on the exit side of the jump. During penetration each marker should be observed and a mental note made.

During penetration make a mental note of any and all unique features of the cave, such as big rocks, holes in the bottom, offshoot lines etc.

Visualize all the potential failures and also give extra thought to particular failures that most concern you and work through how you have prepared to defend against these failures. When I first started cave diving our lights were no where near as reliable as lights are today. I had a particular fear of light failure, being left in the dark and becoming separated from my buddy.

While this was not a particularly rational fear over and above other failures in that it was more likely to happen than say a blow out disc failure, it was a specific fear that I vividly recall. I defended against this by carrying four lights instead of the minimum required three lights. This eased my mostly irrational fear.

During training and post training we should not only discuss these things out of the water but we should practice them in the cave so we can later visualize the in-water steps and processes we use to successfully deal with failures.

So…60/40 -- cave diving is definitely at least 60% mental and 40% physical.

 

[kensuf]

I agree with you 100% that cave diving is more mental than physical. But in addition to visualizing failure, can I take this a step further and also suggest visualizing success? For over 20 years, sports psychologists have studied the impact of visualizing positive outcomes on athletes and have found that successful athletes employ these techniques prior to important events.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/...ians-use-imagery-as-mental-training.html?_r=0

Here's how I do it. Mentally, prior to a dive I like to break it into waypoints and visualize what tasks I will do at each waypoint. I have found that this helps dramatically with the success of the dive.

For example, let's say I am planning a dive in Devil's Ear up the main line, to the roller coaster, to the Bats. The waypoints for this dive would be:

1. Installing primary reel -- self explanatory
2. Depositing deco cylinders -- self explanatory
3. The lips -- making sure to maintain team cohesion (lead diver pauses before entering, pauses after passing)
4. The keyhole -- making sure to maintain team cohesion
5. The park bench -- team cohesion
6. The duck under by the mud flats (you got it, team cohesion)
7. Installing the jump at the roller coaster
8. Installing the jump at the top of the hill
9. Installing the jump to the bats
10. Turn-around
11. Removing jump at the bats
12. Removing jump at the top of the hill
13. Removing the jump at the roller coaster
14. Team cohesion at the duck under by the mud flats
15. Teach cohesion at the park bench
16. Venting air during the ascent right before the keyhole (90' to 70')
17. Ensure group cohesion on the exit side of the keyhole
18. Ensure group cohesion at the exit side of the lips
19. Pick up decompression cylinder
20. Remove primary guideline
21. Decompress, while relaxing and thinking about the dive

Prior to getting in the water, I will think about each of these steps, what each persons role will be (what we will do), and communicate that with the team. "At the jump to the bats, Jim will install the jump reel, Ken will follow in the middle, and AJ will take up the rear" kind of conversations.

I find that the process of mentally visualizing each step, and talking about it with the team, helps make a very fluid, smooth, and successful dive. Additionally, communicating the expectations with everyone on the team will also help to ensure success. As a wise friend of mine once said, "if a person doesn't understand something on the surface, he sure isn't going to begin understanding it underwater."

 

[Basking Ridge Diver]

As a wise friend of mine once said, "if a person doesn't understand something on the surface, he sure isn't going to begin understanding it underwater."

I am going to use this going forward. Thanks.

 

[boulderjohn]

If the diver becomes lost off of the line s/he should STOP immediately and visualize where s/he last saw the line, how was the line configured – whether it was on the bottom, what color it is, along a wall, on the ceiling, on rock, on mud, on silt. The diver must STOP and visualize all of these things and then deploy a safety reel in order to conduct a logical, methodical search. I teach that the best odds are that the line is behind them since they swam off of the line. To play these odds the diver definitely needs to STOP immediately to maintain their position & not get further off of the line.

As a career educator, and coach certified to instruct two sports at a high level, I would like to use this example to discuss a key concept in the education of physical skills. That concept is that instruction and practice should replicate "game" circumstances to the greatest degree possible. When you create situations in instruction and practice that are different from what the students will encounter in the real world, you either ingrain bad habits or you fail to teach key skills properly.

An example I just used in another ScubaBoard thread refers to teaching ascent skills in the OW class. If you end each of the pool instructional sessions with students overweighted and on the knees and then have them ascend, the students will need to add air to the BCD to become neutrally buoyant before they ascend. The instructor TELLS the students in the classroom that they should NEVER use the inflator button to begin an ascent, but the practices and training in the pool REQUIRE the student to push the inflator button to begin the ascent.

Let's look at Jim's description of the procedure for finding a lost line and see how that would play out in instruction. We start with what we want the student to learn--critical visualization techniques prior to searching for a lost line. How can an instructor conduct an instructional session that will emphasize those key instructional skills? How will the instructor teach the student to stop immediately, visualize where the line was last seen, maintain their position so as not to get further off the line, and then head in the direction that those techniques tell him or her are the best way to go?

While you are thinking about it, evaluate a process that is commonly used for this skill in cave instruction--spinning the student in circles long enough to get the student totally disoriented, with no sense of of where he or she was prior to losing the line. How well does that teach those critical visualization skills?

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

While you are thinking about it, evaluate a process that is commonly used for this skill in cave instruction--spinning the student in circles long enough to get the student totally disoriented, with no sense of of where he or she was prior to losing the line. How well does that teach those critical visualization skills?

This a terrible way to teach that skill. It is totally unrealistic as to what actually happens.