Weight question

[CathyE]

TSandM,
I was trying to sit, the pool wasn't large and so it was not deep enough at that end to kneel. Lying on my stomach might have worked.

 

[ladyfishdvr]

I am assuming this was all done at the beginning of the session from what you say. If you were bobbing at eye level what did you do to get to the bottom?

I raised my arms up from my waist and it pushed me down. When I got down a bit I swam down.
The instructor did make it a teaching moment, but it is near the end of the pool sessions and I was just fooling around. He humored me. I am the only student in the class and he is a very good instructor. I trust him completely.

I was able to sit at the bottom but floated up feet first. Next time down I was able to stay down with more weight in the trim pockets of the BC. but my feet still wanted to float. Without the wet suit I was able to sit on the bottom in an earlier session without my feet going up.

I asked to wear the hood and gloves so I could see how they feel and practice using them. The quarry where I will take my check out dives is going to be cold (50's) and I did not want it to be the first time using the gloves and hood. He agreed and normally does bring them for students to try out.

I have open heel fins and have a 7 mil boot. I had a weight belt on as well as weights in the BC. We tried a variety of configurations and will work on it again next week. I do have long legs. I am thinking we just did not have the weights in the right spots and my breathing is still probably deeper than it should be.

 

[TSandM]

I'm curious -- how do you "sit" in scuba gear? I'm quite sure that, if I tried to sit on my butt with my legs out in front of me, the tank would pull me over backwards, and my legs would go straight up in the air. Even if I managed it, it would be terribly uncomfortable. I can't imagine trying to make students hold that position.

As my sig line says, you can't fight physics. If your legs want to float, they want to float -- if you are wearing heavy neoprene and have long legs, that is actually quite likely to happen. I remember, when I started diving with my favorite dive buddy, he was diving wet (in Puget Sound, so a thick suit). His trim was always off, head-down and feet up. When he switched to a dry suit, the problem went completely away. Some of it may have been practice, but the change was instantaneous and temporally correlated with the change in suit.

 

[elan]

I second that. When I was doin the pool portion of my DM class the instructor was insisting on us kneeling. I had to add 6lb to my belt to be able to kneel comfortably.

CathyE, were you kneeling? It's not easy to kneel if you are weighted correctly. I think if somebody had put a 20 lb weight belt across my legs, I could have knelt and been stable -- but why? We have our students lie on their stomachs or rest on their fintips, whichever is more comfortable. They're much more stable that way.

 

[261311]

I'm curious -- how do you "sit" in scuba gear? I'm quite sure that, if I tried to sit on my butt with my legs out in front of me, the tank would pull me over backwards, and my legs would go straight up in the air. Even if I managed it, it would be terribly uncomfortable. I can't imagine trying to make students hold that position.

I've sat with my fins out in front, obviously knelt with my fins under me flat down, but sitting can still be done with a combination of the two, I usually have one fin tucked under my other leg sideways sort of half sitting, half kneeling. I've also done the zen-Buddha crossed legs for fun but I wouldn't count that in either definitive comfort or control. You're right though, having done all of that recently you tend to have to focus on putting your center of gravity forward so your tank doesn't pull you back. Took a lot of trial and error to figure that one out, sadly. My instructor had a student who wasn't very confidence in water and would break surface regularly so he ended up having a chat with us to all be stomach down, fin tips touching bottom so that we could all have a chance to calm her down and "jetting" wouldn't be such an easy option in that position because she'd have to right herself upwards first. After a class of her nearly doing it twice, she never did again and got a lot more confidence as we did our drills.

Honestly speaking, the entire point of neutral buoyancy, trim, etc. should have such a wider focus in the basic open water level. No, not everyone will be "perfect" at it, but there's not much for opportunity to practice when it's not really a drill. Ascend, descend, sit on bottom and do drills or actively swim. I get the logistics of it, especially because not everyone has a huge pool but it would be such a better learning experience relating to actual diving.

 

[ladyfishdvr]

Well I was trying to sit with my feet out and it was not working so well but maybe its not really an issue then. Once I go for the open water dives I am sure this will work out better. I don't think I will be sitting on the bottom of the quarry. We will work on the weights again at the quarry anyway when I am in the full wetsuit. Perhaps I am overthinking this.

 

[TSandM]

It makes me incredibly sad to read these stories. I remember taking my open water class, and being VERY frustrated because I couldn't kneel without falling over. And you know what? In my entire subsequent diving career, all thousand plus dives of it, I have never encountered a situation on a dive where being able to kneel comfortably was necessary or desirable. Why do we frustrate students with trying to do something THEY DON'T NEED TO DO?

In my husband's classes, students neither kneel nor sit. They lie on their stomachs (which is generally pretty easy to do), rest on their fin tips, or float. It's amazing how easy those things are for students to do, compared with kneeling. And those positions are directly analogous to actually DIVING, and what divers do. If everyone learned this way, we'd have fewer frustrated novices, and fewer divers kneeling on the coral to reposition their masks.

Excuse my soapbox, but I feel very strongly about this.

 

[diverrex]

It makes me incredibly sad to read these stories. I remember taking my open water class, and being VERY frustrated because I couldn't kneel without falling over. And you know what? In my entire subsequent diving career, all thousand plus dives of it, I have never encountered a situation on a dive where being able to kneel comfortably was necessary or desirable. Why do we frustrate students with trying to do something THEY DON'T NEED TO DO?

In my husband's classes, students neither kneel nor sit. They lie on their stomachs (which is generally pretty easy to do), rest on their fin tips, or float. It's amazing how easy those things are for students to do, compared with kneeling. And those positions are directly analogous to actually DIVING, and what divers do. If everyone learned this way, we'd have fewer frustrated novices, and fewer divers kneeling on the coral to reposition their masks.

Excuse my soapbox, but I feel very strongly about this.

How is it that so many good instructors know how to teach yet there are so many others that still do it poorly? And what good are agencies if they are not pushing best practices down to all their instructors? Or do they and there are just too many instructors not paying attention?

 

[tincan715]

How is it that so many good instructors know how to teach yet there are so many others that still do it poorly? And what good are agencies if they are not pushing best practices down to all their instructors? Or do they and there are just too many instructors not paying attention?

Today I made a purchase at a major chain store, and the receipt invited me to take a survey and share my experience; I'm sure everyone reading this has seen those survey requests many times. PADI has never asked me any questions about my training experiences, nor have I heard of anyone else mentioning something like that. Either the certification agencies aren't interested in feedback, or they are not sufficiently sophisticated to realize it's a necessary aspect of customer service. IMHO, if they're not asking the customers about the quality of the end product it's not likely they can do much to improve it.