What is Avanced Buoyancy Class?

[cleung]

Experience is the best class for buoyancy. Just keep diving.

 

[Adobo]

Air in. Air out. Big puffs. Small puffs. there's not much more to it. I do agree that its takes practice. But if you dive every month. It shouldn't take a year to learn.

Wow... I must really suck. My bouyancy just goes out the window when doing an air share and shooting a surface marker bouy at the same time.

I guess diving every weekend might not be sufficient for some of us to get our bouyancy nailed down.

 

[H2Andy]

Wow... I must really suck. My bouyancy just goes out the window when doing an air share and shooting a surface marker bouy at the same time.

just make keeping your depth primary, and all else secondary

check dept -- pull out bag -- check depth and adjust -- get spool -- check
depth and adjust -- clip spool to bag -- check depth and adjust ...

and so on

as they say in flying, "fly the plane." the most important thing is keeping
depth, so keep depth. everything else can wait.

 

[boulderjohn]

Air in. Air out. Big puffs. Small puffs. there's not much more to it. I do agree that its takes practice. But if you dive every month. It shouldn't take a year to learn.
Too bad the agencies don't make those skills part of the OW test. Isn't that how some have died or gotten sick?

I took my OW, and then I did some more buoyancy training beyond that. I worked hard. After about 50-60 dives, I had a revelation that I was finally feeling pretty good at it.

When, after 100 dives, I worked on my DM rating, I learned I was not as good as my cocky attitude had led me to believe. I worked harder and got better.

Right now, I can do some what some would consider wondrous things in a demonstration buoyancy exercise. I have had people come up to me after dives to ask me about something I have done, like doing a drift dive along the bottom of a reef upside down with my head a few inches off the bottom while I looked under ledges, but I know better than to think I am good at it. I have a friend who is far better than I. He is doing some exercises in a program that are testing him to the limit. I know I could not do them--way beyond my skill.

I think the general rule of buoyancy is this: about 20 dives after you think you have mastered it, you realize you still suck.

Take the class.

 

[Walter]

You know...

It amazes me that people can be so skeptical of a class that fills an obvious need.

I don't think anyone objects to the class filling the need. I think the objection is to the OW class that doesn't teach the things it should in the first place. The "need" shouldn't exist. When an OW class is designed to have a flaw that will be fixed by another class later, that's a problem that should be addressed or is it merely a good marketing plan taking precedence over training?

 

[all4scuba05]

my thoughts exactly

 

[all4scuba05]

Wow... I must really suck. My bouyancy just goes out the window when doing an air share and shooting a surface marker bouy at the same time.

I guess diving every weekend might not be sufficient for some of us to get our bouyancy nailed down.

I didn't mean the buoyancy throughout the dive. I meant when you first go down. It seems after a drop many don't get it right. To get it right while doing what you said takes skills which are only learned with experience. What I want to say is that during OW class, in the pool, if you can't learn to get it right, you shouldn't be taken to the ocean yet.

Unfortunately OW classes, for the most part, don't feel its a priority. So you get newly certified divers in the ocean who dive without being bouyant from the start.

 

[PerroneFord]

I'm going to take a different tack here:

<rant on>

When I took O/W my buoyancy wasn't good, and I didn't know what trim was. I was able to get neutral in the pool and do my ocean dives ok, but buoyancy takes time.

In coming back to SCUBA last fall, my buoyancy was all over the place. The difference between myself and most people who's stories I read here is that I *WORKED ON IT*.

I'd spend 8 hours a week in the pool dialing things in. All too often I hear on this board about how bad the instructor is, or how bad the class is. You know what? Maybe so, but its YOUR butt there in the water. Work on it until you get it right. For some it comes quickly, for others it takes months. Not everyone learns at the same rate. Fact of life.

People choose not to educate themselves about instructors. They choose not to educate themselves about the environment they are about to enter. They choose a SCUBA class out of a magazine and are suprised when they have substandard skills. Want to learn buoyancy and skill down cold? Come take a week long O/W class from a good cave instructor. Class will be harder. You might have someone tell you the TRUTH about your diving. Suck it up and improve.

Personally, I think the bar is set FAR too low in this sport. Class is too short, divers get certified too easily, and we deal with the ramifications far too often.

<rant off>

 

[Adobo]

I didn't mean the buoyancy throughout the dive. I meant when you first go down. It seems after a drop many don't get it right. To get it right while doing what you said takes skills which are only learned with experience. What I want to say is that during OW class, in the pool, if you can't learn to get it right, you shouldn't be taken to the ocean yet.

Unfortunately OW classes, for the most part, don't feel its a priority. So you get newly certified divers in the ocean who dive without being bouyant from the start.

IMHO, getting bouyancy control is not a "I get it" or "I don't get it" thing. While it is just a function of inflating/deflating something and inhale/exhale, it is far more complicated to actually do. And it is one thing to think that you have yourself neutral while you are swimming, it is another to do it when you are completely motionless. And yet another thing to do it while you are doing something like an out of air drill or trying to a maskless drill in mid-water. And yet something else when you are trying to do two things at once like air sharing and deploying an SMB in midwater. And by the way, there is bouyancy control where your depth varies by + or - 5feet while you are completely motionless. Then there is bouyancy control where your depth varies + or - 2 feet while you are motionless.

During OW classes, they look to anchor down the new diver so that they do not polaris to the surface. In my class, we were shown the concept of how to establish neutral. Everything from there has been a work in progress. I wish they could have made me "good" at bouyancy out of the gate. But quite frankly, I needed in-water experience in shallow, bunny slope dives to figure it out a little bit at a time. Then I needed to go to an instructor who was an "expert" in bouyancy and an "expert" in teaching bouyancy to for more training and tips.

So I guess what I am getting at is that I personally have an appreciation for any instruction that helps a diver improve their bouyancy. IMHO, of course.

 

[PerroneFord]

Exactly Adobo. Which is why I now practice skills and maskless stuff in 3ft of water. When I got asked to do an asent 1ft at a time from 25-3ft, I learned where the bar was. Add maskless, or gas sharing to that, and now you've got something. Ask the person to not go on an ocean tour during all this, and you MIGHT be getting good.