how about breathing entirely - inhalation and exhalation - through your mouth? .
If we are talking about devleoping breathing patterns, then we have to talk about breathing patterns. There is no similarity at all between how ones breathes from a regulator (fully exhaling, slow inhale) and breathing froma snorkel (keeping lung volume for buoyancy, sharp exhale to half lung volume). There is no benefit to and in fact there is a hazard to, exhaling beyond a certain point on a snorkel.
The problem with most people who think snorkels are useful is that they only use them in the kinds of conditions (pools, lakes, and similar conditions) that give them the false confidence to think that a snorkel would somehow be useful in bad surface conditions. They don't every have to learn the exaggerated breathing pattern that is necessary in rough conditions when the snorkel is
always full of water. And then they go to the snorkel in an emergency and drown. The only time a snorkel should be in the mouth is in the 'only during Open Water Diver training" type situations of people having to wait on the surface for their turn.
If mouth only breathing is a useful skill to practice, then what possible benefit is there to practicing it the wrong way on a snorkel when practicing it the right way on scuba is available?
I love free diving. I even love free diving in a pool. It just has nothing other than a historical accident to do with scuba. In times before BCDs, this was not the case, because in those times people on scuba had to decend from the purpose positively buoyant, and handle being negatively buoyant underwater.
But the breathing pattern was still not even slightly close, just the constant ballast and wetsuits compression ideas.
I learned the frog kick many years ago, while learning the breast stroke which, as I vaguely seem to recall, involved - ah, yes, swimming at the surface, I am sure that must be right. I am thankful I learned to do so. If you cannot frog kick at the surface without your feet coming out of the water, a reasonable question would be whether you actually know how to frog kick.No, that is simply wrong. It does.
Why learn how to do something that is nothing like a kick with fins in order learn how to kick with fins? Why learn swimming out of trim which one must do in order for the fins to not leave the water on the surface? Why learn to how to half kick because otherwise the fins slap the surface.
You are begging for something to be learned badly just to justify a historical quirk.
In scuba, the only surface kicking that makes sense, power wise, is on the back because the full kick stroke can be done. I personally prefer (if I am stuck swimming on the surface) to ride belly down on the gear, sthe ticking my face in the water to check things out, and free diving down and back to the BCD raft. But these are both things that involved kicking wrong, and are just dealing with a less than ideal situation.
But, none of those situations suggest that snorkelling has 'nothing to do' with scuba, or scuba training.
Yes it does. It is amazing how long people put up with computers being laid out like TV (landscape mode) simply because of the historical hiccup of early computers having to use TV monitors. There were even people who like you managed to come up with endless back rationalizations for it being that way. The minute people (and not computer designers) become free to choose how to look at their computer screeens everyone and their mother voted to look at the in portrait mode. ANd now the vast majority of computer users used portrait mode almost exclusively, and only occasionally switch to landscape when say looking at a long form movie.
Now here's the fact: Standards require us to make students swim a distance. FOr most instructors, that means swimming them some distance in the pool. Which shows nothing. I do my MFS surface swims over a shallow section, and then a hook over deep water. I have had people who showed no previous nervousness decide that that was where they get leave the class, at that hook over deep water.
AT that moment, the snorkel can be justified, and I can also, after the swim, let people know that snorkeling a new dive site (not trundling along in scuba gear huffing through a snorkel, but actually snorkeling and free-diving) can be useful. I also tell them at that point to take off their snorkel and never wear on scuba, you know like their instrcutor is doing. And then I tell them they can't because there are silly skills like snorkel reg exhcange they still have to do, and some waiting on the surface they have to do.
---------- Post added March 24th, 2015 at 10:15 PM ----------
It's pretty obvious to me that you have never taught anyone how to scuba dive. Perhaps you should leave the lofty pronouncements about what is and isn't effective training technique to those of us who do ...
(It's weird when someone with significantly less experience tries to play the experience card on someone else. Why does anyone try and play it at all? There is
always someone with more experience and knowledge out there, and playing it always makes the person playing it look bad, especially when used with the ever included "those of us" type phrases. There is probably only one person typing at your computer now, so why act like there are more of you there? "I" is always a better word.
I have way, way, way, more experience than you (even if you get to include the us in there), and
I agree with everything he is saying. Which makes him what, right, or wrong? Neither is my guess. Address his points. Avoid the as hominem.)
Or you could leave those pronoucements to people who teach diving full-time, for a living, rather than on the odd weekend.
In that case, he goes back to being right. The snorkel teaches nothing that scuba could not teach better, and only encourages bad habits that proper training has to then remove. (Other than perhaps the inital no-mask, snorkel only breathing exercise, which some people find useful. I just do it on scuba because this is scuba diving and bubbles will have to be dealt with all the time anyway.)
The snorkel a crutch for people who are worrying about paying for airfills when training people to use scuba. Or it's not.
The snorkel is a historical "human tail" that just happened to get attached to diving in its evolution. Or it's not.
The snorkel is something that people try and rationalize because we have not managed to get it out of scuba training yet. Or it is not.
The people who dive the most don't use snorkels because it's hard to tuck the mask into the fin pocket with a snorkel on it. And snorkel clips are death to long hair, and neoprene snorkel keepers wear out too fast on anything but the tiny bore snorkels, and those cause too much tubulence to breathe effectively from.
