Reaching your valves?

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I've been helping a friend out for a recheck in Fundies. He's making great progress with other skills, but just touching his valves appears a struggle.

Dare I say it, but I suspect that at least part of this problem is performance anxiety! I bet that if you gave your friend a Fundies card now that he could probably reach those valves no problem!

In addition to all the other advice, probably the biggest suggestion is to slow it down and relax, remove the performance anxiety as much as you can.

I'd also break up the valve drill and look at each component of the drill in isolation, one valve at a time.

Start with the isolator, opening and closing it. Try it with both hands and see if there is a discernible difference. For you as mentor, you want to be looking at position. If they are feet down the tanks will be sliding down the back. If they are head forward, the distance between shoulder and valves is increased making it harder to reach. Correct those two positions first, head is normally jammed back and twisted slightly to get the room you need.

I find that the isolator is easier to open with my right hand and easier to close with my left. I believe that this is due to the biomechanics of the wrist. Ask your friend whether they find any particular movements harder than the others, if you you can change how they do the drill. I think it's allowable in GUE SoP, for example, to open the isolator with the right and close it with the left.

Switch to the right post. Again you are looking for a horizontal position and head back to ensure that you are minimising the distance between shoulder and valve. The elbow should also be close to the side of the head. When you batwing the elbow out, it is harder. Also look at their fingers and how they grasp the valve knob. Because I suffer from quite bad RSI, I acutally use a different grip to close a valve than I do to open it. Think of alternative grips. It's also worth considering whether they should go straight for the valve - I use to find it easier to grab the first stage to begin with, then work my fingers out to find the valve knob and grip the way I wanted to "in control" rather than wildly flailing for the valve.

The do the same for the left post. Work out what your friends strengths and weaknesses are. Embrace the former, train the latter!

I'd also suggest that doing less is more. If someone is finding valve drills hard, yes they need to do more of them - but space them out. Repeatedly attempting valve drills is just going to build frustration that results in a loss of relaxation. Tense muscles aren't as pliable as relaxed ones.

Hope this helps.
 
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Gareth, thank you for copying over your essay on shutdowns! I had not yet linked to it, but I was going to. It's the best piece on the topic I have ever run into, and I cite it often.
 
Another thing to do with a drysuit in the water is to go face down and inflate it and get a bit of a bubble in your legs and stretch your arms out in front of you to pull the torso up and hike the crotch up. Then migrate the bubble up your body and stretch out the drysuit as you go up so that you've got full mobility in your shoulders and arms. Once you've got it in the right position like that while you're in the water it'll tend to stay that way throughout the dive.
 
Today my friend could reach and turn his valves.

A little more stretching and I bet he nails the V drill.

Thanks again for all your great advice.

It's working :)!
 
I made a valve drill training aid so that you can prance around your house while doing valve drills with something a LOT lighter than a set of doubles. Hopefully it helps out some other people, too. I put a couple more in a picture gallery.

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/167822
 
I made a valve drill training aid so that you can prance around your house while doing valve drills with something a LOT lighter than a set of doubles. Hopefully it helps out some other people, too. I put a couple more in a picture gallery.


Looking at this thing all I can think is, how stupid, how completely moronic, how just stupid....I am! I feel like a complete idiot now for wearing my back-breaking doubles around the house doing valve drill practice.

Well done!
 
Another fantastic resource for flexibility and mobility is the blog at MobilityWOD A quick search for shoulders should turn up quite a few valuable exercises.
 
I made a valve drill training aid so that you can prance around your house while doing valve drills with something a LOT lighter than a set of doubles. Hopefully it helps out some other people, too. I put a couple more in a picture gallery.

ScubaBoard Gallery - training_aid_2

This is a pretty neat device, I like it.

I was practicing with my doubles set up on a work bench, then stood up on some blocks to make the valves lower than normal. This way I practiced the "V" drill and got some stretching in at the same time. I also wore my gloves.

Your rig looks a whole lot easier to "lug" around the house.
 
This is a pretty neat device, I like it.

Except that the entire point of the valve-drill is (was?) supposed to allow the diver to "get" the connection between right/left posts and regulators (i.e. the act of breathing down the regs drills into you what regulator is attached to what posts)

Seems like you lose that correlation here and a lot of the benefit. No ?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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