Skills to have polished before going to AOW

[NAM001]

I like your post. and buoyancy is a difficult to master. what I have done and still do is watch the you tube flics of the guy doing donning and doffing of gear while maintaining depth and trim. It is a skill that will never et enough practice. A pool is a great place to do this. Most think that the simple ACT of dropping a stage bottle and then picking it up is no great feat. It is a great feat for most. There are a dozen ways to trim and weight yourself to stay on depth. few of them work when it comes to dropping off or picking up a piece of gear or shoot a buoy. You reach and you roll and end belly up or in a number of other positions. But when you get it right you know it and you can do anything. Do you need to MASTER buoyancy to take AOW, no. Should you be in control of your buoyancy and not buoyancy being in control of you, yes. Diving is so much more fun that way.

As someone who plans on taking AOW once the water becomes a liquid again, I like the timing of this thread, it'll give me something to work on through the winter in the pool. I've noticed something too... every single reply mentions buoyancy control! There must be a reason for that










So my question is, is there a good way to practice this besides just swimming around? I'm thinking of bringing something to act as a reference, just not sure what yet.

 

[TSandM]

Two buoyancy props I love in the pool are a hula hoop with a weight belt, and a 4 pound hard weight. Tie a string to the hula hoop and loop it around the weight belt, so the hoop floats in mid water. Then practice swimming through it without touching it. When you can reliably do that, practice swimming into it and stopping. When you can do that, stop and flood and clear your mask. Then take your mask off and put it back on. When you can do all of that without dragging the hoop off the bottom (or pushing it down into the bottom) you are doing pretty well with your buoyancy. Now do the mask skills with your eyes CLOSED

Pick up the 4 pound weight. Adjust your buoyancy so you don't crash into the bottom. Now put it down, and adjust again. Keep practicing until you can do this with virtually NO change in depth at all. You will have to learn to use your breath for buoyancy control, because there's no way you can adjust fast enough with the power inflator!

 

[rongoodman]

Doesn't sound like anything I'll be doing with the rebreather any time soon!