pre fundies tips tricks?

I just picked up a great tip from a previous post. How to find the OPV string without the knob on the end by circling the valve with your finger and the string wraps around your finger. I am a sponge for these kinds of tips on gear and procedures. I am just about finished gearing up and when time and money allow I will be taking the fundies class. Untill then can anyone offer any other tips I can be practicing?I have turned into a real zealot for diving and want to be ready and get the most out of the class when I take it. Can someone recommend an instructor in the St.Louis area?

The biggest things to practice before Fundies are buoyancy, trim, position and awareness. The specific skills and drills are best taught by the instructor, so you don't ingrain bad habits.

But it's fun to dive and see how long you can hang in the water without moving ANYTHING. Get your buddy to give you feedback on your trim (a tilted hand works well for this). Work on your awareness . . . dive with a mantra: What's my depth? Where's my buddy? Look at the fish . . . Practice the basic 5 and try to maintain your depth, your position, and your buddy awareness. If you have ropes or pilings, do ascent drills -- go up 3' and hold, 6' and hold, back down in 3' increments.

If you play with all these things, you'll have a really solid base from which to take the class.

As far as instructors, Ed Gabe in Kentucky would probably be your closest option, or if you are interested in the UTD classes, James Mott is in Detroit, I believe. But many of both the GUE and UTD instructors will travel to give a class, if you can get at least three students together who want to take it.

- No accessory finning! If you think you're unstable, figure out how to correct it without using your hands. Head heavy? Move your fins further back. Feet heavy? Move your fins further forwards. But don't try to solve it using your hands. Heavy fins help here.
- Practice not finning at all and seeing what happens. That will reveal your problems pretty quickly ;-)
- Get used to having 4-5 feet above the platform be your target depth. I kind of had my mental setpoint as 1-2 feet above, and it leaves you little window for error. I'm finding it hard to get used to a little bit more above the platform visually, and I think it would help if I had tried it beforehand.
- SLOW DOWN ;-). Don't ever get so involved in a drill (valve drill, SMB launching, whatever) that you forget your team, your buoyancy, or your trim. If you notice your buoyancy going, pause the trill, get everything back just right, then start it up again.
-Find some good buddies and practice.

EDIT: Lynne got there first on the staying still thing. One more thing to add, which goes in tandem with what she said: Once you've got decent buoyancy, start working on your trim. The most important thing is to realize what 0 degree trim feels like. At first it often feels like you're going over head-first. So video feedback or a tilted hand from your buddy can help you realize that that's the feeling you need to replicate. Once you know what perfect feels like, it's much easier to get there automatically.

I have been "practicing" with my fundies team with at least 1 (sometimes 2) fundies graduates. We have been focussing on things like getting our buoyancy really solid, working on our trim, and working on a few skills (mostly the basic 5, which ends up being a good way to test control of buoyancy, breathing control, and trim while doing a task and it helps get you used to having your mask off). I would say that that alone seems to be enough to prepare us to learn in fundies. I might find out that i am wrong though.

It's kind of fun to assume the horizontal skydiving position while swimming in a pool or such just above the bottom in order to reaffirm proper trim...

ppbt

TSandM:

The biggest things to practice before Fundies are buoyancy, trim, position and awareness. The specific skills and drills are best taught by the instructor, so you don't ingrain bad habits.

Click to expand...

I agree with Lynne ! Good luck with your class!

I did a primer and hadsome tips before fundies. Thought I had my trim and buoyancy sorted. Big mistake. There's a huge difference between moving around in trim and maintaining buoyancy and hovering.

Most of what you do in fundies will be the latter. to give an idea on your next dive, find a spot on bottom. Can be a rock or a weight. Now hold position 30cm away from rock and 30cm above bottom. Now stay there. How long can you hold? In fundies we would be on this for half hour to an hour whilst the team was running through drills. It wa the singular most tiring thing i'd ever done in water.

And you can forget about the gue standards of plus minus 1m of target depth. Evertyime I ascended more than even 10cm running a drill I got the thumbs down sign. What they ask for is a lot morethan the standards.

The biggest thing was the back kick. Simply put without a decent back kick holding position becomes a much harder job especially if current is pushing you forward.
tbh I only truly mastered this post fundies but it was fundies that set me on the right path.

Buoyancy, trim, positioning like everyone else said, back kick is very useful in maintaining position, do not even start working on the back kick w/o sorting the trim and balance, just a waste of time. Once the trim and balance are dialed in the back kick is very simple.