Do-it-yourself exercises to improve diving skills without the help of an instructor?

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janosik

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Messages
38
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Location
New York
# of dives
50 - 99
Admittedly, diving skills come from the breadth of one's experience, and there is no better way to acquire them than to dive a lot. This being said, my diving opportunities are very limited*, so besides just diving and passively waiting for interesting experiences to jump at me, I would like to take a more active role in my learning process. Here by learning, I do not mean reading the scuba board, but rather engaging in some small exercises during the dive, or otherwise planning my dive in a way that would help me get the most out of it.

Classes are great, I have taken quite a few and plan to take many more, but the number of classes available to me is somewhat limited, as are the funds I am willing to invest in tuition, and arguably, classes anyway aim at providing only very basic familiarity with certain procedures and equipment, especially considering how almost everyone is seriously cutting corners wherever they can. Diving in a new environment is great, but hard to implement other than during vacation. Practising basic skills and playing with the equipment is some idea, but I suspect that repeatedly removing my BC or deploying my DSMB from the safety stop will only get me as far. Furthermore, there seems to be the whole range of skills that are apparently not being taught anywhere. For example, a number of posts on this board talk about things like situational awareness, holistic decision-making, multitasking, etc. Now, how does one actively develop any of these, other than by logging thousands of dives?

*While one might disagree with this statement, I would prefer to postpone this discussion to another thread.
 
First of all, you need to buy that download cable for your Suunto computer. That's how all the cool kids get to be great divers. :wink:

But seriously, if you aren't going to be diving very often, I would recommend lowering your expectations with regard to the kind of diver you aspire to become. It's going to be hard enough just to hang onto the level of proficiency you have right now. Practice what you can when you can.
 
Point taken, although I only aspire to become a safe diver, and I enjoy the process of learning as much as the end result. The frequency of my diving is largely a function of my skill, too. My most interesting dive opportunities around here are effectively solo dives, in a group of experiences folks with drysuits and rebreathers, who have better things to do than babysitting newbies like myself.
 
It sounds like you just need to increase your dive opportunities...

Have you considered joining one or more local dive clubs?

Continued education is another way to expand your dive circle. I found a lot of my regular dive buddies through an Advanced OW class that I took several years ago.

FWIW, you shouldn't feel self-conscious about diving with others who happen to have more experience. We were all beginners once. It shouldn't be a big deal for you to dive with divers using more advanced equipment. Just make sure that you know how to help them and they know how to help you in the event of an emergency. My buddy who just got a rebreather looks kind of like a newbie in the water. His buoyancy control ain't the best.
 
Well, there is a ton of reading material on the web, and some very good books. Things like Deco for Divers, and Steve Lewis's book, The Six Skills, will give you food for thought and a better understanding of some of the processes you are managing during a dive.

Multitasking, or task loading tolerance, is only built by practice. Such things as air-sharing or shooting a bag are great to task load yourself (and probably the simplest task loading is flooding and clearing a mask) but they're only truly useful if you simultaneously ask yourself to remain on depth and in position, starting with visual reference to the bottom, and proceeding eventually to doing such skills in midwater.

Situational awareness is also something you build with practice, and again by challenging yourself. My Fundies instructor taught me a mantra, "What's my depth? Where's my buddy? Look at the fish . . . " By cycling through the information you have about the dive in that kind of fashion, you build habits of awareness. Nowadays, if I go more than about 30 seconds without checking in on my buddy, I feel almost a sort of mental "itch" that isn't satisfied until I do it. Other things you can challenge yourself with are estimating what your pressure will be before you check it, and seeing how accurately you can predict the number. Pay attention to your depths and times, and at the end of the dive, estimate what your average depth was, and then check it on your computer. All these things build awareness.

You don't have to remove your BC, or do a maskless ascent from 75 feet, to build diving skills. Just using the dives you do to challenge yourself in small ways will steadily build facility in a lot of things.
 
Personally, I learn my skills while diving. For practice I go to the Y pool and do 1000 yards two to three times a week during adult lap with a snorkle and fins. Lungs and legs seem to answer most questions for me.
 
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