Who helped you with the "how"?

It's pretty easy to teach people WHAT they ought to be doing while they dive. It's a whole different story to teach them HOW to do it. I'm quite sure that there are all kinds of people here who have had light bulb moments as a result of a talented teacher doing something to help them figure out HOW to do something . . . I'd like to hear those stories.

For me, two stand out: When I was trying to learn the frog kick, I just kept trying to do it backwards. My instructor got behind me, grabbed my fins, and patterned my legs through the kick, and it was instantly clear how to do it correctly. No amount of explanation, land practice or demonstration had done for me what thirty seconds of kinesthetic learning did.

The other was being shown on video that when I went to get things out of my left pocket, I rolled to the right and dumped my dry suit without being aware of it, which then set me up for buoyancy problems with the subsequent skill. I'd been doing that for months without realizing WHY I was having so much trouble.

So, who helped you with the "how", and what did they do?

For my entire life I have had a problem with converting things from the printed page to reality. In all my years, 72 of them, it has been much easier for me to see something done once rather than to decipher it from print unless it was something that I was really interested in and could readily absorb the information. A good example is how to read my first dive computer. Although most of the instructions were probably written by some Chinaman who had a problem with English, a DM went through it for about five minutes and I caught on immediately.

I helped a friend with the "how" recently.

He was doing a discover scuba with an instructor, and I was just along for the ride. He was very vertical in the water, and when he started kicking, he would swim up without realizing it (yes, he didn't notice the bottom getting further away). His instructor would just signal to him to drop down a bit and waved his had around indicating a horizontal position. However, my friend didn't get it. After a while, I went over to him, grabbed his shoulder and his leg and put him in a horizontal position.

After the dive, he commented that he understood what I did and appreciated it, since he thought he was already in a horizontal position

I have had several of these moments. For me the most memorable was in underwater navigation. My mentor at the time who no longer dives for medical reasons not only showed me how to do course changes and read the compass but also told me WHY he did them that way and what happened when he did not. For me how is not nearly as important to understanding as why I need to do it that way. Something I carry with me when teaching and use. I am fortunate in that all of my students to this point have been very into knowing why we are doing things. It shows that they are thinking and planning on their own. I have found that these are the ones who usually stay with the activity on a regular basis.

Breaking down a skill (or concept) into its component parts, or analysing a problem and determining cause and correction is called.....TEACHING! So is doing demonstration quality examples of the desired outcomes. When the teacher has enough experience to have encountered problems or difficulties on a number of occasions, they get better at correction or remediation. The teacher may be an instructor, and experienced diver willing to mentor, or just someone who can tactfully point out something they observed and suggest it should be corrected. There are a lot of teachers in the world, not just teaching scuba but teaching welding, or algebra, or gymnastics, who may not themselves understand the "how." I think the discussion here points out the value of teaching not just the "what", but the "how" and to teach the how I think it helps to teach the "why." Hence the theory and physics part of dive training. Tell me why I should ascend slowly, (to avoid serious injury or death) then tell me what to do, (dump my air from my bc, kick slowly, etc.) and I I struggle, show me how to do it right by going over how to make sure I have vented all the air from my bc, maybe even talking about proper weighting and how empty tanks are lighter than fulls ones and etc. To all the truly fine scuba teachers out there, including those who taught me, and who continue to do so here on scubaboard, thank you!
DivemasterDennis

Most of the skills I was taught came easy with a little work but my white whale was the back kick. For over a year i worked on that kick with no results. It took two instructors to fine tune that but the moment it clicked I almost spit my reg out i was so happy. My instructor had me break trim to get it started then it clicked but he was not going to let that fade away so he made me do a full hour dive backward so it would stick. We still run backward now and then just for the fun of it and it makes me think about all the work that went into to that little kick. It might be funny but I spent many hours on the coffee table watching videos trying to get it. To the point I was in full gear and having my wife move my fins. When I want something look out!

Well I've commented in a couple of class reports on what I consider to be one instructor's exceptional ability to teach the "how" vs the "what," at the end of one of those reports I think I even used those terms :-D.
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/di...eport-s-3-fundies-sessions-3-months-long.html
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/di...ver-class-report-doug-mudry-march-2011-a.html

I've added one additional example below that I don't think I covered in the other two reports:
Drills (S-drill, valve drill, etc.):
Doug started out by playing demonstration videos in classroom setting... he typically played them at least twice - one time just to watch them, and then another time, where he explained exactly was happening each step of the process. Then, when we would get on site, he would demo the drill twice if it didn't involve the regulator being in his mouth - once all the way through, and once explaining as he went. Then, he would have us face each other, and he would walk each of us through the drill talking us through the first time. Then he would have us repeat it until we were completely comfortable doing it on land. We did not enter the water for drills until we had mastered them on land. Once in the water, he demonstrated them, then had us repeat them multiple times. That was teaching HOW to do those drills IMHO.

Come on, there must be more people out there with good stories of how something an instructor did helped you figure something out? Something that helped with mask skills, or better buoyancy control, or better buddy skills . . .

Steve Millington put me on a picnic table to work on my non-existent back kick during my Fundies class. He went through the motion by moving my fins until I got a feel for the movements I'd have to replicate underwater. Thank you, Steve!

Of what I have been taught so far and of all the advice received the most important thing I was told was to 'watch the fish'. It was taken quite literally and my diving took a very simplistic turn. Diving is thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with them.