Did Scuba build your water confidence?

Just curious as to who all feels that by learning to scuba they became a better water person. Swimming, treading water and even skin diving and snorkling. Here is why I ask and my story

I took a Discover Scuba Class in Hawaii in 2007 long before I could even swim. I was as one can imagined a little nervous but kind of figured I have been in shootings and high speed chases so if they did not kill me water wouldnt LOL. (Seriously) any way I had confidence as well in the gear because people dive all the time and live so all I would have to do is relax right? As I started my adventure I became addicted also . Well when I got home and went down to the dive shop with my new love in life I signed up and paid my money and went home. as I was sitting at the house reading over the material I realized it stated there was a mask fins and snorkle requirement (No problem there I could snorkle all the time) but this 10 minute tread water???? Oh lordy so I went back to the shop to demand a refund. The owner was awesome in that he took me in to the pool and worked with me and got me to floating away So I took the test and passed somehow LOL. Now comes the part that I said (Probably foolishly but still said it) I wont ever take gear off in the water so why learn to swim? So a couple years passed and I was ready for the DiveMaster class (So I thought LOL)

As I was taking the divemaster class I discovered unwittingly I had learned how to swim by just playing in the water. I passed the swim though it was no record time I still passed it I then took a swimming school class to work on the fundies and found that I was not even scared to venture out in the deep end. The mere thought of going out in the deep would scare me years ago if I could not touch a rail or have a life jacket on. Now I found I was just swimming and floating away having the time of my life. The neat things they would do to encourage people like throwing rings in the deep and getting you to go see if you could get them was a blast too.

The purpose of the skills is to asess water confidence for diving. Something I passed years ago but really was at best barely able too. I found though diving presented me with everything I needed to be confident. I became comfortable in the water over time. I became happy to swim rather then to be scared of it.

Is it just me or has anyone else found that diving has made all the difference in their confidence?

I started diving when I was 66, six years ago. I already had confidence in the water by then. What it did for me was to want to go to the ocean as many times as possible at great expense since I live in Ohio which is landlocked so it has, over the years, emptied my 'play money' bank account.

My case is weird. Having pretty much grown up on the water (lots of time at the ocean and on Long Island Sound doing all sorts of stuff in rough surf and off my uncles' boat)--since maybe age 6? Eventually got very into snorkelling and skin diving (as it's called nowadays) into my early teens. However, though I would dive down 8-10 feet to get shells I had one problem. When entering water (rough or calm) from shore to swim or snorkel and approaching say chest high water knowing that a little more and I'm over my head I felt anxious. So, 45 years later comes my OW cert. And shortly after Deep Cert. So when diving, I never had any anxieties about depth--be it 10' or 130'. And of course, I shore dive all the time without giving it a thought--I guess it's because I have a way to breathe when I'm in over my head (?). But you know, when not on scuba and wandering in from shore I get to chest high and damn, I STILL get those heebee jeebees a bit. I think whoa, getting deep here. Tough to explain.

definitely.
I learned to swim ias a kid in group lessons (15 kids per instructor) from lifeguards at the local pool. It was more drownproofing than any type of real efficient swimming but it did the job.

I started out sailing and sailboarding. Contact with the water was limited to a rudimentary form of ocean swimming during what would have been a boating emergency.

When I took scuba lessons, I barely passed the swim test (300 yards in 10 minutes, tread water for 15 minutes, swim 25 yards underwater on a single breath). I could swim, but I was not a swimmer. Because I chose to become a certified scientific diver, dm, and assistant instructor, I had to become a swimmer to pass those tests, including the yearly water skills test required of NPS divers. I actually paid a coach for private stroke improvement in order to do it. I began to swim laps and discovered I actually liked distance swimming. It was the beginning of my continuing education to becoming a waterman.

Today, I swim competitively, like open water swimming, dive my brains out, teach lifeguarding, swimming and finswimming, and so on. I recently redisovered sailing, found surfing was not my calling. My continuing education as a waterman this summer involves learning to packraft and use a standup paddleboard. I can trace all this directly back to scuba.

I have never had issues with swimming but my wife has become a pretty good swimmer and very confident in her swimming ability since becoming a diver. Before she became a diver she was afraid to get in OW deeper than about 4 feet. Now she doesn't care...the deeper the better.

For me yes no. For my wife, certified at age 50 (10 years ago), absolutely. My wife Debbie, since becoming a diver, has jumped off a bot in 10 foot high waves, bobbed in those conditions, descended and enjoyed a dive, bobbed around the surface in just as awful conditions, climbed back on a bobbing boat, all with a smile on her face. Before certification and gaining some experience, she was not crazy about being on the ocean i=on a calm day, swimming or on a boat. She is amazing, best dive buddy ever, and fearless ( though not crazy ). I think scuba definitely makes people more comfortable in or on the water.
DivemasterDennis

I first learned to dive at a very early age and then Jaws happened! :shocked2: While I was quite comfortable in boats, a couple of brushes with spinner sharks off of Ponce Inlet, found me comfortable only in lakes and rivers. Catching a bonnet head out of Lake Monroe kind of shattered that slim hope as well. Fast forward 20+ years and I finally got certified... in a lake. I then got my AOW... in a spring. Then I worked all the way to DM without ever touching salt water. I took a NitrOx class from a shop in Orlando that =HORRORS= included a dive off of a boat out of Boynton Beach. As I approached the dive platform the DM asked me "Are you OK, sir???" I wasn't, but I never want to be controlled by my fears. I plopped into the suds and looked around. No sharks were swarming to get me. In fact, it was pretty lonely down here. On the second dive, my moron instructor grabbed the tail of a nurse shark to take a ride. He encouraged me to do the same, but I declined. I wasn't scared anymore, but I wasn't stupid either.

Since then, I have no qualms diving with sharks during the day or at night. In fact, I love it.

Not at all.

Growing up I stayed with my grandparents every summer, and fortunately they had a pool. I spent nearly every day all day swimming and playing in that pool. I especially loved swimming at night with all the lights off. I guess it's no surprise that my favorite dives are night dives.

yes diving did help... alot!

both my parents are.... how do i put this.. cowardly when it comes to swimming and the ocean. they saw very little of it when they where growing up and i think my dad also experience one of his freinds drown when he was little so.. yea thats not good. When i was younger they would scare the **** out of me, telling me bad stuff will happen if you go out to far etc etc. so i grew up being some what scared of going out alone or even with people out into the ocean or even a couple of yards into the beach. but thankfully there where ocean documentary's and 2 other people in my family that did dive and spear fishing. so about a year and 1/2 ago i got the OW cert. which i was longing to get.

And now... im one of those guys that whats to go diving every other day and ALWAYS needs to have a dive flag when they go to the beach.

WIN

Always been comfortable in the water. Been swimming since I was 5 years old and took swimming lessons during my childhood. Laps, underwater, breath hold, floating, treading, none of it phases me at all. Never has. The one thing that scuba taught me (and I'm surprised this NEVER came up in lessons) was equalization. I used to swim in "the tank" which was the 10ft deep pool with the diving board and as kids we'd always throw pucks and rings in there and then go retrieve them from the bottom. When I got down to about 6 or 7 feet my ears would hurt so bad but I always went forward and got the pucks from the bottom but I never knew why my ears hurt or how to stop it. When I did a DSD on the great barrier reef I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to do Scuba and told the guy I had this "problem" but then he said I just needed to equalize and explained how to do it and from there on out I've never had a problem.

What did Scuba do for me? Really only made me be able to go deeper while skin diving because I now know why my ears hurt so much and also how to alleviate the pain. You should see me collect pucks now LOL