Pool Diving -- different pool, different waters

[divemistress]

what are some of the most useful skill drills you can practice in a swimming pool?

yes, i know, improve buoyancy and trim, and practice fin kicks. but specifically? ie, swim through a hula hoop. swim six inches off the bottom of the pool and pick up strategically placed coins. others????

for family reasons, i can't get away on a scuba vacation anytime soon, so i have to induge my craving for compressed air in chlorinated water. i might as well learn something while i'm down there!

ut:

dm

 

[detroit diver]

For bouyancy, I would start by hovering close to the bottom w/o touching. Then I would ascend slowly and stop every foot or so on the way up. Then reverse this process.

Without a video camera, trim work will be guesswork-mostly. But try and keep you body flat like a board, knees bent and parallel to the pool bottom-unless of course it slopes up and down!

There's nothing wrong with pool practice.


Also, try some valve drills in the shallow end (with a buddy watching). Reach back and turn your air on and off. Most regular BC wearers will have a tough time with this because the tank is located so low on the back.

 

[SeaJay]

Pool diving is great for practice.

Check my website in my signature below. Go to "Look" and then "Training Videos." Now practice, practice, practice.

 

[jepuskar]

I dont really see the value in being able to turn on/off your air while your BC is on.

I guess if you want to improve in this the pool would be the place to do it at.



What I like to practice however is mask removal and breathing without the mask for awhile, regulator recovery in various positions and then manually purging the reg (done when your out of breath), out of air drills, manually inflating your BC at the surface, and for me...I practice video shooting techniques in the pool.

 

[detroit diver]

jepuskar once bubbled...
I dont really see the value in being able to turn on/off your air while your BC is on.

I guess if you want to improve in this the pool would be the place to do it at.



What I like to practice however is mask removal and breathing without the mask for awhile, regulator recovery in various positions and then manually purging the reg (done when your out of breath), out of air drills, manually inflating your BC at the surface, and for me...I practice video shooting techniques in the pool.

Here's some value for you:

1. You jump off the back of the boat with your air turned off and no air in your BC.

2. You blow an O-ring or your reg malfunctions at 90 feet and you're breathing off your buddy's reg.

 

[animian2002]

As me and my mates dun get to dive that often ;-0
so in order to maintain our skills sometime we will rent a tank and head for the pool to practice bouyancy, the various drills and kicks. I guess the only problem with pool is we can't shoot liftbag/SMB ;-0 other than that ...the pool is an ideal place to practice alll diving skills

 

[detroit diver]

animian2002 once bubbled...
As me and my mates dun get to dive that often ;-0
so in order to maintain our skills sometime we will rent a tank and head for the pool to practice bouyancy, the various drills and kicks. I guess the only problem with pool is we can't shoot liftbag/SMB ;-0 other than that ...the pool is an ideal place to practice alll diving skills

No reason you can't shoot a bag from the deep end. It may not fill up, but it's the practice that you want anyway.

 

[SeaJay]

detroit diver once bubbled...


Here's some value for you:

1. You jump off the back of the boat with your air turned off and no air in your BC.

2. You blow an O-ring or your reg malfunctions at 90 feet and you're breathing off your buddy's reg.

I've actually heard of divers saving themselves from a failed first stage by "feathering" the tank valve in order to breathe off of it anyway, even in the face of a first stage failure. Of course, we're assuming that:

1. The first stage is the type that fails open.
2. The diver does not have a functional second first stage.
3. The buddy is not present or able to donate.
4. This was preferrable to an ESA (like in overhead, deco, or deep diving.)

Sure, the point is that it's a pretty extreme situation, but DD's got two much more common reasons why you'd want to be able to control your valve.

To me, the fact that I can do it means that my tank's adjusted right. If I can reach my valves and at the same time they're not whacking me in the back of the head, then I know my rig's set up correctly... And that leads to proper trim.

...So there's actually several reasons why you'd want to be able to do it, although none of them really apparent at first.

For me, whether the situation is uncommon or not, I find it really comforting that I have control over that part of my rig, and really disconcerting when I don't have control over that part of my rig.

 

[sailnj]

I saw a porno video once shot in a pool using scuba, other than that a pool gets old pretty fast