skill perfection

[АлександрД]

for back kick training -
1. use good, not shaking on your feets, fins. It should be fixed on your legs very strongly, (but not to squize you).
2. Start to feel water resisting. When you move your fin - your leg should feel all resist forces. Also you can feel forces, moved to parasite side, not than you wish.
3. for backkick - in your fins movement, you shold turn your fins till start to feel greater resists of water, than just shaking in fins plane, side to side. When you starts to feel resists - remember how you turning your legs and feets.

for another swimming trainings - look to that movie of Denis Khoroshko - one of our young, but famouse scuba swimming instructors. He makes special course - Pilotage in diving.

 

[Chris H]

Get a camera and take video while you are practicing. You may notice some things that are helping or hurting your cause.

 

[divad]

for back kick training -
1. use good, not shaking on your feets, fins. It should be fixed on your legs very strongly, (but not to squize you).
2. Start to feel water resisting. When you move your fin - your leg should feel all resist forces. Also you can feel forces, moved to parasite side, not than you wish.
3. for backkick - in your fins movement, you shold turn your fins till start to feel greater resists of water, than just shaking in fins plane, side to side. When you starts to feel resists - remember how you turning your legs and feets.

for another swimming trainings - look to that movie of Denis Khoroshko - one of our young, but famouse scuba swimming instructors. He makes special course - Pilotage in diving.

You don't want to look like this.

I think this is what they're referring to as "pooch screwing."

 

[DevonDiver]

You don't want to look like this.

I wouldn't take him anywhere silty.

 

[decompression]

Gotta agree.......that video isn’t what I would consider “good form”......

 

[stuartv]

I've been doing a lot of pool diving over the cold months, my usual buddy and I are prepping for an intro to tech course this August. One thing I've noted with myself is somewhat restless legs. Has anybody else experianced this issue? I find it mostly when I am doing things such as shutting valves on and off. Any tips others have found to minimize this issue?

The second thing I am practising every time I go out is my back finning. I find success in backfinning on demand, however I seem to kick myself upwards often. Maybe it is to do with being shallow and trying it, I am also using al80 doubles 7mil wetsuit and no weight at about 1500psi. Just really wish I could not have to think about not floating up while I backfin. I generally exhale while doing it but sometimes that is not enough.

Any advise on the issues will be super!

That (the bolded part) is a possible sign of not having your trim 100% sorted. I.e. not having your weight distributed properly to let you be perfectly still. Thus, constantly moving your fins to some degree to keep yourself in good trim.

In my experience, the ability to fin backwards well is contingent on having good trim. If you're constantly finning to keep your legs up, then when you add in an attempt to fin backwards, you end up going back and up.

My suggestion would be to first get sorted out so that you can hold your entire body perfectly still and stay that way, while staying in good trim, for at least 30 seconds to a minute (without even twitching your fins). You will probably have to move some weight around and/or adjust the position of things like your back plate, your wing, or your tanks.

Jet fins are very negative. If your legs are dropping, you might need to get fins that are closer to neutral.

Also remember that where you hold your arms/hands and the position of your head affect your ability to stay still and stay flat.

One thing you can try also is to get a couple of lead weights (1 or 2 pounds each) and hold them in your hands as you try to stay flat without moving. If you are tilting head down, hold the weights down towards your feet. If your legs are sinking, hold them out in front of you. This can help you quickly and easily find the balance point and experience the beauty of staying flat without sculling. Once you do that and see how much weight it takes and where you have to hold it, you can use that information to make educated guesses on what changes to make to your rig/weighting to achieve the same thing without holding weights in your hands.

Once you can hold still and still stay flat in the water, THEN work on back finning.

 

[Michael Guerrero]

film yourself to see what you're doing.

 

[KevinNM]

Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent. Practicing a technique correctly means you'll do it right under pressure when you don't have time to focus on that element. Endless practicing something wrong means that under pressure you'll do it wrong. It's really hard to fix something after you have done it wrong a few thousand times. Spend the 2 days with an instructor to show you how to do the skills right before practicing them.

 

[Imla]

Most likely, you look down when you try your back kicks. This causes an slight imbalance, and makes you go up.
Raise your head. Look forward. Arms forward. Shoulders together. Tighten the muscles in the small of your back so it arches. Tighten those buttcheeks. And slooow movements. You may have to do 3 or 4 backkicks before you actually get any good momentum at first. DONT LOOK DOWN

 

[Colliam7]

You don't want to look like this.

I wouldn't take him anywhere silty.

Gotta agree.......that video isn’t what I would consider “good form”......

I am not so sure I agree. At first, I thought exactly the same thing - I certainly wouldn't want to look like this - because I mistakenly thought he was merely doing a very bad demonstration of the frog kick. I couldn't understand why someone, who is apparently an instructor of some note, couldn't coordinate his fin strokes - what in the world was wrong with that left leg? Then, I realized he was actually demonstrating single fin propulsion, first with the right fin, then the left fin, etc. So, I decided to watch the video through to the end. There's more here than might be apparent at first, and I am not willing to take the dismissive attitude that was my initial impression.