Thoughts on Training, Panic, and Hazing

[TSandM]

Well, in terms of real-world scenarios, I thought that was what I was getting at with the "opportunistic facilitator" comment. It's the mistakes the students make that set up the "failures" they're given to cope with -- if you get your fins too close to someone's face, their mask comes off. If you get too far away from your buddy, you go OOA. If you get too far in front, the buddy gets kidnapped. If you're handling line poorly, you get tangled up in it. Nothing that wouldn't or couldn't really happen, but just "helped along" a bit by an opportunistic instructor, trying to help you understand that what you might view as a small mistake can quickly mushroom underwater into a much bigger problem.

With the exception of my "now you see it, now you don't" mask (which was done for VERY specific reasons related to my own deficiencies) I can't really think of any totally unrealistic scenarios that have been thrown at me in training. One certainly hopes that, in no real world situation would things compound in the way they are given to do in training, but at least if they do, I might be able to take a deep breath (assuming I'm not the OOA diver ) and remember that I have, indeed, dealt with this much poo successfully before.

 

[chickdiver]

Good Point.

What drills do you think appropriate for non-technical, recreational divers? When my lovely bride and I drill we practice air sharing, swimming while air sharing, OOA both mechanical (failed or free flows) and actual (shut off air). We also practice shooting bags and SMB’s, self and buddy entanglement recovery.

Since a large percentage of our diving is here in SoCal, we don’t really have silt out conditions or dive in any caves or wrecks. (unless you consider the Valiant or Sue-Jac a real wreck dive.)

I think all of those things sound very appropriate. If you want to increase the level of difficulty, you might throw in a maskless air sharing exercise, or navigating while sharing gas, (or both at the same time). Compound problems (within reason, of course) to increase the difficulty of the exercise. Another one I like for training is to set up a line course of specific length, place one diver at the end, facing away fromt he course. The other diver starts at the opposite end of the course, maskless, and "out of air" they navigate the course to the other diver, get their attention and commence an air sharing drill while reversing the line course. The drill in and of itself has limited real world applicability, but the individual pieces are all very applicable.

A couple of others I used early on in OW classes:

marble drill- dump a couple of dozen marbles on the pool floor. Each diver collects marbles by flooding the mask, inserting the marble and then clearing the mask. Repeat until all the marbles are gone. The student with the most marbles at the end of the drill "wins". It's a fun and non threatening way for students practice mask clearing to the point of mastery.

mask jumble drill- take all the students masks and wad them up into a big knot- place them on the bottom of the pool. Students dive down and get a mask, placing it on the face, then find their mask. The first to come back with his or her own mask "wins". This one lets them practice mask removal and replacement.

One thing I think is very important is to stress the idea that drills/ learning skills in class should be done in motion. I can't tell you how many times I have watched OW classes during checkout dives practice buddy breathing or gas sharing without moving. Sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

 

[chickdiver]

Well, in terms of real-world scenarios, I thought that was what I was getting at with the "opportunistic facilitator" comment. It's the mistakes the students make that set up the "failures" they're given to cope with -- if you get your fins too close to someone's face, their mask comes off. If you get too far away from your buddy, you go OOA. If you get too far in front, the buddy gets kidnapped. If you're handling line poorly, you get tangled up in it. Nothing that wouldn't or couldn't really happen, but just "helped along" a bit by an opportunistic instructor, trying to help you understand that what you might view as a small mistake can quickly mushroom underwater into a much bigger problem.

With the exception of my "now you see it, now you don't" mask (which was done for VERY specific reasons related to my own deficiencies) I can't really think of any totally unrealistic scenarios that have been thrown at me in training. One certainly hopes that, in no real world situation would things compound in the way they are given to do in training, but at least if they do, I might be able to take a deep breath (assuming I'm not the OOA diver ) and remember that I have, indeed, dealt with this much poo successfully before.

Exactly along the lines of my thoughts. Sorry, I started reading this thread at 3 pages, and it sort of gets jumbled together when they are that long. .

 

[Thalassamania]

... I do, however, find it interesting that no one in this conversation has brought up the idea of setting up drills/ experiences that closely mimic real world scenarios. I am not talking about "hazing" or harassment drills, but rather the types of drills we employ in technical training- which tend to be dynamic rather than the static drills used in most OW instruction. It seems to me that dynamic drills which escalate in difficulty are a nice balance between the two practices. Additionally, this type of training builds the student's confidence in thier own abilities.

I think that those sorts of drills are important, but possibly in a different way than you do. Students, especially those undertaking “bigger” dives, need to learn what it takes to deal with a wide variety of problems and failures. But we live in a mythos of a paradigm that feature training the exact right autonomic response into muscle memory and surviving because we were able to do just the thing that we had practiced time after time and honed to absolute perfection.

But it’s not that easy, there are several things that need to be guarded against. As a diver moves toward (and into) panic there is a tendency to revert to older learning. There have been a few accidents over the years involving divers who lost their regulator from their mouth and continued to perform arm sweep after arm sweep, without success, in an attempt to effect a recovery. In the two cases that I am most familiar with, the divers also lost concentration on buoyancy control and were last seen dropping like a stone by buddies who could not catch up with them, and abandoned the chase at significant depth. In both these cases the description was the same, “… sunk out of sight over the wall, kept doing arm sweeps.” It would appear that the technique had been so ingrained and their perception had so narrowed that that was all they could do. I fear that we run the same risks with S-drills and such.

This problem is especially true when it involves a change in gear that demands a change in procedure. Those two arm sweep incidents occurred with moderately experienced divers shortly after the introduction of axillaries, so why didn’t they just shift to their auxiliary and then go looking for their primary? Reverting to old learning under pressure is a well-understood principle. It is similarly illustrated by a story regarding a fighter jet from the 1960s. Pilots ejected whenever anything went wrong. The engineers couldn’t find any pattern to the ejections. It didn’t matter whether the failure was a stall, a spin, hydraulics, a flame out, locked ailerons, no matter what happened, the pilot became a member of the Martin-Baker Tie Club. When the pilots’ flight histories were reviewed, it was found that all had transitioned to this aircraft from the same former aircraft. Furthermore, the cockpits of the two aircraft were almost identical. But there was a critical difference, the throttle and ejection seat handle positions had been switched. Pilots flying the new plane had no problem until something went wrong, when it did they reverted to old behavior and mistakenly ejected when they went to apply power.

So what do we do? I feel that a combination of training techniques is required. Divers need to have confidence in their ability to fix things on the fly within a given timeframe. We typically work with what you are calling “dynamic drills” (I like that term, I’m going to steal it) in thirty second blocks, (e.g., if you can’t solve it in 30 seconds you’re not going to solve it). Why 30 seconds? That’s rather arbitrary, but we established that guideline based on two criteria, and that‘s where the combination of things comes into play: a thirty second breath hold is not a big deal for our students, even if the problem is discovered after exhaling and while attempting to inhale; and all of the dynamic drills that we do can be accomplished in less than 30 seconds from onset to resolution, with the exception of the deep ESAs that we no longer teach.

So we use dynamic drills to work on the process of thinking your way through problems (I agree with you there, it just something I had not planned on addressing here) and on breath holding drills to make sure that you know that you have to time to actually do so (which is the light motif of the thread).

You know what they say ... "reality is grossly over rated!"

 

[chickdiver]

“dynamic drills” (I like that term, I’m going to steal it)

Hee hee I'm flattered! When I was doing my ITC I was taught the first rule of instructing was : "When you see something good, steal it!"

I think my comments about static vs. dynamic drills are along the same lines as what you are thinking. For example, though there is some movement (swimming, positioning) involved, I consider an S Drill to be a static drill. To my mind, a dynamic drill is one that requires forward (or upward) motion on the part of the diver/team, and may also include an ever changing scenario. When teaching technical classes, my usual modus operandi is to start with small, basic skills- such as an air sharing exit. By the time class is over, the students will be completing complex drills which start with a light failure or gas sharing but will experience other, repeated failures along the way, so that by the end it is a lights out/ tough contact/ gas sharing exit. Basically, the drills evolve as the students progress.

This is a personal thing that I do, but I encourage students to do it as well. I play "if/then" mind games (it passes the time on long drives to go diving). I create scenarios with "If X happens, then what is my reaction" Over the years I have come up with some pretty far fetched things, but oddly enough a fair number of them have happened to me. Having already "thought through" the problem with an unlimited air source certainly gave me a leg up, and may have shaved time off my response.

 

[SparticleBrane]

I agree with you. I do, however, find it interesting that no one in this conversation has brought up the idea of setting up drills/ experiences that closely mimic real world scenarios.

Ok, I'll give it a shot.
In the OW classes at school we have an equipment-malfunction circuit. We give the students regulators that have either a high pressure leak, a low pressure like (always fun), and some form of 2nd stage problem -- either a missing (folded, missing, non-sealing, whatever) inhalation diaphragm or something wrong with the exhalation diaphragm. The real fun one is a combination of 1st and 2nd stage problems. The students have to feather the tank valve while purging the reg to breathe, all while attempting to hold trim and buoyancy in the 4ft section of the pool.

Hee hee I'm flattered! When I was doing my ITC I was taught the first rule of instructing was : "When you see something good, steal it!"

Hmm...that sounds good. I think I'll steal it.

When teaching technical classes, my usual modus operandi is to start with small, basic skills- such as an air sharing exit. By the time class is over, the students will be completing complex drills which start with a light failure or gas sharing but will experience other, repeated failures along the way, so that by the end it is a lights out/ tough contact/ gas sharing exit. Basically, the drills evolve as the students progress.

:11: :11:

 

[Thalassamania]

Ok, I'll give it a shot.
In the OW classes at school we have an equipment-malfunction circuit. We give the students regulators that have either a high pressure leak, a low pressure like (always fun), and some form of 2nd stage problem -- either a missing (folded, missing, non-sealing, whatever) inhalation diaphragm or something wrong with the exhalation diaphragm. The real fun one is a combination of 1st and 2nd stage problems. The students have to feather the tank valve while purging the reg to breathe, all while attempting to hold trim and buoyancy in the 4ft section of the pool.

Excellent. We do that too, we include a leaky 1st stage seat that blows the second stage wide open after a few minutes of no breathing, then we get them sharing air with their buddy, throw the team another problem (net entanglement is a favorite) and watch the fireworks. But those are not problems that have to be fixed without an air supply. Good issue, but different issue.

Hee hee I'm flattered! When I was doing my ITC I was taught the first rule of instructing was : "When you see something good, steal it!"

I think my comments about static vs. dynamic drills are along the same lines as what you are thinking. For example, though there is some movement (swimming, positioning) involved, I consider an S Drill to be a static drill. To my mind, a dynamic drill is one that requires forward (or upward) motion on the part of the diver/team, and may also include an ever changing scenario. When teaching technical classes, my usual modus operandi is to start with small, basic skills- such as an air sharing exit. By the time class is over, the students will be completing complex drills which start with a light failure or gas sharing but will experience other, repeated failures along the way, so that by the end it is a lights out/ tough contact/ gas sharing exit. Basically, the drills evolve as the students progress.

This is a personal thing that I do, but I encourage students to do it as well. I play "if/then" mind games (it passes the time on long drives to go diving). I create scenarios with "If X happens, then what is my reaction" Over the years I have come up with some pretty far fetched things, but oddly enough a fair number of them have happened to me. Having already "thought through" the problem with an unlimited air source certainly gave me a leg up, and may have shaved time off my response.

Please, start a thread with a bunch of those "if/thens" and indicate if they really happened and annotate with the some details. That'd be a really useful thread.

 

[littleleemur]

Entanglement practice would have been really useful. Especially if we had to actually cut through some monofilament. The closest I got was getting caught in a coral swim through and had to undo the BC, slip out and unhook the bits that got caught. I'm surprised I got caught as I'm 1/3 the girth of my buddy (& he went through first) and I like to keep all the dangly bits tucked-in & simple.

Although I my OW class was small (5 students incl. w/ 1 instructor & 2 DM) I felt I had more questions after pool session than I did going in & also after the checkout dives. I think I must have bugged the crap out of the DMs

I also found that some people panic when another person gives them the out of air signal!

I would rather sign up for a genuine "poo-hits-the-fan" practice than anything else my LDS is currently offering.

 

[TNdiver6387]

This hasn't been talked about all that much in this thread, but I agree that a good skin diving base makes scuba alot easier in my opinion. I had a family trip to hawaii scheduled at a motel with a nice reef RIGHT off the beach, and at the time didn't know about "resort dives" and knew i didnt have the money at the time to get certified, so I started looking into some of the breathing exercises to increase breath hold times from freediving boards. At my best before the trip I could do 3-3.5 min holds at rest dry, and i could do about 2 mins underwater. After we got there and i had done a few days of skin diving on the site, i found out the motel offered resort dives, which i ended up doing. I had very no problem being nervous about diving there, because i had already been down to the same depths (about 30 feet) on the same site we were diving just holding my breath, so even the general worst fear of running out of air, didn't concern me in the least, because i knew i could make it down and up with some bottom time from that depth on a breath, so i would have no problem at all surfacing if i needed to. I also had a MUCH lower sac than several others in the group ( i ended the second dive with about a half a tank left after the instructor had some of the others surface swim in because they were so low on air). I feel the general comfort from the skindiving experience played a big role in that.

 

[sweatfrog]

I attend magic workshops/lectures from time to time and one thing that is touted there is the fact that to make a trick second nature, you need to practice it 3,000 times before it sinks in completely.

You need to practice skills on a regular basis when diving also. So, people actually have to get out there and do it, more frequently than just when you go on vacation. As the people on this thread alude to, there is more to this than the Country Club, hand holding dives that most people are looking for. Training/learning should never stop. I don't care what Instructor or skills a class has, or that the student has mastered them in the past. If that person hasn't been diving in a while, it will take time for him/her to get back up to speed.

The skills posed by the OP are great fodder for a freediving class. That class if marketed properly, can enhance diving skills, but it would be counterproductive in a beginning LDS class. It might be a throwback to the time when those of us (yes, I was there too) who passed a beginning class already had lifeguard certifications and would have passed the class, no matter what skills were thrown at us.

Not a lot of growth in the scuba industry at that time. As a matter of fact, my wife was watching a show on quilting recently and there is more money made per year with that hobby, than the whole diving industry. I for one, see no reason to go back to those times.

Good thread for academia purposes though.