Swimming Skills Assessment

How strong a swimmer are you?

  • Strong Swimmer: Competitive high school, college, or masters swimmer, lifeguard, or WSI

    Votes: 88 21.0%
  • Fitness Swimmer: Not perfect, but routinely swim for fitness or compete in triathlons

    Votes: 101 24.1%
  • Average Swimmer: Learned as a child, but only swim occasionally

    Votes: 207 49.4%
  • Weak Swimmer: Not confident in swimming ability especially far from shore or in the ocean

    Votes: 23 5.5%

  • Total voters
    419

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How sardonic.


I ain't no bloody Sardonian dude. I'm a Aussie.

So if you try make yourself open and do the hard mental yards at the start
then you have more control of the the degree of difficultness you subjugate
yourself to, so when the time comes, what you are able to handle with ease
to others may not by any means seem like such a walk in the Mediterranean
collecting armfuls of lobster.

Yummy.

Not mummy.
 
Trace, there are lots of people who want to be pushed to be as good as they can be. Not all of them learn the same way. I have been throwing myself at the bar since the fall of 2005, but if you lambaste me for poor performance, I'm more likely to crawl off into a corner and mope than to return to try harder. On the other hand, if you remain encouraging and positive, no one works harder and longer than I do . . .

That's what I was trying to say as well. And there is nothing wrong with the "mean coach" style either..... just that it will not work for all people, and I don't like to get the impression that that style is the one or the best. It also seemed to imply that anyone not ascribing to that style must be a "grandma" a "slug" or just not even care how they move through the water (and that cannot be true, as I care, a LOT, and I'm not in the "mean coach" camp by a long shot). Yeah, I guess that's what got to me the most: The assumption that I -- or people like me -- don't care and are just moving through the water like hooked worms, not giving a toot about grace or fluidity or how we dive at all.


The whole discussion was starting to make me feel like I don't belong in diving, but then as I thought about it I felt like "no, I don't think that's true, and maybe what is true is that there is room for people who aren't that one type of diver (that was being touted)."

Blue Sparkle, please forgive Claus. I was at one time where he is. The profound dichotomy between what one sees in resort settings, or in poor quality mainstream classes, and what one sees from folks with more demanding training, makes quite a powerful impression.

I hear what you are saying. And the thing is, I have had a taste of that better quality non-mainstream training You should have heard me bargaining with my dive buddy for us to take some GUE training; I had to agree to take two sub-par PADI classes and not roll my eyes at all during them (I was allowed to make snarky comments while we read the books at our lodging though). (Not that all PADI classes are sub-par, but these specific ones were, in my opinion.) But I don't assume that everyone else is a slug-like grandma; actually, I tend to assume other divers are better than I am until I've seen otherwise (and they usually are, since I'm really a beginner).

I also don't like the idea of dividing divers into two camps and making derogatory remarks about the ones who are not in "my" camp. That's what I felt I needed to respond to -- not the fact that some training is sub-par, which I agree with. I'm also a strong swimmer, so it's not like I'm a poor swimmer who is just trying to justify it.

The other thing that made me keep trying to come back to explain was that both Lobzilla and Trace responded as if I were attacking them or their methods of instruction or diving, and I was not. Quite the opposite: I get the impression that both are fantastic. I was just trying to counter things such as Trace's "mean coach" method being the one way, and the way Lobzilla was sounding divisive/derisive about other divers, and that they thought I was trying to be "PC" and coddle inadequate divers, which is not what I stand for at all.

In the end I think I must not have the writing skills to convey my thoughts well, and I'm sorry to have dragged the thread along while people were probably groaning inside. I'll try not to do that again! That's a bit humbling as I have always thought I was good at explaining myself :blush:
 
Many divers fall short of the fitness standard they should meet, at ALL levels of diving.

Many humans fall short of the fitness standard they should meet, at ALL levels of human endeavor. :shakehead:

Look for a new thread with the above quote/reply as the spring board.....

:eyebrow:
 
during a dema meeting at beneath the sea, i had the pleasure of being in a focus group with pierre-yves cousteau, the youngest son of jacques cousteau. In discussing the diving industry as we approach the year 2020, diver training was universally thought to have poor standards and poor quality at both diver and instructor levels. Pierre remarked that his father would have disapproved of how complicated learning to dive has become and how he perhaps would have seen the buoyancy compensator as being taught inappropriately as a way of circumventing important swimming and freediving skills.

I'm going to discuss the buoyancy compensator in detail in another thread. However, i would like to know where divers in scubaboard assess their swimming abilities since swimming is a prerequisite for scuba training. Please answer the poll as honestly as you can. To that end, i'm going to attempt to provide a way of gauging swimming capabilities. Choose the answer that best matches your ability.

Special instructions for instructors and dm's: Assess your abilities in relation to the world of swimming, not passing scuba swimming standards for any level of diver or dive pro training.

Thank you.

ja ja ja¡¡¡¡¡

Like that thing REALLY maters to PADI¡¡¡
 
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I think you need to be comfortable in the water. I am a pretty poor swimmer but I can float for ever. We once finished a dive on a remote reef in the middle of the Red Sea, when we surfaced the weather had got really bad. I had dekitted first and the boat skipper was worried about us getting driven on to the reef. he wanted to motor to safer waters. We tried to get the anchor up and it got stuck! so I donned snorkel and mask and went over the side and freed it. The boat drifted off down wind really, really quickly! I was left in the water with just a rash vest, shorts, snorkel and mask for about three quarters of an hour as he tried to maneuver back to get me. What I learn't from that wee scare was take your bloody fins with you, also you cannot see anything from your eye line at water level in a big swell.

So yes comfort and swimming skills are important around water.
 
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