How do you incorporate focused practice into your diving?

[kr2y5]

The #1 advice typically given to divers, who want to get better, is to just "dive more". That makes a lot of sense... Everyone agrees that it's all about experience, and as we gain experience, our skills naturally improve.

Then again, you don't give a child a violin, and expect her to become a virtuoso just by randomly interacting with the violin. In many areas of life, it's commonly accepted and goes without saying that the path to get better is through very focused, and targeted practice. One will often play the same short passage, focusing on the areas where mistakes are made, or repeat the same movement, until it gets better, and then move on to practicing something else. Sometimes, focused practice is about overall fluency, or something intangible, but often it's all about ironing out those stubborn wrinkles here and there, and that usually requires a little more of a systematic approach than just repeating the same movements over and over...

Of course, getting obsessed with knob-turning, or some such, runs the risk of losing all fun in diving. Between that, at one extreme, and "do more" at the other extreme, there's presumably a universe of possibilities...

So, what's your approach to getting better? Do you engage in a focused, targeted practice? What kind of practice? Feel free to define "focused practice" in whatever way it makes sense to you. How do you find balance between focused practice and just getting out more often? Or, did you abandon focused practice after reaching some level of proficiency?

I'm putting this in "advanced" rather than "basic", so that we can feel somewhat uninhibited, and enjoy a lively discussion on anything from mask clearing to rebreathers... ;-)

Thanks!

 

[Storker]

My training/fun dive ratio is lower than I would have wanted, I don't get to dive enough to do many straight training dives. But I hardly have a dive where I don't at least try to be aware of my buoyancy control and improve my general skill set. I believe that an attitude like this helps me to improve my diving in the long run. Besides, pure training dives get dull quite fast IMO

When I remember, I try to run a reg drill and/or a mask drill during my safety top. My dSMB is in my thigh pocket on virtually every dive, rigged and ready, and I use it regularly, at least when I dive from my own boat. That's out of consideration for the boat tender, who finds it a lot easier to spot us that way.

You might say that my "focused" approach is constant awareness of my diving, with routine debriefs after the dive. What was good, what should have been done better or in another way, what was executed crappily.

 

[tbone1004]

so here's my opinion. Practice makes permanent. So you have to have focused practice of good skills before you can go out and apply them.

So, we can skirt this back to GUE Fundies because it is easy to compare. When does it make best sense to take Fundies? Immediately after AOW, after 5 years of diving and 200 dives? I think it makes sense to take Fundies asap to make sure that you don't develop bad habits, bad habits are tough to break. After you take fundies, does it make sense to continue to hone that technique to perfection, or does it make sense to accept that you have the basics, and then put them into practice in real dives while you are constantly critiquing yourself?

I don't do "focused practice" anymore. I have spend hundreds of hours in a pool doing nothing but hovering, turning around, and backing up watching students and demonstrating skills. My fundamentals are solid. EVERY single dive I do, I make sure that I am constantly acting as the example and look back and critique myself on anything that didn't go perfectly, this is how I constantly get better. There is a point in time where you have to go out and "do" in order to gain a different experience set, failures happen, exciting things happen, none of those can be replicated in a controlled environment, but you need your fundamentals to be solid before you go out into those environments so when something out of the ordinary happens, it doesn't throw you off too much. Now, that said, there are times when you have to go back and tune skills back up. I don't shoot DSMB's very often, so if I'm going to the ocean for the first time in a while, or I haven't shot one in a few months, I'll shoot a couple in the quarry to make sure that I can still do it properly. Same if I go a long time without diving doubles, have to make sure that all of the muscle memory is still there, I might do 2 valve drills instead of the one that I normally do if the first one had anything go wrong. Hand signals that may be different because of a different environment may be practiced, etc etc.
This can only be done when you have solid fundamentals because it is always easier to go back and pick it back up, than it is to unlearn a bad habit, relearn a new one, and make it perfect without relapsing. Everyone in the technical community sees this when people resort to hand motions, flutter kicks, bad trim, etc when they get stressed because innately this is what they fall back on as it was their first experience....

 

[TSandM]

When you are learning something new, you have to dedicate a little time to practice. I did a lot of practice dives after Fundies, working on the things I couldn't do or couldn't do well. Once they were going better, I went back to mostly just diving, focusing on USING those skills, and always asking my buddy for feedback on how things went. Once in a while, we would do a fun dive with the plan to end it with a few minutes of skills practice -- maybe ascent work, or bag shooting, or valve drills. And, like tbone, if I haven't done something for a while, I'll ask my buddy to slot it in to the dive we are doing.

In the winter, when the viz is fabulous and there is very little in it to see, I can be talked into doing a pure skills dive. It can be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of me and Kirk sitting at 20 feet (or rather, me TRYING to sit at 20 feet) while passing a full and an empty Al80 back and forth. It's good to stretch yourself a bit now and then.

 

[victorzamora]

So, what's your approach to getting better? Do you engage in a focused, targeted practice? What kind of practice? Feel free to define "focused practice" in whatever way it makes sense to you. How do you find balance between focused practice and just getting out more often? Or, did you abandon focused practice after reaching some level of proficiency?

So, my approach is a combo. I started off with just diving, but had no targets or goals....I wasn't a "serious diver." I had 200+ dives all over the Caribbean (mostly Belize and Roatan), but none of my skills were very good. My buoyancy was alright, my trim was pretty bad, my "skills" certainly weren't crisp or clean. I was safe and comfortable in the water. I was good enough to not bounce off the reef or kill myself, my SAC was decent enough. I was a "pretty good" vacation-only diver. I owned my own mask and fins, but that was it. I loved diving, but it wasn't a "hobby" as much as an activity during vacations....if that makes sense. That didn't work a bit, obviously.

I started down the DM path. I got involved with a shop almost accidentally, and started diving "Seriously" then. I started considering buying gear, diving in sub-paradise locations, and started actually learning stuff. I didn't know what an AL80 was (though it's all I had ever dove), and didn't realize there were other options before this. The shop I was with was starting to market BPWs and pushed horizontal and neutral, and so that's what I started working on. Working towards DM, I got all of the "shop-monkey" stuff taken care of: Jargon, knowledge, fills, reg repairs, sales, etc. I also started doing "demo-quality" skills like reg remove/replace, mask remove/replace, etc. Still not a great diver, but getting better and I started realizing what was what.

When I started my Tech/Cave/Sidemount training and diving is when I first started realizing there's a whole new level of diving I wasn't aware of. My first dive with my Cavern instructor made me realize I had set my own bar far too low. Throughout that training, I improved tremendously....but in the 9 months between Cavern and Full, I spent every second in the water with a goal in mind. Work on trim, buoyancy, reels, SAC....whatever it was, each dive had one specific goal.

Now, my philosophy is somewhere between focused practice and diving more. I think this is what Storker was talking about. I do fun dives, but all of my fun dives have a goal. This dive is focused on trim. This one on buoyancy. This one on awareness. I'm always trying to do better about everything, but I spend every dive nowadays working hard on one specific subject. The dives are still fun, for sure, but they have a component of focused improvement....so, both?

 

[JerseyJames]

Buoyancy and trim!

I'm fortunate enough to live on an island therefore shore diving is common place. This means that there's no obligation to always be back at a specific time to meet the boatman. I'll occasionally end my dives by hovering about half a meter off the bottom. I'll focus on something and try not to move. I also dive with a few keen photographers which also gives me the perfect opportunity to remain as motionless as possible! Of course safety stops are the perfect opportunity to practice your buoyancy and trim, especially if there's no fixed line. If there is, try letting go. Remember that you'll be more buoyant however at the end of your dive depending moreso on your cylinder type. Another good skill to practise is rapid deployment of your dSMB using your exhausted air and not by purging your Octopus.

 

[g1138]

When looking to become a better diver, the most important thing about a dive is to receive and listen to constructive feedback.
Whether you do a improvement orientated dive or a pure fun dive, you will not gain anything if there is nothing to give you feedback.

Feedback can range from a mentor giving you a talk down after the dive or it can be literally in your face fire coral that you run head on into.
So the answer to your question is both. Different methods that can reach the same end goal.

 

[TMHeimer]

Nice analogy to practising an instrument. Two types of practising there. One is just going through excersises that cover all possible technical problems. The other is practising pieces that you may perform. All is highly focused. My diving: I'm finished taking courses and my own diving is very straight forward. I dive solo 95% of the time and practise skills here & there. Some skills require a buddy, so that's a problem. For assisting with courses I have to be able to demonstrate the skills. Once weekly I go through all the motions on land. Not that I'm gunna forget them, but just to keep the wheels greased. I often recommend this to anyone who expects to be out of water for a while. While diving I do a fair bit of hovering near the surface while heading back to shore. As mentioned, repetition makes things automatic. I'm often hovering over a flounder ready to poke spear it, or nose to the bottom looking for shells without creating a cloud. So I guess most of what I do is pretty focused.

 

[waterpirate]

I am in the " skills and drills every dive camp ". When I splash I descend to the travel line at 40fsw. It is there that you do a final buoyancy check, valve drill, and buddy check if so complimented. It takes all of 3-4 minutes. I have caught all kinds of stupid human errors on my part at the 40fsw mark.

Prior to diving at the level I am now, I sought out and got very regimented and focused training to get me here in the environment that is native to me. Train where you dive, et all.
YMMV
Eric

 

[RJP]

The #1 advice typically given to divers, who want to get better, is to just "dive more". That makes a lot of sense...

No. It doesn't.

---------- Post added June 11th, 2015 at 08:27 PM ----------

Everyone agrees that it's all about experience,

No. They don't.

---------- Post added June 11th, 2015 at 08:27 PM ----------

and as we gain experience, our skills naturally improve.

No. They won't.