Don't know what happened

[boulderjohn]

Why is using arms a no-no? I do understand that you don’t need it normally but in case of emergency won’t using your arms propel you faster?

OK, this question takes me back to Scubadada's comment on your DM training. I never let a student leave the pool sessions of OW training without knowing why you do not use your hands and arms while diving. You got through a heck of a lot of classes without being taught that. It is not your fault.

 

[Dody]

OK, this question takes me back to Scubadada's comment on your DM training. I never let a student leave the pool sessions of OW training without knowing why you do not use your hands and arms while diving. You got through a heck of a lot of classes without being taught that. It is not your fault.

I was taught during my OW training that using arms as a habit is not efficient, must be avoided and I never use my arms while diving. But in an emergency situation, I figured that every watt counts.

 

[RyanT]

@Dody, please do not take this as a personal attack, I'm just hoping to make something clear....Despite whatever training you may have had, your account here indicates that you are woefully unprepared to work as a DM. If you don't understand why you were unable to keep up, or why paddling with your hands is not acceptable practice, then it indicates that you are lacking in training. Please do not accept professional responsibility for other divers at this time.

 

[OTF]

Not to take the thread on too much of a tangent but this is one of my favorite scubaboard fights to pick. There IS a place for using hands to swim in scuba. It's taught as a big "no no" early in training to stop novice divers flailing around inefficiently. But then "HANDS BAD" is treated like gospel forever.

The fact is that arms can be utilized very well for swimming on scuba in several situations. It just has to be selective and controlled. As is the case in this thread, arm strokes can add extra power in an emergency if efficiency/endurance/CO2 are not the most important factors. Like fighting a current briefly, dealing with a leg cramp, or indeed catching up to the group. It can actually be done quite efficiently using this sort of arm stroke common in freediving
Other times arm use can be totally valid: a few hand paddles to get away from other divers when using your fins might kick them. Or to propel yourself sideways away from a very close wall or object when you might hit it broadside or kick the fragile encrusting organisms.

Just don't use arms to swim all the time. Or whatever, do if that's more fun.

 

[Jcp2]

My bet is, that you didnt do an efficient flutter kick, some people bend the knives to much. Others have the legs too streigth.
Typical is the bycicle kick,which wastes a lot of Energie and isn't going to produce much force. But I can just guess without a video.

If you have a quad driven kick and you look carefully around, you’ll find the right type of Fin to generate enough Force for you.

 

[Dody]

@Dody, please do not take this as a personal attack, I'm just hoping to make something clear....Despite whatever training you may have had, your account here indicates that you are woefully unprepared to work as a DM. If you don't understand why you were unable to keep up, or why paddling with your hands is not acceptable practice, then it indicates that you are lacking in training. Please do not accept professional responsibility for other divers at this time.

No offense taken. The reason I posted was to learn. Without pretense, I don't think that my training is bad. I spent hours and hours of practise and training (I do not log my training hours as practise hours). I have a very structured way of learning things. Checklist is a way of thinking for me but I know that exact science and real life are two different things just like mistaking "this is the way I have always been told" and "I can prove it scientifically" as the different opinions very experienced divers have can show. I don't think that buyoancy or trim have anything to do with the problem I had today. I don't think my flutter kick technique has either. Long gone are the day I was bicycling kicking back in November . My reluctance to do frog kick might have had an infinitesimal impact. My fitness is good and scientifically, I am far from convinced that using my arms in this emergency case got things worst and I am not the only one to think that.
So, I am still puzzled and I was hoping to find an answer here but I understand that some relevant information is missing in my report.
It might be poor fins or the fact that all my gear was new (2nd time, I was using it), strange currents or other things.
9 times out of 10, the dives are eventless. This is the 1 out of 10 that I enjoy studying. Not just experiencing it and not getting to the bottom of it.

 

[hedonist222]

Not to take the thread on too much of a tangent but this is one of my favorite scubaboard fights to pick. There IS a place for using hands to swim in scuba. It's taught as a big "no no" early in training to stop novice divers flailing around inefficiently. But then "HANDS BAD" is treated like gospel forever.

The fact is that arms can be utilized very well for swimming on scuba in several situations. It just has to be selective and controlled. As is the case in this thread, arm strokes can add extra power in an emergency if efficiency/endurance/CO2 are not the most important factors. Like fighting a current briefly, dealing with a leg cramp, or indeed catching up to the group. It can actually be done quite efficiently using this sort of arm stroke common in freediving
Other times arm use can be totally valid: a few hand paddles to get away from other divers when using your fins might kick them. Or to propel yourself sideways away from a very close wall or object when you might hit it broadside or kick the fragile encrusting organisms.

Just don't use arms to swim all the time. Or whatever, do if that's more fun.

I agree that it appears some have taken it as gospel.

I never use my arms when diving but on occasion, I have had to.
Recently as well.
I was looking at the portside of a wreck and to my right was a moray eel - a small to medium sized specimen about 4 or 5 foot away.

Suddenly I see a diver approach me from the left but above me a few feet. His knees would have hit my left shoulder and pushed me directly into the moray eel.
I instinctively pushed myself backwards using my hands.
My hands were faster than trying to back fin.

 

[Angelo Farina]

First of all, I am a finned swimming instructor, and also a 3 stars CMAS diving instructor. From this position, I can say that most diving instructors do not know how to teach proper kicking techniques, and how to guide their students in finding the optimal fins for their legs.
Some free diving instructors have some good clue about fins and kicking, but only a finned swimming instructor knows all the tricks and techniques. Most scuba diving instructors, particularly tech instructors, have very strange believings, and often think that frog kicking is the best technique for every scenario (whilst it is the best only inside caves or wrecks, when there is risk of raising silt from the bottom).
When young, I and my wife (who also is both a scuba diving instructor and finned swimming instructor) worked at Maldives as dive masters, where there are incredibly strong currents inside the channels between open ocean and internal lagoon. People who do not master proper kicking are captured by the current and in no way they can swim against it.
The tricks for swimming against current in such conditions are:
1) be streamlined: best, at Maldives, is to use no diving suit, as the naked skin makes less friction than any suit. And no cloths, of course. Just use a Speedo.
2) do not use a jacket, just a very minimal rear bladder, kept rigorously empty (with no suit, there is no significant variation on buoyancy with depth) - at the time it was still allowed to dive without any BCD; now it is forbidden, you must have some sort of minimal BCD. But a 5-liters bladder is plenty enough.
3) use long freediving fins, of proper length, stiffness and angle between blade and foot based on your leg geometry (choosing the proper fins is a long process made by trials and errors)
4) use a proper kicking style, resulting by months of training in the pool under supervision of a finned swimming instructor
5) when the current is very strong you also need the extra thrust of your arms. But instead of "paddling", you must use your arms "in the proper way": the video posted here a couple of posts above is an excellent example on how the arms should be used for swimming underwater. Actually, proper propulsion with arms is almost as efficient as using long freediving fins, and definitely more efficient than frog kicking with rigid short fins.
6) When doing a significant effort swimming against current you cannot just "breath normally", You need to employ the same ventilation technique used with CC rebreathers, that is augmenting the vented volume and slowing down the ventilation rhythm, and performing an inspiratory pause of 4-5 seconds between each inhalation and each exhalation.
7) After a burst against the current, you often need to rest for a while, for avoiding to loose control of your breathing. For doing this safely and with minimal effort we were using a "coral hook": a stainless steel hook with an handle, which is used for anchoring you to the reef without damaging it too much.

 

[RyanT]

Without pretense, I don't think that my training is bad.

You may have very well received good training. Given where you are in your dive career, I suspect, however, that you don't yet have enough training. One thing my instructor emphasized was doing our skills in a variety of environments. Over several courses, we often worked on the same skills in: cold(ish) water wearing 7mm wetsuits, warm water, shallow water, deep water, rough seas, calm seas with no current, calm seas with ripping currents, and overhead environments. Those experiences taught me that things that might work in one situation, won't in another. There really just isn't a substitute for working on your skills in a variety of conditions over time.

 

[hedonist222]

Unsure whether you meant 69 dives or age of 69

At 69 dives
I'd still want another 100 experiencing dives to learn my gaps and areas of improvement

At age of 69 I wouldn't waste energy and time on being a guide

to clarify - at age 69
I'd rather just enjoy diving for its sheer fun
as opposed to the stress of taking responsibility for others