Any tips on backing up when taking pictures? I love taking photos and constantly work on my skills. One I seem to have difficulty with is backing up only using fins (since my hands are busy with my camera). I can do it but thought I would some advice on doing it better. Tanks! Bill
Always going forward because I can't find reverse...
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The Chairman
Chairman of the Board
A reverse frog kick is how I do it.
What the Chairman calls a reverse frog kick is what some people call a back kick. It can be a very hard kick to master, but it is very useful. You can either find a good instructor to teach it, or you can use videos to show yo the technique and then work until you master it.
The Chairman
Chairman of the Board
It's probably one of the most useful tricks you can master, and once you get it, you'll be using it all the time.
kafkaland
Contributor
The keyword here for instructor is "good". There are quite a few instructors out there who can't backkick. And useful - once you can do it, you'll do it on every dive, eventually without even thinking about it any more. It goes a long way to having total control over your positioning in the water and that makes diving so much more fun and less stressful.
The Chairman
Chairman of the Board
As a caveat: it's really best to have a proper bent knee frog kick in place before you try to reverse it.
Don't ask me why, but when I'm actually diving and go to frog kick, I automatically default to reverse frog. Some people have told me they hate me for it. When I'm in the pool doing laps, I can do the frog without thinking. But put me in my drysuit, and it's reverse frog. 
I see that a lot with students Marie. In their case it's that they are thinking hard about the steps of the frog kick and they put too much feeling into the first loading stroke, going backwards a foot, then they give a power stroke with poor ankle position and go forward a foot. Does make me laugh on the inside, deep inside where the poor peeps can't see it.
The clue is that you can do it without thinking, except when you are task loaded. That's a sign that you are begin to break down basic tasks into discrete steps, a common symptom of approaching task overload.
Relax and it should go away as your DS becomes more second nature to you.
Oh and just a point in general, the back kick uses the sides of the fin for the thrust, if you don't have rigid, wide-ish sided fins you will have to get creative.
The clue is that you can do it without thinking, except when you are task loaded. That's a sign that you are begin to break down basic tasks into discrete steps, a common symptom of approaching task overload.
Relax and it should go away as your DS becomes more second nature to you.
Oh and just a point in general, the back kick uses the sides of the fin for the thrust, if you don't have rigid, wide-ish sided fins you will have to get creative.
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