I may not be there to see it... but I suspect that one of the three has a DIRf in their future... the other two are total dorks.
Bouyancy in an OW class.
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I cant speak for Mike, but the way I have seen it done is as follows:
Diver gets neutral, has to stop and pick up coin without touching the bottom. That makes them start working on bouyancy control without really noticing.
They then slip the coin under their mask skirt. This lets some water in, and they get to work on mask clearing as well.
By the time they get a half dozen coins or so, they are getting pretty good at clearing and maintaining position in the water.
a similar game with golf balls although they don't put them in their mask
I start this the very first session we are on scuba. They must hover, horizontally, over the golf ball and use their lungs to change bouyancy as needed to lower them down to the golf ball and retrieve it without touching the bottom or pushing off of the golf ball. Granted they aren't real good at this the first session but by session 6 they are usually pretty darn good at it.
Once they pick up the golf ball they have to swim it to a bucket and stop and hover over the bucket and drop the ball in. Since the pool is fairly small I teach them the helicopter turn while they are doing this game.
I start this the very first session we are on scuba. They must hover, horizontally, over the golf ball and use their lungs to change bouyancy as needed to lower them down to the golf ball and retrieve it without touching the bottom or pushing off of the golf ball. Granted they aren't real good at this the first session but by session 6 they are usually pretty darn good at it.Once they pick up the golf ball they have to swim it to a bucket and stop and hover over the bucket and drop the ball in. Since the pool is fairly small I teach them the helicopter turn while they are doing this game.
ScubaDan
Guest
would have been nice to have some of you as my instuctor.
I'll take that bet. I do agree that lots of shops cut the time down way too much. The first class I ever tought was for the shop where I started my training. I had a class of six in the pool alone without a DM and I was jumped on for taking six hours to get through the pool work. It wasn't long before I realized I couldn't teach that way. They got the las laugh though because I ended up with a dive shop.
Tell us about your PPB class.
DiverBuoy,
They just slip the coin into the mask without remoing the mask. The mask will partially flood and they must clear it before getting another coin. The object is to control buoyancy while performing the tasks of picking up the coin and then clearing the mask.
in order to get the coin...
ElectricZombie
Contributor
You can teach good bouyancy control in a Basic OW class. It does not take a whole lot longer to teach them correctly from the beginning. They will not be experts but, they will not be crashing into the bottom like 99% of the people out there. Getting bouyancy down to the point of a couple inches will take a little more time than most OW classes allow. Bouyancy and trim are the basics in diving, you can't ignore them just because it's an OW class. A lot of classes seem to be more focued on having the student "not die" rather than teach ligitimate diving skills.
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