Yesterday was spent diving with some buddies from this board. Total of five divers all trained to frog kick.
We had a longish dive of 73 minutes with an average depth of around 65'. Most of us where swimming a foot or so off the muddy bottom. Looking back behind us there wasn't a silt cloud. I was left thinking, that I was glad to have buddies who know how to frog kick.
For those of you who aren't familiar with this technique, it is reasonably simple. Both knees are bent at a 90 degree angle with the bottoms of your feet facing the surface, you bring your fins out to your sides and push away with your fins with insides of your your feet coming together at the end of your kick. What this does is move the water column backwards and up. No water is thrust down, thus keeping the silt from being stirred up. It is the accepted method of kicking amongst many tech divers and universally used in caves.
Almost all new divers are taught the flutter kick. This up and down movement forces the water into the silt, thus blowing out any sort of visibility. It is the most common mistake that a new or uninitiated diver can make. It is a detriment to anyone else who has to follow behind them. It is also much less efficient because their feet and legs move out of the water column creating excess drag. This in turn means that they breath more gas.
We have an area in Seattle called Cove 2 that gets daily dives from all sorts of divers. From the newly certified to highly skilled. It always amazes me to see divers rototil the bottom with their fins and wipe out any sort of vis. that this dive site had.
While this kick may not seem to be applicable in all situations to some, you may want to try it out for yourself. To see a demo video of this technique check out the following link
http://www.gue.com/classroom/propulsion/index.shtml
We had a longish dive of 73 minutes with an average depth of around 65'. Most of us where swimming a foot or so off the muddy bottom. Looking back behind us there wasn't a silt cloud. I was left thinking, that I was glad to have buddies who know how to frog kick.
For those of you who aren't familiar with this technique, it is reasonably simple. Both knees are bent at a 90 degree angle with the bottoms of your feet facing the surface, you bring your fins out to your sides and push away with your fins with insides of your your feet coming together at the end of your kick. What this does is move the water column backwards and up. No water is thrust down, thus keeping the silt from being stirred up. It is the accepted method of kicking amongst many tech divers and universally used in caves.
Almost all new divers are taught the flutter kick. This up and down movement forces the water into the silt, thus blowing out any sort of visibility. It is the most common mistake that a new or uninitiated diver can make. It is a detriment to anyone else who has to follow behind them. It is also much less efficient because their feet and legs move out of the water column creating excess drag. This in turn means that they breath more gas.
We have an area in Seattle called Cove 2 that gets daily dives from all sorts of divers. From the newly certified to highly skilled. It always amazes me to see divers rototil the bottom with their fins and wipe out any sort of vis. that this dive site had.
While this kick may not seem to be applicable in all situations to some, you may want to try it out for yourself. To see a demo video of this technique check out the following link
http://www.gue.com/classroom/propulsion/index.shtml