How do you incorporate focused practice into your diving?

[rjack321]

The problem with focused practice is that you can easily practice crap. You need to go with someone who can actually give good feedback or get yourself video taped and review it in between dives or better yet during the dive (surface and look at it then fix the issues on the next drop.

On the other hand, there are scores of divers who go to the same site over and over and have perfect skillz only for diving themselves out of the one and only paper bag.

I recommend both. What's the point of perfect skills if you never use them anyplace challenging or interesting?

 

[PfcAJ]

My vote is almost always "go diving" and use the skills you're trying to hone in a practical manner.

Go go shoot some SMBs for real on real dives. Do some non-silting kicks over a silty bottom where it matters. Check out some lil' critters where being still in the water means you're able to actually see them.

To me, sitting in a pool while someone gets out a bubble level to see if you're within 3 degrees of horizontal trim while making sure you don't fluctuate more than 6 inches up and down is dumb.

Go scuba and use what you're trying to refine.

 

[kr2y5]

Thanks, everyone.

To respond to some of you, just to clarify my intention: I wasn't necessarily trying to debate all one vs. all the other... assuming most folks would agree that some mixture of both, at least at some point in their diving career, is desirable, I'm curious how much practice you feel is optimal for you right now, given where you are in your progression as a diver, and how you blend whatever amount practice you choose into your regular diving. The examples given so far were great!

Good point about feedback. One cannot reliably improve what one cannot measure. Some things are easier to measure, some harder. Buoyancy seems comparatively easy. Feedback comes in real-time, which is likely why people tend to generally get better at buoyancy control by just accumulating more experience. The angle of one's fin tips, on the other hand, might be harder to tell without videotaping. So, video recording, or an attentive buddy, is probably a must. A lot of things are probably somewhere in between... there might be indirect clues one could use, or the feedback is sparse.

I'm especially curious how folks "measure" and practice their higher-level skills, like situational awareness... or anything that goes beyond muscle memory, for that matter.

No. It doesn't. No. They don't. No. They won't.

I think the popular belief (or what I perceive as popular belief) that skills improve with experience stems from the fact that most people eventually get bored of the same site and go someplace new, so we tend to get challenged from time to time in this way or another, while our general comfort level increases, which translates into better skills. I also think that even without focused practice, people tend to pick up things here and there over time, and try them out (at least I do). Of course, there are folks who never go someplace new, and never try something new... a lot of things cannot really be mastered without a focused practice, either...

Anyhow, I take it that you are in the focused practice camp. That's great! I'm also a believer in targeted practice (within reason). I'm curious how you incorporate practice into your diving...

I recommend both. What's the point of perfect skills if you never use them anyplace challenging or interesting?

I agree...

My vote is almost always "go diving" and use the skills you're trying to hone in a practical manner. Go go shoot some SMBs for real on real dives. Do some non-silting kicks over a silty bottom where it matters. Check out some lil' critters where being still in the water means you're able to actually see them. To me, sitting in a pool while someone gets out a bubble level to see if you're within 3 degrees of horizontal trim while making sure you don't fluctuate more than 6 inches up and down is dumb. Go scuba and use what you're trying to refine.

I like that.

 

[WhiteSands]

Do whichever will allow you the highest number of repetitions of the skill you want to practice, at the level of difficulty that pushes your boundaries slightly, in the most realistic scenario possible.

 

[TSandM]

I think things DO get better with experience alone, to the extent that the diver perceives a gap between his current skill and what he would like to be able to do. For example, my buoyancy control DID get better over my first six months of diving, without doing any specific skills work, because I didn't like corking and wanted to stop doing it. But my bar for adequate control was way too low, as I learned when I started diving with some people who had really GOOD skills.

You have a very good point, that diving skills sort into two camps: Those which are objective and measurable, and those which are more amorphous and more difficult to evaluate and to improve. Situational awareness falls in the latter category, but it can be evaluated and it can be improved through drills. Evaluation is easy, whether in a class or just diving. Just ask your buddy if they felt they had any trouble getting your attention! (You can also figure out how often you check your gauge, whether you knew where you were during the dive, whether you noticed and responded quickly to any problems, things like that.) In a class, the instructor will notice your inattention, and generally throw some kind of failure at you that will make you sit up and take notice. I've had my mask disappear more times than I can count, just because a buddy turned away from me and aimed his fins at my face. Once your subconscious realizes that excessive distance between team members means someone will run out of gas, the behavior will cease

 

[ajduplessis]

@OP
Firstly all dives must be focused activities with plans, objectives and goals. This holds true for all types of diving. Maybe you should rather focus more on how you plan and execute a dive start to finish?? I assure you that you that this will give you the focus you desire. What you put in is what you will get out. Do you consider risks, where you place pieces of equipment and why? Do you consider and incorporate personal skills shortfalls into you dive planing, objectives and goals in becoming an more polished and capable diver?

There are things I do in preparation for a dive and will communicate these to my dive partner. That's how we roll, nothing else will do. Many here suggested training that will help you explore different considerations in becoming a more polished diver.

 

[PCoetzee]

My advice is to find good people to dive with.
It is amazing how much you can learn from positive criticism, first hand experience and knowledge transfers.
Apart from actual practise I would also advise reading. There are amazing books with a wealth of knowledge in the market.

 

[RJP]

I think the popular belief (or what I perceive as popular belief) that skills improve with experience stems from the fact that most people eventually get bored of the same site and go someplace new, so we tend to get challenged from time to time in this way or another, while our general comfort level increases, which translates into better skills.

Correlation vs causation.

There are plenty of people with lots of experience... and crap skills.

---------- Post added June 12th, 2015 at 07:51 AM ----------

@OP
Firstly all dives must be focused activities with plans, objectives and goals. This holds true for all types of diving.

You sure make diving sound like a lot of fun...

 

[Doppler]

My advice is to find good people to dive with.
It is amazing how much you can learn from positive criticism, first hand experience and knowledge transfers.
Apart from actual practise I would also advise reading. There are amazing books with a wealth of knowledge in the market.

Good advice as long as one has a supportable definition of "good people to dive with." :shocked2:

To use the violin analogy again, if you play with a bunch of tone-deaf, off-beat duffers, your chances of pulling off a passable rendering of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto are slim, fat, and poor.

However, there are many, many "virtuoso players" out there... and hanging out with them, watching their technique, practicing with them, listening to their suggestions, will all help to improve one's skills... or should.

For the record, I practice working through major failures on most "adventure tourist" level dives. Bigger dives, not so much.

 

[tbone1004]

and a few with fantastic skills and no experience, though the situation is certainly biased towards Ray's point.... You need fantastic skills to get meaningful experience, you can't learn the situational awareness, and how to stay calm under pressure etc if you can't trust that you will revert back the skills that you know you need. I.e. you can't silt out a cave and revert back to turning with your hands and flutter kicking because it will only make it worse. It's a fine balance, but you need to have the intense practice before you can really trust yourself to be able to get you out of situations, but after the skills are locked in you need to go use them to learn how to adapt those skills to real diving conditions.