How long should you practice buoyancy per dive without burning out

[Angelo Farina]

It does sound like a dive count thing.

Which means many things.
When a diver is worried about the dive count, it does not sound good to me...

 

[Angelo Farina]

NO, not trying to pad my dive count, that won't help me if I'm in trouble in the ocean or be a better diver. I'm a new diver and am asking for advice on how to do this. I was thinking that I needed a break, if a long dive is better I'll do it. I am aware you should practice on every dive, it's why I'm taking time to just focus solely on it. In martial arts we call it repetitive drilling, that means I may set aside a day or two and only drill a specific technique over and over to get proficient at it. I was carrying over that mindset to diving.

This is a good approach. But the problem of buoyancy control is that people tend to loose control of it when overwhelmed by other tasks.
So practicing only buoyancy control is good at the very beginning, but after 4 or 5 dives, it is time to move to multiple simultaneous tasks.
As buoyancy control is to be done always, you can add other simultaneous tasks such as navigation, making photos o videos, unrolling and rolling back a line, launching an SMB, removing your scuba system and wearing it again, swapping your two regulators, clearing the mask, etc...

 

[Angelo Farina]

I'll be practicing frog kicks and back kicks

They are useful when you do not want to raise silt from the bottom.
But, in my opinion, frog kicking is overestimated here on Scubaboard (due to the presence of many divers who focus only on wrecks and caves).
Depending on the situation, you could need to be efficient also with very different kicking styles, in particular power flutter kicking for speeding against current, and horizontal scissor kick when passing under delicate reef structures or when silting can come from surfaces above you.
Also swimming at the surface should be practiced, because in some cases you ascend far from the boat or the shore and you are forced to a long surface trip.

 

[Kharon]

I practice buoyancy on every dive. As I start a dive I hover horizontal fac e down and face up. I also hover verticle head up and head down. If can easily hold those positions without rising or falling I'm good to continue. If I can't, something (weight, air in wetsuit, etc) needs adjusted before I continue.

 

[SlugLife]

Thanks, yes I'm setting aside time for this to be practice dives. When I'm in the ocean I'll be using the techniques but I'd rather that time be for fun. I'm not burned out with diving, probably used the wrong words, I was asking what's the best way to do these practice dives so I can get the most out of it. Thanks again.

If that's the question, then having distinct "practice dives" is absolutely the way to go. If you can find a shore similar to what I described, then all such practice-dives really will cost you is time, fill-cost, and some gas-money.

Then when you're out on dive-charters, etc, then you're really not worrying about practice. Or if you practice, it's mostly "incidental practice" where it's things that are low-effort that don't interfere with your dive in any meaningful way.

 

[Tigerpaw]

This is a good approach. But the problem of buoyancy control is that people tend to loose control of it when overwhelmed by other tasks.
So practicing only buoyancy control is good at the very beginning, but after 4 or 5 dives, it is time to move to multiple simultaneous tasks.
As buoyancy control is to be done always, you can add other simultaneous tasks such as navigation, making photos o videos, unrolling and rolling back a line, launching an SMB, removing your scuba system and wearing it again, swapping your two regulators, clearing the mask, etc...

Thank you for the helpful tips, after I get the buoyancy under control, I'll add task loading.