Staying Still?

[RainPilot]

You've gotten a lot of good advice so far. My tiny addition:

Any small foot movement will translate to forward motion. Modern fins are VERY good at forward propulsion.....
I would suggest getting your weight and trim dialled in without fins on, in that small pool. That will reduce the effects of the foot movements you still have. Once you are steady and weighted correctly, add the fins back BUT....in the trim position you want, cross your ankles. This will be an invisible reminder not to move your feet. Once you are neutral and in full control like that, then uncross your ankles but keep them together, until you are steady. then move them a little apart and eventually you will be conditioned to hold steady without foot movement.

Just be aware, the crossed ankles is a signal in overhead environments that you are "stuck", meant for the person following you. In OW, nobody will bat an eye but just be aware.

 

[UCFKnightDiver]

In your second video/pool session it looks like you're not wearing the tank strapped to you. A tank and BCD changes the weight and buoyancy over your lungs a bunch. Not sure that dialing in your trim without one is going to help you much.

 

[Graeme Fraser]

You've gotten a lot of good advice so far. My tiny addition:

Any small foot movement will translate to forward motion. Modern fins are VERY good at forward propulsion.....
I would suggest getting your weight and trim dialled in without fins on, in that small pool. That will reduce the effects of the foot movements you still have. Once you are steady and weighted correctly, add the fins back BUT....in the trim position you want, cross your ankles. This will be an invisible reminder not to move your feet. Once you are neutral and in full control like that, then uncross your ankles but keep them together, until you are steady. then move them a little apart and eventually you will be conditioned to hold steady without foot movement.

Just be aware, the crossed ankles is a signal in overhead environments that you are "stuck", meant for the person following you. In OW, nobody will bat an eye but just be aware.

I never knew that about the crossed ankle signal. Every day's a school day.

 

[Doc Harry]

You need to reconsider the goal. Not moving at all is almost impossible......

False claim
Fake news

Cave divers and good photographers are experts at not moving at all. I mastered this skill long before I became a cave diver. It takes some practice, but it is a very achievable skill.

In caves, sometimes you have to wait in a very tight, silty passageway while someone ahead of you ties off a line. You can't be constantly finning and moving, because you bump into the person ahead of you, or you stir up the silt with your fins, or crash into the ceiling or cave floor. So you have to hover motionless. It's what cave divers do.

Dubious, the answer to your question is "more time in the water." You will master buoyancy with more time in the water. Sorry, but that's a truthful answer, and that's the best advice that you will get.

But I can offer a few tips:

Arch your back slightly and keep you head up. Can't tell from your video if you are doing that.

Spread your legs slightly, so that your body is more in a triangle position than a straight position. More than what you see in your video.

Learn the frog and modified frog kicks. These kicks are very useful when you're in a stable triangle.

Focus on consistent, easy breathing so that your buoyancy isn't changing too much from breath to breath.

Keep you body position in the prone position. Don't be rolling side to side. This makes it easier to keep your buoyancy in balance because the air in your BC isn't shifting all over the place. Once you master your buoyancy then you can do whatever you want. I do drift dives hanging upside down.

Finally: RELAX! You look really tense in the video. Tensing a muscle here will cause you to roll over there. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." You gotta relax, especially keeping your arms and legs relaxed.

In your video you keep moving towards the ladder because you keep kicking, which is forward propulsion. Learn to back kick, so that you can reverse forward momentum. And back up.

With enough time in the water, you will learn to hover stationary without moving a muscle.
You'll be chillin' in no time.

 

[Dubious]

be loose and relaxed

Finally: RELAX! You look really tense in the video

Relaxing is something I have a lot of trouble with even before I get to a dive site. My wife-buddy doesn't know why I am fretting about this so much. I guess I am just trying to find things to work on in the pool since Covid-19 has really limited our dive season.

In your second video/pool session it looks like you're not wearing the tank strapped to you. A tank and BCD changes the weight and buoyancy over your lungs a bunch. Not sure that dialing in your trim without one is going to help you much.

I understand that but I guess I was under the impression that buoyancy practice is buoyancy practice or am I way off on this perception. While I am not currently dialing in the weighting of my full kit, I am still learning how breath, posture, fins, weight, and weight placement affects my overall trim and ability to "stay still" while at my safety stop and doing drills. I just don't feel like fully kitting up to hop in my intex pool all the time.

 

[Doc Harry]

My wife-buddy doesn't know why I am fretting about this so much.

It's a good thing to fret about.
It's like a fighter pilot fretting about being a good pilot.

You can't truly find the joy scuba diving until you truly master buoyancy.

 

[UCFKnightDiver]

I understand that but I guess I was under the impression that buoyancy practice is buoyancy practice or am I way off on this perception. While I am not currently dialing in the weighting of my full kit, I am still learning how breath, posture, fins, weight, and weight placement affects my overall trim and ability to "stay still" while at my safety stop and doing drills. I just don't feel like fully kitting up to hop in my intex pool all the time.

There are certainly things you can work on without gear such as different fin kicks, etc. However, to truly get your trim and buoyancy dialed in to where you can be more still, you do need your full kit as the difference in weight and buoyancy can affect things.

I'll give you an example. I love diving my jet fins and they work great and keep me in good trim with steel doubles or a heavy steel single. However, when I dive an AL80 with the jet fins, I end up too feet heavy and end up sculling my fins back and forth to keep my butt up/stay in trim. I recently bought some OMS Slipstream fins to fix this issue because they are less negatively buoyant. Of course there's other ways I could've fixed this issue too such as trim weights, etc. I just chose to go the fin route.

 

[MichaelMc]

I understand that but I guess I was under the impression that buoyancy practice is buoyancy practice or am I way off on this perception. While I am not currently dialing in the weighting of my full kit, I am still learning how breath, posture, fins, weight, and weight placement affects my overall trim and ability to "stay still" while at my safety stop and doing drills. I just don't feel like fully kitting up to hop in my intex pool all the time.

Doing things in manageable chunks makes lots of sense. That pool, hooka and camera are a GREAT resource. Hop in when you can.

ETA: You likely will dial in setups for different levels of gear.

 

[Angelo Farina]

There are some people who dont have complete control of their body.
I did my military service as a firefighter and one of the skills we had to learn was to freeze in a position and staying absolutely motionless. This was the self defense manouvre to employ if being surrounded by bees.
Fire brigade is often called to intervene when a bee storm invades someone's house or garden. There are special "bee suits" for avoiding being punctured, but in case a firefighter is surrounded by a bee storm without that suit, we were trained to stay absolutely motionless for several minutes.
Almost 1/3 of my forecoming firefighters did not pass this test during training, despite doing days of exercise.
I suppose it is a constitutional thing.
The "punishment" for these guys was that they were labelled as the "bee target". So they were given the "bee suit" and were those who had to go close to the storm for pushing them outside, or freezing them with the CO2 extinguisher...