Teaching it Neutral Style... a paradigm shift in Scuba instruction

[Hawkwood]

That's why most of our OW students do their certification dives in a dry suit. So they can continue to dive locally or on the coast.

 

[boulderjohn]

When we wrote our article on this topic, we did research to find out when teaching skills on the knees started. It turned out that it started pretty much from the start of scuba instruction because they had no way to make students buoyant--not even a wet suit at first. As a consequence, it made sense to teach the skills on the knees, a paradigm that continued even after technology (the BCD) was invented that made it unnecessary.

 

[Cert1967]

Hello Pete

A year ago you were trimming us out and suggesting a cavern class

Well, we took your advice and took a cavern and overhead Sidemount class from Cave Adventures. Michal was our instructor.

Caverns and caves were a reach for Liz - she wasn't comfortable with the closed spaces. She took quickly to the Sidemount

I thought the clear spring water was amazing - and an easy gear wash. I was fortunate and passed both the overhead Sidemount and cavern. Now I want to see what's in the caves

And all because you showed us how easy it was to be trim and efficient - simple with practice and the right instruction

We followed the courses with a beach stay, 2-days in Destin. Nice beach, but 2ft of rain in 36 hours

We're in Turks now and enjoying the 60MPH winds. Our flight was the last AA flight into PLS. We shall see how Explorer Ventures handles their Saturday departure

It was great fun diving with you, meeting Elena and see the Keys

Thanks again for pointing us in the right direction




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ScubaInChicago]

I have seen classes kneeling as far back as 1969.

I guess that's one way to earn a certification. It would be interesting to see that standard published somewhere.

 

[boulderjohn]

I guess that's one way to earn a certification. It would be interesting to see that standard published somewhere.

It was never a standard. It was just how it was done.

As mentioned earlier, our research on this topic showed that skills instruction was pretty much always done on the knees. Formal scuba instruction started at Scripps before the wet suit was even invented. Tanks had bands around them that held straps in place, and that is how they were affixed to the near-naked body. Instruction was done on the knees because that was how they first figured out how to do it back then. Then the wet suit was created, giving some little buoyancy. The horse collar BCD came into being, but it tended to put diver's upright. With each invention, buoyancy became a little easier to control, but the tradition of teaching on the knees continued. By the time something resembling the modern BCD was invented, the tradition of instructing firmly planted on the knees was thoroughly established. There was no standard for it--that's just how it was done.

When technical diving agencies started training divers, some tended to go right to horizontal, neutral instruction, but they were dealing with seasoned divers, not beginning OW students.

The question, then, is not when people started teaching skills to beginning divers while they are negatively buoyant on the knees but rather when instructors began to teach differently. I have no idea when that started. When I was a new instructor, I had never seen it done otherwise, and when I first heard about it, I was skeptical. Discussion about this in the Instructor to Instructor forum on ScubaBoard 9-10 years ago was dominated by people who insisted that you had to do it on the knees, with only a few lonely voices saying otherwise. When I started experimenting, I was told by some that teaching in the knees was required by standards, and I checked carefully with my local Course Director and PADI headquarters to get assurance that it was not. Even after we published the article about horizontal, neutral instruction in the PADI professional journal (The Undersea Journal), Several instructors on ScubaBoard argued incessantly and vigorously that doing so was a standards violation. They persisted even when we quoted statements from PADI headquarters that said categorically that there was no standards violation, insisting nonsensically that PADI headquarters--including CEO and President Drew Richardson--did not have the authority to explain PADI standards.

In short, teaching new OW students on the knees while negatively buoyant was the norm in all scuba instruction for decades. At some point some unknown instructors scattered around the world started doing things differently, and the concept has slowly spread. It is still a minority approach, but now discussions about it are dominated by people advocating it. That's an important change.

 

[rjensen23]

I just recently began learning about scuba diving, so this post was really informative. Two ideas that I learned is that there are alternative certifications besides PADI and SSI, and that there are more effective ways to teach learning scuba divers.
Thanks!

 

[The Chairman]

And all because you showed us how easy it was to be trim and efficient - simple with practice and the right instruction

You guys were great!!! But the real key: it's incredibly easy. Easy to learn. Easy to do. Then it makes the whole dive incredibly easy too.

when I first heard about it, I was skeptical.

That's an understatement! I wish I could find it, but John actually posted that he did not believe that I was able to teach completely off the bottom. It was about the closest to being called a liar without him actually saying it.

 

[boulderjohn]

That's an understatement! I wish I could find it, but John actually posted that he did not believe that I was able to teach completely off the bottom. It was about the closest to being called a liar without him actually saying it.

OK, let's be accurate here.

I was skeptical about teaching horizontal and neutral early on--like 9-10 years ago. Then I tried it the way I still do it and liked it. I became an advocate for that approach, as I am now. I was teaching horizontal and neutral, the body resting lightly in the floor for the first session, for several years before the thread being mentioned now.

Then in another thread you talked about having students in mid water horizontal from the very start of instruction. I was more than skeptical about that because I did not think I could do that myself. All of the people who collaborated on the article we wrote shared their approaches prior to our first draft, and none claimed to be able to do that. To this date, you are still the only person I know who does this (as far as I know), and I still have not seen it. (I still start lightly touching the floor and then move off of it in the next section.) I did challenge you, but I was mostly asking you to give more information, which you would not do. You just kept repeating the same general theme over and over again. I finally got very challenging, and you finally gave more specific details of your approach. Those details included how you put your trim weights on the students to get them trimmed out properly, including the bungee system you use, which none of us had ever seen.

IN summary, I was NOT skeptical of getting students off their knees then--I was skeptical that you could have them floating in mid water in the shallow end of the pool immediately after they got in the water, and I was frustrated that you would not provide any details of how you did it.

 

[The Chairman]

2 phunni! I probably misunderstood what you were asking for! It's totally simple and almost too simple for words! The best way to describe it is: I work from the top down. Most instructors work from the bottom up.

• I have my students cross their legs and arms.
• Every inch above water means I give them a pound.
• I repeat until their head is just below the surface. Then I add one or two pounds.
• We put the weights in their BC.
• They start swimming, imitating my frog kick.
• As they swim, they work themselves down.
• As they swim, I adjust their trim.

It usually takes 2 or three laps for them to get fairly trim and neutral. The most common mod to get them trim is a one or two pound "ankle weight" put around the tank valve. Sometimes I have to bungee weights to their BC, but usually it's just not that difficult.

 

[Jack Hammer]

I guess that's one way to earn a certification. It would be interesting to see that standard published somewhere.

It was never a standard. It was just how it was done...

I think he meant something else...

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