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Hello everyone !
As a newbie (I did my certification dives last week-end), I read a fair amount of posts and articles on buoyancy and its importance. So I called the dive shop and spent time in the pool this week to practice. I am planning to do the same every week until I leave for Cozumel at the end of July.
I am wondering if there are exercises I can do to improve my buoyancy control. I came up with few things by myself in the pool, but was curious to see if more experienced divers and instructors here can give me few exercices or tips.
Thanks very much in advance.
(P.S : sorry for my broken English).
A genuine question with no intent to troll: How does someone know their instructor is good or not without taking the class with them? It's a catch 22 for someone who knows not what they don't know. My own experience with a PADI instructor was that I had barely adequate instruction. I can't count how many times I have been slightly bent in my first 75 dives because my instructor placed zero emphasis on proper weighting and trim. I have had to teach myself this (and I'm still not there yet). The trouble is that I could have gotten seriously hurt in the process. I placed too much weight on PADI producing an instructor that would give me the tools to enjoy this sport safely. Instead I got the bare minimum. Mea Culpa.Agreed. A good instructor can help you. If you try and do it yourself, you don 't know what you don't know, you can't see yourself, and you can easily end up missing the important points and reinforcing some bad habits.
A genuine question with no intent to troll: How does someone know their instructor is good or not without taking the class with them? It's a catch 22 for someone who knows not what they don't know. My own experience with a PADI instructor was that I had barely adequate instruction. I can't count how many times I have been slightly bent in my first 75 dives because my instructor placed zero emphasis on proper weighting and trim. I have had to teach myself this (and I'm still not there yet). The trouble is that I could have gotten seriously hurt in the process. I placed too much weight on PADI producing an instructor that would give me the tools to enjoy this sport safely. Instead I got the bare minimum. Mea Culpa.
Do instructors in your area work with divemasters on the openwater checkout dives? If so, I'd ask to talk to a couple of divemasters privately about which instructor they'd recommend. They probably won't trash a bad one, but they may recommend one or two good (or at least decent) ones.
Out of curiosity myself, how do you think your buoyancy (and trim?) issues caused you to get slightly bent? Did you ascend out of control routinely? Or ended up far deeper than you intended to? Honestly curious, as I want to know how to advise student divers better.
I’ve has one case of the skin bends. Yes , self diagnosed and it went away after a day or two. The other times I could directly correlate me losing control on ascent (sometimes multiple times in the same dive) and feeling like I was in a car accident for the rest of the day. I know you’re probably headed to “you’re not a doctor and you’re probably diagnosing muscle fatigue as the bends”. I’m sure you’re right and My only response is I know my body. When I have it together and ascend slowly I come out of a dive feeling fine and I carry on with my day. When I don’t I feel like crap and have to lay down for the rest of the day.More to the point, how do you define "slightly bent", and how do you know you suffered from such a thing too many times to count?