What skills can we practice?

[Deefstes]

My wife and I try to practice skills as often as we get an opportunity but I'm not sure which skills are necessarily meaningful to practice. We've discussed air sharing on ascent in this thread and I recounted how, last weekend, we practiced our own improvised "rescue" situation. We realised afterward that it was a waste of time and a rather silly exercise.

So I thought I'd turn to ScubaBoard again and get suggestions for skills (or perhaps combinations of skills) that would be meaningful for AOW divers to practice. We still practice buddy breathing and that sort of thing from time to time but I'm sure there are more useful and more complex exercises to go through.

Your thoughts?

 

[RonFrank]

Practice them ALL!

Rescue is not a waste of time, you likely need to take the class.

It is VERY worthwhile to do mask drills, and air sharing drills. Likely the two most commonly practiced drills, but both things can and do happen. Especially mask removal, clearing, and just dealing with a mask that get's loose, knocked or even suddenly knocked off.

Learning to shoot a Safety sausage, or lift bag is a VERY worthwhile skill, and something that is surprisingly difficult to do without loosing depth, getting tangled, maybe both!

If you dive with equipment, practice unclipping, or removing the equipment from a pocket. Then use it, or put it back. In the case of a backup mask, you can swop in your backup for the primary, and see how that goes.

When you are doing these types of drills, it's best to start on or near a platform, and have your buddy monitor you. They can grab you in the event a lift bag tries to take you to the surface, etc. However you buddy needs to be a good enough diver to pull that off. If not, better one rapid ascent vs. two! If you get pulled to the surface, just go back down, and complete the dive.

Some skills are difficult, and likely not very useful. Removing or exchanging BC's for example. They are done more as a task loading skill vs. a real life skill.

Practicing skills at a safe comfortable depth on a platform if necessary is the BEST way to ensure those skills are second nature when you need them in a real situation.

 

[Reg Braithwaite]

Your thoughts?

Hee hee... Go UTD Recreational. Failing that, buy their "Essentials of Recreational Diving" or "Intro to Technical Diving" DVDs and practice everything you see there. There are (depending on who is buying rounds at the pub) five or six core drills that can be practiced on every dive:

1. Regulator remove and replace.
2. Regulator Exchange.
3. Mask Flood and Clear.
4. Mask Remove and Replace.
5. Recover Primary Regulator.
6. Safety Drill (a/k/a Deploy Regulator for Air Sharing).

Some would argue you should not learn any of these things without instruction to prevent bad habits. I would guess that if you have had OW, you have had instruction on all of these things.

A few others, given the caveat that if you haven't been instructed on how to do these things, you may do yourself a harm practicing bad techniques. For example, anything to do with fiddling with your valves underwater can kill you, even in a swimming pool. Anything to do with a line or reel can strangle you.

• Valve drill. With a single tank, can you turn your tank on and off? Can you feather it down if it is free flowing?
• Free flow: Breathe from a regulator with the purge held down.
• Busted Inflator: Do a descent using oral inflation only.
• Busted inflator: swim around and do a whole practice dive using oral inflate only.
• Various finning techniques: Frog, Modified Flutter, Helicopter turns, and hovering without ANY movement from your fins.
• Air sharing ascent (both divers fully able).
• Regulator sharing hover.
• Regulator sharing ascent.
• Deploy SMB.

I have left out a common drill where an OOG diver swims 40' or 50' to the donor and then both do an air sharing ascent. I honestly think this should only be practiced with a trained rescue diver/instructor present.

 

[scarefaceDM]

My 2 cents worth. avoid practicing skills you do not know. You will likely not perform them properly. Even if you look at a HOW to DVD it is not in your best interest to do that. Grab an instructor. A very good one. Pay there time in a pool to go over certain skills you are not familiar with. Or grab a very experienced diver who can demonstrate proper skill sets and correct you as you execute them.

The basic skills set you have learned is fine. OW skills. You should be able to do them easily. and practice them as much as you can. say near the end of a dive. Or just before you start your dive.

Blowing a bag or surface marker - if not done properly can lead you into more problems. entanglement issues come to mind, a rapid uncontrolled acent. Caused by entanglement, poor bouyancy.

A mock rescue if not done properly, again will cause an unwanted emergency situation which you may not be prepared for. Take a rescue course if you have not done so already.

The other skills which in my opinion is a vital skill. Buoyancy and proper fining techniques

Practice your buoyancy. practice this over and above anything else until you can effectively hover properly. Meaning hold a depth of 10 feet with 500psi in your tank, not vertically but horizontally. This, surprisingly, is a skill less mastered. MANY MANY divers lack this vital skill. and perform it poorly. If ya do not believe me. Watch a cattle boat of divers next time on vacation, hit the water and watch them dive...you will be shocked as to how poor there buoyancy is. Crashing into each other, hitting the bottom, silting out the dive and worse case crashing into a coral.

The other skill mentioned is Fining techniques. Poor fining techniques run rampant, meaning the traditional scissor kick. It is a fine when you have to power yourself out of current or a difficult swim. But when cruising along close to the bottom. Checking things out, taking pictures etc...you should not leave a cloud behind you. You should be able to swim efficiently by doing the Frog kick. You will also improve your SAC rate. THIS should be part of ALL courses from OW and on. The frog kick is a anit-siliting fining technique that everyone should master. it is a simple skill to learn and practice. This goes hand in hand with proper buoyancy.

Learn and master those two skills, then combine that with mask removal, air share, SMB deployment, etc..you will become the master of your dive.

The real key here is learn from someone with more experience than you. Find a mentor to practice with or hire an instructor to teach you and help you improve your skills.

 

[bfisher]

I agree that practicing some skills is worth while, but most you would never use. Others you hope you never have to use; Rescue being one of those and one that every diver should learn.

Doffing and donning, clearing mask is very useful. Done ccasionally you can become very proficient and comfortable doing this. I routinely do it at depths exceeding 100'. Doesn't matter what depth. It's still worth doing just to bolster your own confidence.

Bouyancy---big time. I don't know that I'd say at 10', but at any depth you should be able to hover or control your position. Comes in REAL handy if you ever take up photo/video. And most places don't want you hitting the reef.

Finning techniques for those times you might be in a wreck, cavern, or swim through of some type. You don't want to silt things up for yourself or those following you. Think of it this way. If you need fins you're going to fast in most cases.

Communications... Work out signals with your buddy (wife) that you both will understand while underwater. Practice them till it's almost like you're talking to one another.

Equipment checks...Oft overlooked is checking each others' equipment prior to each and every time you enter the water. And once you check then do it again to make sure nothing is overlooked. This is a most important part of any dive plan.

 

[PToone]

I think we all have jumped in to the water before without first wetting our BC and now our tank is not tight in our BC. (Maybe it only happened to me when I was first learning?!?) Practice readjusting your buddy's tank in the water; the situation may arise that they find their tank too low/high and would like it adjusted in water.


Oh, and above all.. BOUANCY! A local dive location here in Utah has some objects anchored to the ground and floating at different depths. I go there often to float near/around these objects and test my boyancy skills. Also test my ability to adjust my boyancy with taking deep breaths and dumping my lungs. Once you have that mastered your diving will be much more enjoyable.

 

[nelia1978]

I know that the skill I will work on a LOT is the bouancy. I still have not done my checkout dives but once I get certified, I plan to rent a tank and jump in my aunts 4ft pool.. I know its not deep, but its somewhere where I can practice.. I guess its also good because it is limited in depth...

 

[bfisher]

I know that the skill I will work on a LOT is the bouancy. I still have not done my checkout dives but once I get certified, I plan to rent a tank and jump in my aunts 4ft pool.. I know its not deep, but its somewhere where I can practice.. I guess its also good because it is limited in depth...

Although I'd recommend deeper water you can do as you will. Any practice is better than none. Getting bouyancy under control is very difficult at shallow depths. That's why I do safety stops at about 20'-25'. It's easier to maintain position and I compensate somewhat by doing 5 minutes or more instead of 3 minutes.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Every dive is a skills dive. That was imparted to me by a mentor when I first got certified. I remember on dive number 9 or 10 being given a pony bottle, reel, and lift bag. was supposed to take them off, put em on the platform, and reclip them while hovering off of the platform. Without changing position in the water column. Then deploy said items. CLip bag to reel, inflate with pony and ascend. Mask removal and replacement in the pool or on a platform is nothing special. Do it while swimming in low vis without stopping or changing your buoyancy. Do an air share swim with the receiver maskless.

 

[ivobj]

First, congrats, not every diver have the conscience of practicing the drills.

I think most of then were already mentioned, but in my opinion you should practice:

1 - BUOYANCY!!!
2 - Mask flooding, replacing and unflooding
3 - Air sharing with same reg (one good idea to gain more ability, try also sharing air without your mask on)
4 - Recovering back up reg both for yourself or to offer an OOA buddy
5 - Adjust your buddy's cylinder, well remembered by PToone, and to master that, good buoyancy is a must
6 - Deploy surface marker (also master buoyancy is a must)
7 - Orientation, natural and with compass

This are the main ones, occasionally you can try also:

- If you dive frequently in areas where orietation is very complicated, like sandy botton, you may try using a reel to guide you
- Free flow reg breathing
- Finning half cycle, frog kick, backwards, hovering, helicopter
- If you use dry suit, practice forward roll to stop uncontroled ascent with feet first