When a Student doesn't get it?

[Edward3c]

Thanks for the detailed requirements.

For BSAC, in Sheltered Water Lesson 03: neutral buoyancy (hover) its to be maintained over a number of breathing cycles, but within +/-0.5m. The orientation of the student isn’t important

Kind regards

Edward

 

[boulderjohn]

I'd already done a proper weight check and got her holding a fin pivot all was good. But the hover. No.

Fin pivot? I really don't know how many years it has been since PADI discontinued the fin pivot as a part of the OW course. It is not part of the OW course, and it is not part of the reactivate program. PADI discontinued it because instructors had lost sight of its one and only purpose--to teach students that inhaling makes them go up and exhaling makes them go down. It has no function in actual diving, and there is no reason to use it in instruction. Instructors were obsessing over the form of the fin pivot, and that obsession interferes with real learning.

. PADI still prescribe the Buddha (as I interpret the standards)

What standards are those? The famed Buddha hover has never been prescribed in the standards. Instructors have taught it over the years for a simple reason. The students are required to hover without using their hands or feet to help in maintaining depth--the Buddha hover takes the hands and feet out of the equation, so students have to hover without using hands and feet.

 

[sunnyboy]

...The famed Buddha hover has never been prescribed in the standards. Instructors have taught it over the years for a simple reason. The students are required to hover without using their hands or feet to help in maintaining depth--the Buddha hover takes the hands and feet out of the equation, so students have to hover without using hands and feet.

I disagree somewhat. I found instructors taught the Buddha pose because of that damnable photo in the manual and on that course slide. It became "the thing to do" in the pool, even for instuctors and DMs.

Last I checked, that damned photo still pops up in places. Too bad it doesn't have the caption "diver assuming an idiot pose in the pool".

 

[lowviz]

...//... The client was a mature student,
... I'd already done a proper weight check and got her holding a fin pivot all was good. But the hover. No. ...

OK, needs work.

... Personally I feel a failure not getting her through this skill. ...

No.

Too much at play here. Pick apart WHY she can't hover. Fault analysis. Not you, HER. Baby steps.

...//... so happy to take criticism or advice so that I can learn.

Wow, just wow. Too much energy and self-flagellation.

Redirect all that to analysis, not to second guessing one's own competence.

 

[Remy B.]

Is she breathing normally and in a relaxed way ?, probably not

Probably a little too much weight on her

It seems as well that she doesn't understand that air takes some seconds to start acting, so when she feels that she is going down she put air in her BCD and she sees that she continues going down, then she puts more air in her BCD then she go uncontrollably up, then she release the air a little and she sees that she is still going up then she release a lot more and it starts all over again

try to make her use her index finger with the arm fully extended, not her fins,( using fins is incorrect because they carry a lot of more weight that what you will think so she will never be really neutral with the body fully horizontal) what is called an arm distance from the bottom on exhale, and when she inhale she shall go up and stop touching fingers with the bottom of the pool. ( she can use both index fingers ), as she exhale she shall touch again with her fingertips, this will give her a reference of how much here lungs will make her go up or down with a sense of distance, ( prior to that in the surface tell her that she need to add a little air to her BCD until the contact in her fingertips is very light [ not carrying her weight ]. to almost nothing

Once she gets to touch ( very very lightly ) and not touch in each exhale and inhale of her lungs, tell her to put her arms horizontal and let her keep breathing, if she begins to go down beyond her arm distance that means that she was allowing her weight to rest on her fingertips, which means she need to give a little puff of air to her BCD.

I'm not saying this is the correct way, but it seems a easy way to learn how to start , and have an idea of what neutrality is and that she can use here lungs a little to help here maintain her buoyancy with little fluctuation and concentrate in her breathing.

In reality to know her real neutral weight in the water, she shall breathing from your long hose and she only with weights enough to keep here neutral under the same principle explained above ( meaning she doesn't have the TANK on the moment you are finding her body neutrality. ) then you know she have almost her perfect amount of weight on, it is a long process that almost nobody does, but for what I have been told it makes sense.

 

[boulderjohn]

I disagree somewhat. I found instructors taught the Buddha pose because of that damnable photo in the manual and on that course slide. It became "the thing to do" in the pool, even for instuctors and DMs.

Last I checked, that damned photo still pops up in places. Too bad it doesn't have the caption "diver assuming an idiot pose in the pool".

You could be right. I know that when I was starting out, I demonstrated a variety of positions, telling them to choose whatever worked best for them. I used to tell them I didn't care of they "walked like an Egyptian," as long as they didn't move their hands and feet. (That should date it all to some extent, if you know the song.) In my demo, the last pose I took was indeed, the classic Egyptian walking pose. Most of the poses I demoed then involved the hands holding onto the feet, legs or knees so they could not use them.

When I joined a dive shop a number of years ago as their technical diving/advanced diving instructor, I talked them into offering the TecReational Diving class I created as a regular part of the program. I got them to advertise a presentation on the advanced buoyancy and trim that would be taught in the class. They sent out a message to their full email list describing the class and the presentation, and to make sure people understood what it would all be about, they put a damned picture of the Buddha hover at the top of the message. I figure that drive everyone who would have been truly interested in the class away.

 

[boulderjohn]

Probably a little too much weight on her

When I transitioned from teaching on the knees to neutrally buoyant, that was a revelation to me. You have to be significantly overweighted to do the skills on the knees, and you should be properly weighted for neutral instruction. What a difference it makes for hovering when the students are not having all that excess air expanding and contracting as their depth changes!

 

[Diver0001]

I disagree somewhat. I found instructors taught the Buddha pose because of that damnable photo in the manual and on that course slide. It became "the thing to do" in the pool, even for instuctors and DMs.

Last I checked, that damned photo still pops up in places. Too bad it doesn't have the caption "diver assuming an idiot pose in the pool".

I think there may be another reason. If you flip that coin over then the "Buddha" pose is the logical result of initiating the hover from the bottom. From the bottom the students are either kneeling, sitting or in a fin-pivot (there are no other variations) and when they leave the bottom from any of those positions they will be virtually vertical in the water column.

If the task they have been given is to get off the bottom and then stop moving then they will automatically be in something approximating the Buddha hover. Taken to its logical conclusion, someone who *perfects* this will have a perfect Buddha hover and will, since they are good at that, want students to emulate it.

It's all a result of "bottom up" thinking.

That said, and this might surprise some of you, but I personally don't think there is anything particularly evil about a sitting hover unless the instructor ONLY does the sitting hover. I have a student right now, for example, who has had the hardest imaginable time learning how to hover. These are the cases that make you a better instructor, the ones who struggle. Since Mod-3 I've loosened my grip a bit and allowed her to hover "sitting" when she wants to and a few things have happend:

(1) she has spent a LOT more time hovering because she finds the sitting hover easy. Even when I'm not telling her to hover then she's hovering because she finally "got it" and she can't get enough of that feeling. She can even hover in round about 1.5m of water and has made a sport of doing so. She hovers while I'm doing something else, she hovers while one of the other students does something, she hovers while she watches what other groups are doing.... hell... she even hovers when she's doing other things .... and she hovers just for the hell of it because it feels good to her. Probably 75% of that has been done in a "sitting" position since mod-3

(2) her buoyancy control has improved 10 fold or more in 3 dives. At mod-3 I was getting concerned about it but by stepping out of my own paradigm box it allowed her to learn in her own way and now I would qualify it as good.

(3) her confidence level has gone through the roof, which has unlocked her attention for other skills as well, which makes her total OW experience much more valuable and well-rounded.

Since achieving that I've been able to get her to hover in horizontal trim more and more. Tonight we did the equipment R&R while hovering in mid-water and she performed the skill flawlessly. Some instructors won't even attempt a hovering equipment R&R and I've done it with this student, who was much slower than average in learning neutral buoyancy, and it was perfect.

And why? Because -- I believe -- I was willing to step outside my paradigm box. I still want her to get to the point where the horizontal hover doesn't confound her and I still have 4 dives with her to get to the point where it is equally comfortable.... but by allowing her to hover while sitting she has made MASSIVE progress in a short time.

If I had cramped up and forbidden her from doing it any way except the "right" way (at least, the "right way" according to the internet) then I would have dramatically slowed her learning curve and made achieving the goal of good buoyancy control considerably more difficult for her. In fact, with this student I might have blown it entirely if I had held on to my own paradigm as "the only way" she was allowed to learn. That's not my role as her instructor.

I said to someone else in another thread recently (paraphrased) that as soon as you start getting autistic about things you start to lose the big picture The goal is sacred, not the process.

R..

 

[Marie13]

Some of us are buoyancy challenged and just take longer to get it. I can so relate.

 

[Bubblesong]

I personally don't think there is anything particularly evil about a sitting hover unless the instructor ONLY does the sitting hover.
R..

Thank you, thank you! I love the Buddha hover, because sometimes I am not zipping about like a squirrel trying to find nuts, but sitting quietly to see what happens to pass by. In this case, I prefer not to be horizontal and bending my neck back to look around. It's not my only hover, but it's useful.