Yucatec Divers, Alain Pocobelli, TDI Instructor 17063 , Cavern and Cave Diving course

[beester]

I'm not condoning an instructor hitting is students in any way. However I can see situations where this could be a necessary tool if this was discussed before entering the water.

For example when learning valve-failure procedures (GUE) in an overhead there is a slight risk of mis-managing these procedures in such a way that the trainee and his teammembers could close all valves resulting in an out of air situation. Of course an instructor is on top of this (sometimes literally) and will need to stop this straight away. Light communication might not be enough in such situation (student being fully engrossed in the procedure) and a slight tap on the head can help 'reset' the student and stop the action.

 

[nakatomi]

If you are diving cave which has room to get through in backmounted doubles, you should never need to protect your head, because your buoyancy control should be good enough to ensure you don't hit anything with it.

It probably depends on the individual, but in side mount diving, the vertical position of the diver within the passage can be a little bit different than in backmount.
One major goal of side mount is to keep a lower overall vertical profile. This can only be achieved by not bending the knees at a 90 degree angle
To avoid silting, the side mount diver will have to rise a little further towards the ceiling to compensate for the feet being lower.

Of course the angle can be adjusted dynamically during the dive to suit the situation, but we need to remember that this will affect trim. My legs are trimmed out to be at a maybe 45-60 degree angle, thus I will dive very close to the ceiling in lower backmount passages.

Obviously this will lead to contact with the cave at some point, because the head is now the highest point when in trim, unlike for a backmount diver where it would be the valves. As others have said, this is absolutely a non-issue when wearing a hood and swimming.

Oliver

---------- Post added July 1st, 2013 at 12:34 PM ----------

So just a question : aren't you supposed to wear helmets on cave diving ? And so, I don't really see the point of punching student's head ?
(not to mention instructor get the same in his face, right back to the surface if the "training punch" is that strong...)

A helmet won't help, since during the lights-out drill, without protecting the head you will eventually hit parts of the cave with your mask or other parts of the face, depending on how far the obstacle protrudes.

FWIW, I find this "punching" incident totally unacceptable. Also I made sure before choosing my instructors for technical and cave training that we talked about all the "confidence building drills" and how they were handled.
Some things I cannot accept, like punching someone who cannot even see it coming.

Oliver

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

If you are diving cave which has room to get through in backmounted doubles, you should never need to protect your head, because your buoyancy control should be good enough to ensure you don't hit anything with it.

Agreed, completely.

 

[Peter Guy]

I sure wish the OP and Alain would come back and respond to see if either of them have learned anything from this discussion.

OP -- with the benefit of hindsight, do you feel you were actually prepared for this class? What would you do differently next time?

Alain -- with the benefit of hindsight, do you feel you used the appropriate teaching strategies for these students? What would you do differently next time?

Come on people, Enquiring Minds Need to Know!