TEACHING BUOYANCY
W
hen we started UTD in 2008 we were very focused on technical and overhead diving, but soon learned two things:
Why (And How)
We Teach
Buoyancy
to Students
Trained by
Any Agency
Protecting our lakes and oceans
should be just as important as visiting
them underwater.
We cannot allow students to touch
the bottom, break coral, or disrupt the
habitat of marine animals.
Certified divers come to UTD instructors from all manner of backgrounds,
but mostly they arrive overweighted.
We use our Extreme Scuba Makeover
program to get back to basics: use
your lungs for buoyancy. The BCD
should only carry the weight of the
gas in your tanks and the compression of your wetsuit. It is not for buoyancy control.
Once we establish proper weighting,
then we can teach proper breathing. Proper breathing leads to proper
buoyancy control.
Every diver should have access to this
type of training. And every instructor
should understand how to properly
weight their students.
Call us or write for more info.
1. We had an opportunity to bring team diving concepts to
recreational divers, and
2. Students were not getting good primary buoyancy training.
Our first course for non-certified divers was Recreational 1. This
class combined Open Water training with our Essentials of Rec
program. It was eight days and $1200. In our first two years two
people signed up.
It became obvious that the market would not bear that kind of
entry level class, so we re-worked Rec 1 into our basic Open
Water course then followed it with Essentials of Rec for those who
wanted more training in personal skills.
Essentials of Rec is the entry point into the UTD system of team
diving for any certified diver. In the course we teach buoyancy,
trim, five non-silting propulsion techniques, team air-sharing
(S-Drills), valve shutdown drills, and surface marker buoy deployment.
But the key to all these skills AND a life time of good diving is
proper buoyancy control. This means:
1. Understanding why we need weight.
2. Establishing the proper amount of weight.
3. Getting the weight distributed correctly.
4. Controlling buoyancy with lungs, not the BCD
Proper weighting allows for proper buoyancy control. See UTD
Techniques on page XXX. As instructors, we cannot overweight
students and expect them to have good buoyancy control, especially in shallow water (like at the end of an ascent).
UTD students learn to do all their skills neutrally buoyant, never
kneeling or touching the bottom. We accomplish this by breaking
down buoyancy control into its simplest elements, the foundationl
of whcih is: Breathing is for buoyancy. The fact that it also keeps
you alive is a side effect.
Please contact us for more information on teaching proper weighting and buoyancy.