16 Aug

Skill Demonstration – Hover

Today we will look at how to Hover, a skill that is useful for your PADI Divemaster or PADI IDC course, as it is part of the skill circuit that you are required to complete for both of these courses.

Getting comfortable with the skills requires some practice and also to understand the intent of the skill: what it is meant to explain, or make our students understand, about diving?

 

 

Let’s look at the hover. This is a very important skill, specifically for your PADI Open Water students. Once the neutral buoyancy has been mastered, the next step is to get them to hover.

The aim of this skill is to get the students comfortable with hovering for a while and getting good control of their buoyancy. You will also find similar skills in the PADI Advanced course, for example during the Peak Performance Buoyancy dive.

In order to demonstrate this skill, follow these steps:

  • Deflate completely your BCD in order to be negatively buoyant, before either kneeling or lying on the bottom. There is not one position to achieve this skill, instead students should hover in whichever position they find comfortable.
  • Take a breath and show that you are not going up.
  • Add a little bit of air in your BCD with the inflator button and repeat the breathing in and out part. You will likely gain some buoyancy but maybe not enough.
  • Repeat previous step until you become neutrally buoyant and you start rising slowly as you are breathing in.
  • Show that you are having minimal movements as you are breathing slowly and staying at the same level. You can show your students how to use a visual reference in order to control their depth.
  • Arms and legs should not move and not help in order to reach the position.
  • For that skill in the PADI Open Water course, your students will have to hover for 30 seconds, so you can remind them of the time requirement for this.

The skills to Hover are crucial to good buoyancy control in diving, so give them ample practice time in order to feel comfortable! You can also turn it into some fun by having students try different hovering positions.

During your PADI Divemaster course or your Instructor course you will practice this skill and hopefully these few tips will help you master it!

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