Teaching Tips: The most important dive skill…

Mask clearing ?  C.E.S.A. ? Neutral buoyancy ?  No, for me it’s ‘breathing underwater’.  Not only is it essential to stay alive, but it the basis of everything that happens underwater…

Quite often on a PADI Open Water course this skill gets brushed over and taught too quickly.  But if you spend the time explaining the importance and the effect of breathing correctly underwater, you might find that your entire Open Water Course will flow more smoothly.  As an instructor, do not be too quick to place extra weight on the student’s belt when they can’t descend at the start of Confined Water Dive 1.  Instead, take the time to explain the correct breathing pattern, and the importance of emptying the lungs on exhalation.  Once the student diver does this, they should descend more easily, and now right from the beginning, they have understood the correlation between breathing and buoyancy.

Sometimes at the beginning of an Open Water Course, the students are a little nervous, and this can affect their breathing pattern too.  Once underwater, I then take the time to teach the correct breathing pattern before attempting mask clearing or regulator skills.  I treat this skill underwater as an introduction to the fin pivot.  I ask them to lie down, practising equalising as they do so, then ask them to watch my hand as I coax them into a relaxed, correct breathing pattern.  As they do this, I add little amounts of air to their BCDs to get them neutrally buoyant, so they are fin pivoting.  Now they will truly start to understand the importance of the correct breathing pattern underwater and the effect this has on buoyancy and position in the water, and your Open Water Course will be easier to teach…