In our latest instructor forum we looked at the challenges of teaching buoyancy and trim.  As we are at this stage in this years pool teaching we focused on teaching buoyancy and trim to a novice diver.

Why is this so hard?

Teaching usually begins teaching the basic skills, as instructors we quickly get to grips with teaching these skills and it’s clear how to break down the skills into progressive steps and how to correct when students don’t get it right first time.  As training progresses and we move on to buoyancy and trim, it’s suddenly less clear how to break down the skill and where to correct.  To make it worse, BSACs instructor guidance on teaching B&T seems to stop at teaching a fin pivot.  Learning buoyancy control takes time, so don’t expect the student to pick it up at the speed they pick up reg retrieval and don’t think your lesson has been successful if they aren’t perfect at the end of the lesson.

Here we look at a dedicated lesson for novice divers, but you should consider that B&T is incorporated into most lessons.  In the very early lessons students will have been shown the effects of breathing in and out on the surface and how this moves them up and down in the water, they will have used their BC controls at the surface and underwater and they will have had some time moving around in the pool.  Don’t forget these elements in your early lesson plans, they are critical early steps in understanding buoyancy and a useful way to maximise use of pool time when you’ve flown through teaching the basic 6.

Prepare yourself for teaching

As with any time your instructing, make sure your personal skills are up to standard before you attempt to teach a lesson.  You may have nailed buoyancy in your drysuit, but your buoyancy will be different in the pool especially if you’ve change any other elements of your kit configuration.  You may find attending a buoyancy and trim workshop useful, its opportunity to improve your own skills and see experienced instructors in action teaching B&T.

A dedicated B&T lesson for beginners

A good place to start is what is reasonable to achieve in a dedicated B&T lesson?  This will always depend on the students abilities but aim for ensuring the student understands:

  • why buoyancy and trim is important
  • the horizontal body position they should achieving and making progress towards achieving it
  • the effect of moving weight closer to and further from their center of gravity
  • the use of breath control to move up and down in the water
  • what a neutral hover is and making progress towards achieving it
  • body control while moving and making progress towards moving around while neutrally buoyant.

Incorporating a dry run of body position into your brief is really helpful.  At its simplest, lying on the floor and demoing the position will help.  If you have a chair or platform available, try getting the student to lie with their hips on the edge of it.  Work on the upper back arch to make head forward and arm out in front comfortable.  Next, work on pushing hips down/buttock clench to bring legs up to parallel.  Usually knees will naturally bend into frog kick position, but adjust to this if needed.  (If your incorporating frog kick into the lesson any way, this leads to your next demo).  If necessary physically move their body into the right position, but remember consent is key so ask first and also let them know you will also do it in the water.

Talk through some of the exercises you will do underwater as its not as obvious what you’re doing underwater as with basic 6.  Brief signals related to the lesson – they might not have used a signal for breath in or out, hover or squeeze you butt.

Make sure kit is fitted well before you get in the water, loose kit will mean weight distibution can change in the water which will cause problems.

Start the lesson with getting them to lie on the bottom of the pool and progressively get into the horizontal position.  Then introduce BC controls to get them into a neutral hover.  You’re likely to need to make adjustments to their body, but does tank need moving up or down?  Would they be better with a euro or fabre tank (the euro has an extra 2kg at the bottom)?  Hand them a weight and see what a difference it makes as it move closer or further from their body.  Are their feet overweighted? Do they need to use pool fins instead of heavy jet fins?  Have their knees dropped and their arms gone back to flapping about?  Don’t rush this part, they need time to get used to the feeling or being in a good body position and practice trying to stay neutral.

Next incorporate breathing exercises – the good old fin pivot or try to keep them horizontal and move up and down (fin pivot without feet down).

They should be ready to try swimming around, don’t worry about finning technique for now, focus on maintaining buoyancy and not being flappy.  They’ve just spent a good while focusing on holding their body in a new way so try get them to relax and have some fun.  A neutral ball, or pool toys, can be a really useful tool to help with this.  Try getting them to take off their fins, it something a bit different to do but also means they have to rebalance themselves.

Now see if they can hold a static hover, this is the hardest one.  Try do it facing a wall to encourage them to keep still and give them a fixed visual reference.  Look for their breathing to relax into normal breathing.

If theres time left at the end of the lesson you could start looking at finning, but give plenty of time for the student to focus on buoyancy so don’t rush onto this.  Make sure you debrief the student and they understand that buoyancy isnt something you pick up quickly, they may be feeling a little frustrated.  One of the challenges of B&T is that the student cant see if they’re doing it well.  Video footage can be a really useful way to show them and a great addition to the debrief.