 WE HAVE BEEN MENTORING BUOYANCY
CONTROL SKILLS & FROG KICK SINCE 1996 ....
but we don't dress up as tech divers to do that......................even though one of us is a CAVE DIVER SINCE 2006, we've used the name BuoyancyQuest
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"No
Performance Requirement in SCUBA
Diving is more poorly defined or less
often achieved than....Buoyancy
Control." |
MOST DIVERS: believe that their own Buoyancy SKILLS are "GOOD ENOUGH"! |
Don't be like: MOST DIVERS |
| SCUBA Diving FUNDAMENTALS: are
the basic skills that are needed in order to operate in an alien
world. They are the foundation that supports everything else that a
diver will ever pursue or accomplish. Buoyancy Control,
underwater propulsion skills (fin kicks) and a horizontal profile with
streamlining are as basic to
underwater pursuits as walking and running are to terrestrial
activities. Underwater skills do not equal surface swimming skills. This author has seen magnificent surface swimmers who were hopeless divers and has know some truly spectacular divers who had surface swimming skills that were barely sufficient to keep them alive in an emergency. Equating good swimmers with GOOD SCUBA DIVERS is a profound mistake that has been perpetuated by the "Status Quo" because they are unable to agree upon or recognize a standard for truly exceptional foundation skills. These are the same people, many of whom never bothered to perfect their own fundamental dive skills, who share their less than remarkable buoyancy control talent and the culture of substandard SCUBA Skills continues to prevail and dominate the sport. EVEN WITH THE BEST INTENTIONS: ability that has not been mastered, cannot be shared with someone else. Awarding plastic recognition is very different from sharing real competence. This is true regardless of the credentials that are held or the reputation that has been established. A reputation that may exist mostly on paper or plastic and that may or may not be deserved. Leadership level divers who can not or do not share talent in order to maintain or protect their own status....are not mentors. john noftall
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SCUBA FUNDAMENTALS
When we say FUNDAMENTALS
we aren't talking about things that you can hold in your hand. YES, we
favor HOGARTHIAN techniques, but not when they are employed to promote
"make believe" TECH DIVER COURSES. Wearing 50 year old RUBBER FINS will
not make you into a better diver. Always diving, or being photographed
with, an expensive canister light with a goodman handle won't
either. Neither will having big "combat pockets" on
your thermal suit or always diving a 7 foot long hose when
a 5 footer would be plenty long enough in "open water"; which brings us
to "open water side mount", a really expensive
"dress up and pretend course" that is favored by far too many divers
who haven't even begun to address their own buoyancy control skills
issues.
john noftall
DO YOU
REALLY
LOOK AS GOOD UNDERWATER AS YOU LOOK ON PAPER OR PLASTIC?
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DO YOU LOOK LIKE THE
DIVER THAT ANYONE ELSE WOULD WANT TO BE?
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| WE BELIEVE:
that there's no such thing as Buoyancy Control that's: "GOOD
ENOUGH"! |
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WHO REALLY WANTS GOOD BUOYANCY?
Most divers are much more interested in collecting more C-Cards and more fancy dive gear, and even more T-Shirts, than they are in perfecting foundation skills. Like it or NOT, SCUBA Diving is an EGO Sport! "Bragging Rights" and "STATUS" , are more prized than actual diving ability. Moving pictures are all that is needed in order to evaluate dive skills. Any use of hands for steering and propulsion is too much! Seeing a diver through the face plate of your mask is even better than watching video. Danglies can be seen in still photos. In fact, photos of danglies are a regular feature of dive magazine pictures. Both SCULLING (using the hands) and DANGLIES (hanging consoles, slates, octos and retractors) are all "hallmarks of a substandard diver". |
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 THE PHOTO ABOVE:
Is
the "only" one you will see of us in cave diving equipment. We want our
message to be that good buoyancy control and a good kick are the
foundation of everything else in SCUBA
Diving.
Exceptional fundamental skills are for "all divers" not just tech divers. You won't
"dress up and pretend"!
YOU WON'T GET A C-CARD! YOU WILL HAVE BETTER DIVE
SKILLS!
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ONE OF US IS A CAVE
DIVER
But "only" a cave diver. Not a cave instructor and not a famous cave diver with lots of exploration credits or pending patents on "state of the art" scuba gadgets. A CAVE DIVER who "only" mentors the kind of buoyancy control skills and the kind of kick that you need to have when you show up for your first day of cave diving class. YES....AN OPEN WATER INSTRUCTOR; but let's not include acronyms and instructor numbers here because selling "only" fundamentals without the carrot on a stick [ dressing it up as tech diving ] is difficult enough without identifying with an agency that is not famous for producing good divers or good instructors. When you see your instructor on the sales floor of your local dive shop you are probably seeing him/her at their best. MANY OR MOST of the open water instructors who show up for cave diver training can not claim ownership of remarkable buoyancy skills in a single tank set up. Chances are good that you learned about diving from one or more of them. WE DON'T OFFER PP SKILLS or other "Mickey Mouse"
certifications.
WE PROMISE: you will gain buoyancy control skills and a frog kick that will put a smile on your cave instructor's face. IF you have no plans to...."EVER"....be a technical diver, you'll still be nothing less than a diver with "cave diver quality" fundamental dive skills. SHOULDN'T
EVERY DIVER WANT THAT?
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DON'T
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SCULL WITH YOUR HANDS: sculling is
the Hallmark of Substandard Diving WEAR GLOVES IN WARM WATER: just wear a sign saying your Buoyancy SUCKS! EXPECT YOUR EQUIPMENT TO MAKE YOU INTO A BETTER DIVER! HAVE DANGLIES: try to have a silhouette without any light holes in it while diving. HAVE HOSE HALOS: shorten or re-route your hoses and reduce your girth! |
| DON'T |
IMITATE
any instructor who does any of the ABOVE! |
| LOOSE TANK STRAPS DO OCCUR....but if
you don't have any photos without loose or flapping tank straps.... YOU DON'T HAVE ANY STILL PHOTOS OF GOOD DIVERS! |
| THERE'S NO NEED....to dress up or pretend to be a cave diver
in order to learn or demonstrate GOOD SKILLS! GOOD Buoyancy Control SKILLS are not just for TECH DIVERS! |
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| STILL
PHOTOGRAPHY: only records how good a diver was for a fraction of
a second....VIDEO IS BETTER! |
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"STOP
SCULLING!"
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"LEARN
TO FROG KICK!"
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"Meet us in MEXICO!"
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YOUR CRAWL STROKE is a poor
indication of your Fundamental SCUBA Skills!
THE STATUS QUO has failed, for 70 years,
to establish a STANDARD for "Neutral Buoyancy Control SKILLS".
SO surface swimming skills....HAVE BEEN SUBSTITUTED i.e.
"watermanship" ~ "POSITIVE BUOYANCY SKILLS"
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| HOME |
ABOUT |
WORKSHOPS |
TRAVEL |
PRICE$$$ |
PATCHES |
CONTACT |
LINKS |
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LEARNING SCUBA FUNDAMENTALS
[ buoyancy control ] "FIRST"....IS
LIKE LEARNING TO WALK OR RUN "FIRST"
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"WE SELL
ONLY SKILLS....if you have
nothing to learn...we can't
help you!"
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 AS MOST BUOYANCY CONTROL SKILLS CLINICS |
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YOU WON'T
wear doubles. YOU WON'T
get a C-Card. YOU WILL
improve your buoyancy. YOU WILL
learn to frog kick.
WE WON'T DRESS IN CAVE GEAR TO SHOW YOU HOW....AND YOU WON'T NEED TO DRESS THAT WAY EITHER |
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ABOUT SWIMMING
We
agree that swimming is a good thing to know....and not just for divers.
This author conducted beginner classes through a local dive center for
nine years and certified almost 600 divers of different levels up to
divemasters. The training agency required a "swim test before
certification" but, because they did not want the test to appear to be
a condition for taking the course, they suggested waiting until the end
of the confined water (the pool) sessions to apply the swim test. IF
the reader has not already guessed, there were no less than five
students during that time that failed the swim test on the 5th night of
confined water training AFTER performing well on SCUBA in both the
shallow and deep ends of the pool. The first thing that this brings to
mind is the comfort level that must be required to pull that off. This
defies imagination if you are a swimmer. This is followed by the
realization that , if a non swimmer could out perform a swimmer on
SCUBA, and in some cases this was true, then surface swimming
becomes "only" a test of surface skills, without equipment. We
agree that there should be a test for minimal surface survival. What we
object to is the use of superb swimming skills being substituted, under
the moniker "watermanship" that is used as a substitute for a
"real standard" for Buoyancy Control Skills [neutral buoyancy skills]. Better still.....we would
prefer to see and hear an encouragement to
exceed any and all standards for FUNDAMENTAL
DIVE SKILLS.
john
noftall
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MY FIRST DIVE MASK
My
first dive mask was an "Adolph Kiefer" signature model from Sears
Roebuck. It was triangular in shape, blue in color and included no
option for pinching the nose to aid with equalization of the ears.
Adolph was a
champion swimmer from the 1930s & early 1940s. Nobody in the United
States had ever heard of Jacques Cousteau or Mike Nelson [ both
were still years* away from their TV impact ] so "a
swimmer" was chosen to endorse a dive mask. I'm not suggesting
that this was the beginning of substituting swimming skills for dive
skills but I think comparisons can be drawn as to why so
many current "elite divers" are forgiven their less
than spectacular fundamental dive skills "IF" they are good
swimmers!
john noftall
*not that many years....it was 1953.
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| [ WHO DO WE THINK WE ARE?] |
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We're
offering to mentor "ONLY" the
skills that we do best; "Buoyancy
Control SKILLS".....
Nothing else in Recreational SCUBA Diving is more "HUMBLE" than that! |
| TRY
NAMING: all of the other Cave Divers who "only" mentor Buoyancy
Control....TRY NAMING ONE MORE! |
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