How To Improve Your Own Scuba Skills When Teaching Others

Sub Aqua has all the excitement of one of the best watersports there is. You can enjoy it for years if you are taught properly. However, if safety and rescue is not instilled in you from the beginning it can be quite dangerous.

Every year there are only a handful of deaths of people scuba diving. The details of the incidents always show that most could be avoided if the divers had known better what to do - or not to do. Sub Aqua teaching by the leading training bodies such as BSAC, PADI and many more is of a superlative standard. This includes the excellent standard of training given to instructors in order to pass on the training to students. The trouble is that a few training agencies do not insist on such high levels of safety and even some of the best can occasionally miss the underperformace of one or two of their instructors.

The time when a new recruit first starts learning to dive is the best occasion for lecturing the safety ethos. A new and open mind is more ready to soak up the safety culture than a seasoned diver who probably taught himself to dive years ago.

Each lesson will start with an opening talk for a few minutes, irrespective of whether it is a dry practical, in the swimming pool or in the sea. At the start of the briefing are the safety issues relevant to that lesson and to the site being used. When learning to remove a regulator underwater it may seem obvious but a student is warned to hold their breath for a short while until it is replaced! Safety briefings may seem somewhat pedantic at times but they do help.

Teaching skills are important, especially for new students waiting like sponges to absorb all the new knowledge you have to give them. Skills are best learned when demonstrated in small bits before putting them together for the complete procedure. Every discrete part of a diving skill can be taught in a safe way, such that the sudent carries it out safely. By starting with small chunks and building up this is more easily achievable.