Practising snorkel abilities within the pool

On vacation with entry to an indoor pool, Andy Torbet and household go to work on their snorkelling abilities.

I snorkel to see stuff. To not compete, like in freediving occasions or Octopush leagues, however to come across wildlife, shipwrecks, caves and underwater landscapes. So, it comes as a shock to me to be extolling the virtues of snorkelling in a small swimming pool.

Even when I’ve run programs in snorkelling and freediving, they’ve been primarily based within the ocean. If I need to encourage and enthuse individuals into our sport I need to present them greater than 4 clean partitions and a barely sloping flooring.

it’s a giant ask to be perfecting your duck-dive when you will have… marine life swimming previous you (or hiding on the seabed)… a swimming pool has fewer distractions

I even have a tendency to make use of our inland, cold-water websites for follow or to check out new equipment. It has been a while since I donned a masks in a swimming pool. However final month I had the chance to remain at a small cottage in Wales with my household. And, shockingly when one considers the modest measurement, location and lease, it had its personal pool.

My children, fortunately, love the water. They’ve been swimming and snorkelling within the UK and overseas, however they’ve at all times been extra taken with simply getting in and seeing stuff than coaching or bettering their snorkelling abilities. Which is all honest sufficient.  

In spite of everything, it’s a giant ask to be perfecting your duck-dive when you will have the entire menagerie of marine life swimming previous you (or hiding on the seabed). However a swimming pool has fewer distractions and presents sure amenities extra helpful for coaching.

One of many large advantages of pool time is, effectively, time. The heat of the water and the comfort of the pool meant we spent about six hours a day within the water. Simply that period of time to play and practise produces outcomes. It’s a really managed setting so we might cease and break down every ability into sections with out the entire course of being overwhelming or intimidating. 

I had the children practise a raft of abilities, together with: 

• Masks elimination and becoming on the floor 
• Clearing the snorkel (which took longer to grasp than I’d anticipated)
• Good finning approach 
• Finning with one fin (a little bit of enjoyable, but additionally in case of a misplaced fin at sea) 
• Efficient duck-diving and towing your buddy (for some cause the funniest exercise of the journey for the boys)  

For sure, it’s all wonderful preparation for once they do their BSAC Dolphin Snorkeller course, which is aimed toward youthful kids and structured over a sequence of seven progressive classes.

It gave us an opportunity to study small abilities which is able to make them higher snorkellers. Not solely safer, however extra skilful and adaptable, which is able to in flip assist them to see and expertise extra.

I bear in mind once I first joined Aberdeen BSAC Membership aged 12 and would go alongside each Saturday to the pool classes and snorkel. It should have been months earlier than I used to be taken within the sea. However by then my confidence and skill to maneuver within the water was such, even having practised in full wetsuit and ABLJ, that the additional effort of coping with a chilly, low-visibility and uneven North Sea was a manageable step up. 

Today, I have a tendency to coach and check in environments no less than as laborious as these I might dive in, to make sure the whole lot, particularly me, is as much as the duty. However this journey jogged my memory that typically pool time permits us to experiment and take a look at new abilities in a method that permits us to take the time to work issues out, slightly than the ‘that didn’t work, we’ll come again tomorrow’ strategy I’m typically pressured to undertake. 

And it proved particularly productive with younger kids. After all lots of you on the market, together with your weekly membership pool classes, will know all this already. So if in case you have entry to a pool night time however aren’t profiting from your hour within the chlorine, perhaps you’re lacking a trick. 

Article ‘Pool sharks’ by Andy Torbet first revealed in SCUBA journal, Problem 146 June 2024. Pictures on this on-line model have been substituted from the unique photographs in SCUBA journal as a consequence of utilization rights.