shallerman

In an Open Water class, divers learn about some of the hazards of diving – nitrogen narcosis and decompression sickness usually get the most class time. CO2 retention and CO2 narcosis are not usually talked about except maybe in technical diving classes. This has bothered me since learning about it, because CO2 retention is a … Read more

For the last six months, I’ve been doing most of my diving in sidemount. I’m loving all the benefits of sidemount (better stability in the water, easier access to valves, thinner profile for going into small sections of cave), but getting started has been… challenging. I’m not the only one. Lots of sidemount divers talk … Read more

Being a capable diver requires having a fair amount of knowledge, including knowing the procedures to handle whatever situations come up. There are a lot of procedures to learn. Some are used every dive, while others are only used to respond to problems. To help remember all the procedures, a lot of divers use acronyms … Read more

One of the traditional ways of starting a technical diving class is with accident analysis: the instructor presents a few real diving accidents, and the students try to identify how things went wrong and what they can do to prevent it from happening to them. This kind of introduction isn’t as common for recreational diving … Read more

I just got back from a trip to Mexico where I was taking a sidemount class with Roger Williams at XOC-Ha. It was a great trip – I learned a lot and saw some very cool cave. I used aluminum 80 cylinders for all my dives in Mexico, but now that I’m back home I … Read more

Having a good frog kick is a super useful skill for diving. It lets you swim without kicking up silt from the bottom, and the glide phase of the kick makes it very efficient. It’s also a prerequisite to learning the helicopter turn and back kick. Unfortunately, learning the frog kick is something that a … Read more

I’m assisting with a Peak Performance Buoyancy class next week. People like to make fun of this class for a variety of reasons, but there’s one reason that I’m very exited to help teach it: this is one of the only times you can talk at length with students about fundamentals like trim, buoyancy, breathing, … Read more

A dirty secret of the diving industry: the vast majority of divers are not great at diving, but only about half know it. By “not great”, I mean that their fundamental skills (trim, buoyancy, breathing, and propulsion) aren’t strong, or that those skills take a large amount of concentration and mental effort. The half that … Read more