How to Scuba Dive Better with 5 Essential Diving Skills?

Yes, the first time you dive makes you a diver. However, if you want to know how to scuba dive skillfully and correctly, you will need time, practice and patience.

We live in an impatient world: “Learn how to dive in 5 minutes”, “Become an expert diver in the blink of an eye”, “Learn the principles of underwater physics in this video”; these are some contents you can find on the internet about how to dive.

I don’t know about you, but I have been diving for more than 10 years, and I still have a lot to learn, skills to improve, and experiences to live.

Do you know the 1.000 hours theory? According to it, anyone who wants to develop a skill beyond mere theoretical knowledge needs about 10,000 hours of practice. Then, and only then, we could consider someone an expert?

While it is true that being an expert is not the goal of most divers, we do want to know how to scuba dive correctly.

Knowing how to dive means being more efficient, staying underwater longer, and, above all, diving more safely.

In this article, we see how to scuba dive step by step and we go over the 5 most essential diving skills so that you know how to dive to the best of your ability.

1. How to Scuba Dive Step by Step?

Step 1: Make Sure You Meet the Requirements

You may have been thinking about taking your Open Water Diver course for some time, or you may have met one of our colleagues at the hotel, and they have offered you to learn diving. Whatever it is, to scuba dive you must have some basic requirements.

These are being of legal age or being over 10 years old (this is the age for junior certifications)

Have adequate physical conditions

Step 2: Learn How to Scuba Dive

There are many certifying agencies. At Dressel Divers, we work with many of them: PADI, SDI, SSI, NAUI, IDA , NASDS, YMCA, ACUC , CMAS and PDIC. Their programs vary in intensity, and you can choose the one you want. What you cannot do is practice diving without training.

Step 3: Practice, Practice, Practice

Once you know the scuba skills, just practicing makes improving possible. Let’s see what these skills are!

2. How To Scuba Dive Better?

These 5 skills will help you build a solid base from the beginning as a diver. In addition, with them, the diver will be able to analyze, understand and take charge of what happens during each dive and thus be a much safer diver. According the Diver Alert Network (DAN), you can learn how to dive better with these 5 essential diving skills.

1. How To Scuba Dive Better by Improving Your Breathing Techniques

The diver who knows how to breathe correctly can:

– reduce air consumption;

– control buoyancy;

– relax.

If you want to know how to dive better through your breathing, you should remember two things.

1. The human body needs to remove carbon dioxide particles at the same rate as they are produced, so you should never stop breathing.
2. Diving, you need to maintain as much oxygen as possible in your blood with the least possible respiratory effort. That is why we must control the rhythm and breathe slowly and deeply.
   
   

2. How To Scuba Dive Better with Improved Trim and Buoyancy Control

Trim is the diver’s position. A good diver has neutral trim. In other words, the diver has to maintain a horizontal angle while diving. If you want to learn how to scuba dive better, you should have this point under control. It is essential and has a close relationship with buoyancy.

Buoyancy is the ability of a diver to reach and maintain a specific position at any depth. Both trim and buoyancy allow us to reduce physical effort, optimize gas consumption, and not damage the environment while diving. Putting them under control will allow you to focus on your situational awareness.

  3. How To Scuba Dive Better with Efficient Propulsion Techniques

“Why is it that so many divers discover appropriate propulsion techniques like back kicks or helicopter kicks only after they get interested in technical diving, even though these techniques are appropriate and most efficient for recreational diving as well?” This question is not ours, DAN considered it in a recent article.

There are different kicks: frog kick, the modified frog kick, the drag kick, and other techniques. Each one is useful in a different situation. Putting them into practice on your dive is part of learning how to dive better.

4. How To Scuba Dive Better by Improving Team Performance

You don’t dive alone. Still, nothing new. It is a vital scuba diving rule. What not everyone knows are the purposes of the diving team.

According to DAN, the objectives sought when diving as a team are safety and complementarity.

Scuba divers work as a team to deal with any problem jointly and redundantly. In addition, they are complementary. Therefore, they depend on each other and fulfill different functions in each dive.

To learn how to scuba dive better, we must become more and more aware of the divers who dive with us. Thus, they cease to be individuals in the same place, coincidentally underwater, to become partners. It improves communication and joint reaction when a team member has a problem.

5. How To Scuba Dive Better by Controlling Your Situational Awareness

According to DAN, situational awareness is a 3-step process:

1. to perceive the underwater environment that surrounds us and the elements that compose it;
2. to evaluate their importance and anticipate their effects, as well as assess whether they represent an advantage, a risk, or are neutral;
3. to make the right decisions to reduce human error. It is one of the main factors in scuba diving accidents.