Well, I can’t rollerskate or iceskate, but I’ve never heard of a case where either could save my life. Swimming is something that can save your life. I don’t see anything mentioned about you having taken a swimming lesson.
I can’t disagree more. If you don’t have the basic skills and confidence of swimming in open water (and in the surface conditions you’ll be diving in) you’ve no business being in the water at all. You’re a nuisance to the diving crew of the boat (if you’re boat diving) and a positive danger to your dive buddy, as much as an acrophobic would be a hazard in climbing a cliff. “…as long as nothing goes wrong…” are the second most famous set of last words.[sup]1[/sup] Things go wrong with gear all the time–usually owing to the diver’s lack of maintainence, preparation, and awareness–and a diver whose first instinct is to panic about not being able to manoeuver in their medium is not going to effectively be able to deal with any other problem.
Better, actually, to lay on the back and kick (I eschew a snorkel when I’m not teaching as an unneeded encombrance more likely to snag on something than to be of benefit–woefully, the Orange County beaches require divers to carry a snorkel) but yes, in that situation there is nothing to be panicked about. Even if you’re totally exhausted, you can indicate for assistance and the boat DM will toss out a stern line with a float to haul you in, or (if you’re really distant) hop in the dingy and come out to get you, though at 100ft that shouldn’t even be an issue. But take a tired, cold, slightly panicked, and unaccustomed diver along with a little bit of current or some moderate wave action, and you’ve got a diver who is flailing for help and has to be physically hauled out of the water. The problem isn’t the diver, of course, but the fact that he has received insufficient training and preparation to handle himself in those conditions, a result of the “pay and dive immediately” philosophy that has infiltrated most of the major dive certification organizations.
If you’re going to get wet, you’d better be able to swim. Ditto if you’re going out in open water in small craft[sup]2[/sup], or canoeing a fast-moving stream, or snorkeling in water deeper than your shoulders. If you’re going to be putting on complicated life support equipment, you should be able to swim, freedive to a reasonable depth, and compose yourself underwater even if something goes wrong with your equipment.
Stranger
[sup]1[/sup]The first, of course, being “What happens if I push this?”
[sup]2[/sup]Ask Natalie Wood.
I learned to swim before I could walk (thanks, Mom!) and always felt comfortable in the water. I’ll never be a great swimmer but I still enjoy it.
I took a swimming class in college. The first day, we were seperated into those who could swim and those who couldn’t. Our section swam across the deep end and the other was in the shallow end. The coach for the non-swimmers was a very good natured and patient man. He had many stories about teaching adults to swim and everyone that stayed in the class was swimming by the end.
I can swim, scuba dive, ride a bike, juggle (kinda), and walk into a classroom to teach with no notes for a one hour lecture without a qualm.
I can’t whistle with my fingers (wish I could), skydive (tried it and chickened out after two static line jumps), reppel(sp?) or climb, and I still cannot do a wheelie on my bike.
Dude. That’s a page compiled for reference for roleplaying games. From that very link:
Anyway, as someone else here pointed out, all human flesh does not have the same specific gravity. Bone is denser than muscle is denser than most organ tissue is denser than fat. And your lungs, flotation devices that they are, are located in the top half of the body. Ergo, your legs tend to sink even if your average specific gravity is less than that of water, necessitating some effort to stay horizontal.
Furthermore, having a specific gravity the same as that of water does not mean you will float to the surface. It means your buoyancy is neutral, i.e. you will neither sink nor float without some force acting on you. If you jump into a 10-foot pool with enough energy to reach the bottom, your body will tend to orient vertically due to your lungs, but you will stay towards the bottom until you push yourself upwards. (I sat on the bottom of the pool, waiting to start floating upward, many a time as a kid. It never happened quickly enough for me to not have to swim up for air.) Conversely, if you carefully slip into the water nearly horizontally, you will tend to stay at the surface unless you swim downwards.
If your specific gravity is slightly less than that of water, you will slowly float to the surface. Even so, this does not necessarily mean that your mouth and nose will stay above water without some effort.
Take me as an example, I tried this in the lake yesterday. Relaxed, took a breath, and stopped all paddling and kicking, to see what would happen. My legs sank, my arms dragged down, my body went partially vertical, and just my forehead was actually above water. Yes, I was floating. Technically. In a way that would hardly reassure anyone trying to not panic. It does in fact take an effort for me to keep my nose above water. Not a whole lot, but enough that if I ever became too fatigued to swim to shore, I would not be able to count on simply floating until I was rescued.
No, don’t try to claim that floating is always easy. It isn’t easy for everyone. Learning to swim and not panic is important, but it’s more difficult for some people than others, and it’s not constructive to insist that if it’s not a total breeze for you, because people just don’t sink, period, then you’re doing something wrong. Frankly, I don’t want to tell you this again, myself.
Oh, and while I can swim, I have a terrible time trying to back up a car with a manual transmission. I stall it out every time. The sequence of start the car-step on the clutch-step on the brake-release the handbrake-take foot off the brake-step on the gas-shift into reverse-release the clutch is just too fickin’ convoluted to remember while I’m trying to do it, as well as getting just the right pressure on the gas and releasing the clutch quickly-but not TOO quickly! It either stalls out immediately, or I nearly smack my head on the steering wheel as the car teleports backwards a foot and a half 'cause I gave it too much gas and release the poor clutch too slowly. Or too little gas and released the clutch too quickly. And THEN it stalls out as I try to recover my wits.
I finally learned how to drive a manual at all thanks to my ever-patient and good tutor boyfriend, no thanks to the handful of people who, upon learning I was learning, said “Oh, don’t worry, it’s REAL EASY.” No! Don’t say that! hands over ears Telling me that something is easy is a near guarantee that I’ll have some kinda problem with it that nooobody else ever has. Sure enough, I STILL end up having to ask someone else to back the car out of the parking space for me. Drive in forward gear from here to New York: no problem. Drive 12 feet in reverse gear to get out of the rest area parking spot: honey, could you…? Fickin’ embarrassing, it is. 'S why I still drive an automatic.
I can’t:
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do the two fingered whistling thing. I’ve tried and tried. As an aside, I love those stories of other people who have gotten so used to trying that they do it almost subconsciously, and one day it finally works to brilliant effect - usually in church.
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slice stuff. From bread to salami, there is no way I can make a slice the same thickness at the top and bottom. I am just missing the gene. Sometimes I end up with a big triangle of food with a base that would take a day to drive around, but usually the knife comes out halfway down the slice, and I get a sliver of food. This ‘antiskill’ also applies to sawing wood.
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ski (never even bothered to learn, it’s true. but it’s one of those things that makes me feel like a dork at the snow).
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shuffle cards. No way. Not ever. I understand the theory. I’ve had people try to teach me, but after I cut the deck, it’s just like banging two bricks together.
I grew up by the beach, so I can swim like a fish though.
[QUOTE=EleventyOne]
Dude. That’s a page compiled for reference for roleplaying games. From that very link:
OK, fine, here’s another link. And another.
Every last website I googled that had words to say on the subject said that the human body has about the same specific gravity as water, though surprisingly few gave numbers. Fact is, when you are in water, most of the work you have to do to stay afloat is being done by the water … all you really have to do is get your nose and mouth above water. Floating on your back, even if you are skinny, iis ridiculously easy, once you know how, and involves trivial amounts of energy. The hard part is getting people to not panic and learn how.
Here’s a link on drownproofing. . The basic idea behind drownproofing is to use at little energy as possible to stay fafloat. It works because … get this … the human body with air in it is less dense than water. So it takes very little energy to keep your head above water enough to get air regularly.
I understand that some people have an enormous amount of psychological difficulty absorbing this, and that this is a serious impediment to swimming for some, but that does not change the truth of it. Where are my facts wrong? Where is my logic flawed?
I never said it took no effort, only that it takes very little. And it does take very little.
The crux of our disagreement seems to be that you think I believe that a human can float with their head completely out of water with no effort under all conditions. I do not believe that, consider that point conceded. We only have a disagreement if you wish to maintain that for some people great effort is required to stay afloat.
With the proviso that “if you know how to do it, floating is always easy” – hey, that’s EXACTLY what I believe.
Those of you who can swim easily can skip over this. Fish probably can’t understand why anyone can’t swim.
For my fellow swimming-challenged friends, this is what works for me:
If you’re skinny and don’t do this on a regular basis, take a deep breath and hold it. Expand your rib cage, not just your belly. Fill those lungs with air. Okay, now stretch those lungs a little more. Your body is like a water balloon with some some air in it that’s floating in the water: the more air, the more you’ll ride on top of the water.
Hold that air in. You’ve got to breathe, sure, but take shallow breaths, or else you’ll gulp water, maybe. Relax if you can; panic sucks up energy that you maybe don’t have so much of. Get on your back and throw your head back a little, to get your mouth and nose that much further out of the water. Kick a little to keep your legs up.
(Ah, don’t try this the first many times without a lifeguard on duty.)
Easy enough to picture, not so easy to do. I find.
Well, I can swim like a fish. I’m an Australian; I grew up in the water. But for the life of me I can’t float in fresh water. I can float in salt water fine. It’s rubbish that panic is the reason I can’t float. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not panic. I’m completely relaxed.
Another thing is I can’t pop one of my ears under water. It’s a real problem because I want to be able to scuba dive in the future. I’ve tried holding my nose, swallowing… you name it. Soo… annoying. I do snorkel at the moment and it’s really frustrating diving down to look at a fish and having to come straight back up again because it hurts so much.
Dressing ‘nicely’ freaks me out; I almost can’t do it. Sure, I can clean up and put on nice clothes, but if I wear anything more than a button down shirt then I feel like the clothes are wearing me. I’ve had to leave one formal wedding because I knew that I looked like a complete fool (sheesh, anyone else want to start a ‘stupid phobias’ thread?)
I grew up swimming. My mother started teaching swimming when Esther Williams was still making movies, but Mom also taught adult beginner classes and the adults usually took much longer to learn. After all, they had a lifetime of not swimming to overcome. I think that her favorite student was a forty year old woman who was in a bus accident when she was in elementary school. The driver tried to cross a low water bridge during a flood and the bus was swept into a river. The high school kids got a few of the younger kids out before everyone else drowned. Mom’s student had grown up terrified of water and was too scared to even take baths (yes, wise guys, she took showers instead–very short showers.) The first step in the Red Cross swimming curriculum used to be placing one’s face in the water and blowing bubbles. It was a full year before the student could put her entire face in the water and blow bubbles, but she did. Over the next year she became able to relax, then float, then swim. I never met the student, but I admire her patience and determination.
My mom is German and I took German lessons for about 8 years and I was in Germany about 11 times now and I still can’t speak that language with all the long words that look exactly the same… aak! It drives me crazy that I’m learning it at such a slow rate when my cat could have learned it by now. He’s pretty smart, but I’ve had more experience!
I can’t snap my fingers or touch my toes or make armpit farts.But I compensated for that in school by making great arm farts!
As far as the 3D pictures thing, this is what worked for me.
I couldn’t get the focus past the picture thing either but once after trying for a while I accidentally crossed my eyes and I “got” the picture! Unfortunately the perspective was reversed (which looked quite odd) but at least I knew now what to look for the correct way. So if you can cross your eyes you may want to try this method.
Wow. Except for the slicing thing and being able to ski you could be my long lost twin (see post above). I suppose you can snap your fingers though?
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Can shuffle cards with my thumbs and ride a bike.
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Can swim. My parents dragged me to the Y every summer to learn how to swim almost from the day I was out of diapers, and I was on my high school swim team.
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Can’t whistle any other way than cupping my hands and blowing sort of across/into my thumbs. Sounds a bit like what you get when you tootle on a bottle.
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Can’t scuba dive, although I’d love to learn. One of my concerns is that I get foot cramps very easily, and I always dreaded wearing fins during drills as a result.
Maybe I should take potassium pills, eh? (Also, Stranger, what’re your recommendations on how to find a reputable scuba org for learning from?) -
Can’t touch my toes or do a split. I don’t bend that way, dammit. Although I can and do squat Asian-style, plus sit with my knees bent and legs splayed out like little kids do.
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Can’t do math in my head.
I have to actually visualize the numbers written on an imaginary piece of paper and mumble things like, “Fourteen, carry the one, add nine,” which is just sad when trying to figure grocery prices. How the hell do you more mathematically enabled Dopers do it?
I have a bachelor’s degree in math, and a master’s in astronomy.
I have to do the exact same thing.
If anyone talks to me or otherwise distracts me while I’m doing this, I have to start over.
I can’t purr.
But I can wiggle my ears.
I do get a quite audible ‘click’ rather than an ineffectual ‘fwwwsh’ sound, but that click isn’t the sort of thing that the Fonz would see as a threat.
To avoid cramps, eat your bananers and stretch before you get in the water. They’re partially caused by cold and can’t be completely avoided, but that should help, and you should be taught a couple of methods to deal with them in the water. Some people also advocate the uberexpensive split fins, but I’ve used 'em and I just don’t see that they make that much difference (and you can’t effectively frog-kick in them) but then I don’t usually have cramping problems to begin with.
If you are already comfortable in the water, then any of the standard programs (PADI, SDI, NAUI) should cover all the necessary information. What I don’t like about one of those organizations (not going to say which one, but the one that sounds like an Irish lad) is that, while the information is pretty well organized and laid out, it is chock full of advertisements and instructors are trained to market, market, market equipment, classes, trips, et cetera. It’s very irritating, and in the “self-study” materials, quite intrusive, to the point of ignoring parts of the videos that might contain vital information.
If the option is available to you, I’d recommend training with Global Underwater Explorers. Even if you don’t or can’t do your certification with them, I’d definitely look at their DIR specs as far as equipment selection/configuration and diving procedures. Los Angeles County Underwater Divers Association has a great program (so I hear…I haven’t gone through it) but that would be a bit of a commute for you.
The thing to keep in mind is that diving is a pretty safe activity if you are aware of your surroundings and are diving within your physical and experiential limits, but can be very hazardous if you do something wrong. The beef I have with most recreational dive organizations isn’t that the don’t teach the right way to do this but that in the competition to offer certifications as quickly as possible they inadequately prepare divers for problems and don’t offer enough experience before issuing them a card.
The only other point I’ll make in what is rapidly becoming an egregious hijack of the OP, is that you should not be pressured to purchase anything or sign up for any trips or other classes while doing your certification. In particularly, you shouldn’t be required to buy any more equipment than mask, fins, and snorkel (and possibly gloves and booties if necessary). I’ve seen some operations–never ones I’ve worked for–rip students for thousands of dollars in overpriced gear before they are even certified, which is utterly ridiculous.
Now, back to our regular programming…
Stranger
I was a lifeguard and certified Water Safety Instructor for about five years when I was in high school/early college and I sink. I’m a girl, my body fat has never been below 9%, and if I hop into a body of water I immediately head for the bottom. Despite having a bustline in the upper DD/DDD range. Two words: bone density.
I don’t actually sink to the bottom - instead I sink about a foot under the surface and there I stay unless I take action in some way. And I’m an exceptionally proficient swimmer. I just also have very, very dense and heavy bones - I’ve never broken one, despite considerably enthusiastic (albeit accidental) attempts to do so. I also ran into a number of people when I was teaching swimming who had the same situation - just didn’t float on the surface. It wasn’t always about body fat (although more fat generally meant more floaty). Those people are really, really difficult to teach to swim - it requires different techniques. For starters, if someone doesn’t float well, it’s counterproductive to start with Dead Man’s Floating (a common first step to teaching people to swim with their heads underwater). A lot of swimming instruction techniques focus on boyancy as a starting point - first you float, then you learn strokes, etc. If someone doesn’t float, then you have to start with other things. You have to substitute brute muscle power for natural boyancy. Definitely get private instruction though.
I, personally, cannot see those stupid 3-D hidden picture thingies either. I believe it’s really just a conspiracy. Or mass hysteria. I also can’t whistle with my fingers, do a cartwheel, or raise one eyebrow. I also cannot snap with the fingers of my right hand. Only my left hand. Even though I’m right-handed. Also, despite being 30 years old and possessing several advanced degrees, I cannot tell my right from my left without actually physically inspecting my fingers (my right hand has a pen callus on the middle finger and my left hand does not).
My parents had me in swimming lessons. I failed the first level 3 times and got frustrated and quit.
I’ve since taught myself some awkward doggie-paddle like thing that keeps me afloat, but I am just incapable of actually swimming.
So just saying, it isn’t always the parent’s fault when the kid can’t swim.