April 2004

Vol. 19, No. 4     What's this?

More on Dropping Weights

from the April, 2004 issue of Undercurrent  

Divers who do not drop their weights in an emergency are divers who were never taught to drop their weights in the first place. That doesn't mean that they were never told to drop them. It also doesn't mean that the divers didn't get it right on a written exam.

Divers are taught to drop their weights only when they are made to drop them during training. They will get it engraved in their heads when they've experienced what it feels like. Now having made a student drop his or her weights (the right way to train them), the instructor is left with a weight belt on the bottom. He or she needs to retrieve it. Multiply this situation by three (because the student should be made to do it three times), then multiply it times the number of students in the class, and you will quickly see why beginners are not trained to drop their weights but are only told to drop their weights. ... You could call these instructors lazy ... you could also call them "bad."

-- Fred Calhoun
Maynard, MA