02/10/12 - Snorkelling - Pool training session

2nd October 2012

Snorkelling - Pool Session - Mark O’Connor

• Tonight my aim was to learn the basic snorkel skills needed to be a senior snorkeler.

Weeman was our instructor tonight, he taught us the basic skills to become a senior snorkeler. 

First of all we learnt how to fin on the surface, to do this you have to kick from your hips and try not to bend your knees too much. We then learnt how to fin below the surface, this is a much slower wider kick, sometimes your knee might bend, but you still have to try to kick from the hip as much as you can.

We then swam 4 lengths of the pool free style without fins, we then had a 4 minute break to catch our breath before we had to hold our breath for 20 seconds under water. Weeman did a couple of breathing techniques with us to help us catch our breath before we had to do the breath hold, which was really helpful.
We had to do 3 forward rolls and 3 backward rolls under water.

We also went through all the entries to the water, e.g silent entry, forward roll, backward roll, feet together and step in.

There are a couple of different surface dives that we went through, these are useful when you want to dive down and explore something further. This was good to learn because I knew it would be useful to know for the sea sessions.

I really enjoyed learning how to snorkel tonight. A highlight for me would be actually getting my breath hold because I have tried it in the past and failed due to having a cold and my lungs not being able to function at their full capacity.

I think I did well tonight, I worked hard to do all of the skills to the best of my ability and really enjoyed learning them. I am looking forward to the sea session so that I get to use all of the skills I learnt tonight to explore the sea. :)