24 skills a PADI Divemaster should be able to do in his sleep

It might not seem interesting at first, but on our renewed Eco PADI Divemaster course in Bali we will spend the Sundays in the swimming pool practicing your PADI Divemaster skills. You will have to show demonstrations of various skills such as mask removal and replacement, hovering, regulator recovery, and some out of air skills. It might ring a bell; yes you have learned all those skills in your PADI Open Water course!

Those Divemaster skills will be very useful for you as a future dive professional. First of all, it just makes your life much easier if you can actually control yourself underwater and know what to do in an emergency. Also, as a PADI Divemaster you can assist on a PADI Open Water course and conduct the PADI Scuba Review program. In all those programs you will use those scuba skill demonstrations. So, use the following steps to get those flawless scuba skills demonstrations.

• Go over the 24 skills. Have a look in your Open Water course manual or find skills demonstrations on YouTube. Good if you need to refresh the skills!
• Understand the skills. Think about why we do a particular skill so you can explain the value of the skill. Although this is actually something you will learn from your PADI Course Director on your PADI Instructor course, if your student understands the value it is often much easier to perform.
• Slow it down! You will get better scores if you perform the skills in a slow manner. Makes sense, because rushing through a skills won’t make it very clear to your students.
• Exaggerate and make the skill look easy. You student should think: “wow if it looks this easy, it can’t be too difficult for me”, and that is what we need. Your students won’t fear the mask skills after seeing a seemingly flawless skill.

On top of this, I would suggest participating in our legendary Sunday skill circuits to see your PADI Instructors and PADI Course Directors demonstrating those skills. Remember, there is no substitute for practice. Doing at least 3 or 4 skill circuits should give you some role-model demonstrations!