How To Learn To Scuba Dive

Hi, I'm Howard Payne. I'm an instructor with Dive Wimbeldon. We're a five star IDC center here in Southwest London and I teach both recreational and technical diving, and I've been diving for about eight years.

Today, I'm going to be giving you a little bit of advice on equipment and how to scuba dive. Okay, let's look at how most people learn to scuba dive. Probably the most common way of learning to dive is through the P.

A.D.I system of education.

P.A.D.

I or the Professional Association of Diving Instructors are the largest diver training organization in the world. They have schools and branches if you like in every country on the planet practically. P.

A.D.I are a good way of learning to dive because generally, you'll get into the water quite quickly.

Most dive schools will have that very often here in the UK, certainly here at Dive Wimbeldon we have a first weekend where we do all of the theory topics with people in the classroom and this is our classroom just here and then we do evening sessions normally in the pool where we'll introduce you to about 20 basic skills of scuba diving, so really you're in a kind of an easy warm environment. We'll teach you the basic kind of building blocks if you like of diving, all of the skills that you're going to need to dive safely in order to have fun and then normally the following weekend, we'll go out to either the sea or to one of the inland diving quarries that we have here in the UK and in an open water environment. We'll go and do four qualifying dives with you and that basically enables you to use the skills you've learned in a confined water environment but in a more realistic real diving environment.

So four dives in total and then when you've completed those and assuming that everything has gone well along with a couple of swim tests and things along the way, you'll find that you're certified to scuba dive, you get a card and you can basically use that anywhere in the world and go into a dive center and show them the card assuming that your experience is up to date and they'll happily take you diving. So that's the most common way of learning to dive. .