Dive Skills · 11 Jul 2017
The dreaded mask clear is one of the most hated skills in scuba diving, and one of the biggest reasons people stop diving altogether. Water in the nose is deeply uncomfortable, and for someone new to the skill it can instantly summon images of drowning.
Instructors are almost as wary of the mask clear as their students — walking into a course wondering whether this one will go smoothly or not. The real problem is that instructors and students approach the skill from completely opposite ends of the experience.
To an instructor, a mask clear is easy — something they do almost without thinking. The typical teaching method is a briefing, an underwater demonstration, and then an expectation that the student will simply do it. That approach only really works for about 20% of students. Around 60% get through it but hate every second and never want to repeat it, and the rest experience genuine panic.
The core issue is that scuba diving is a physical skill, and physical skills need to be taught with proper methodology. There are three distinct learning phases at play:
Students need to understand and learn the individual steps involved — filling the mask slowly, looking down, lifting the skirt correctly, taking a breath, exhaling while lifting the head, timing it all, and repeating if needed.
Students start linking those steps into one smooth action, with instructors giving corrective feedback along the way. This is where creativity and insistence on getting it right really matter.
With regular, correct practice, the skill eventually becomes automatic — requiring almost no conscious thought at all.
As Fitts and Posner put it back in 1967: “The learning of physical skills requires the relevant movements to be assembled, component by component, using feedback to shape and polish them into a smooth action. Rehearsal of the skill must be done regularly and correctly.”