PADI Divemaster Skills Videos

Your first PADI Divemaster Skill Circuit will emphasise how to demonstrate a skill in general.

Your Divemaster coordinators will start the session by discussing the characteristics, demonstration-quality and how to exaggerate the critical attributes within each skill.

From there they will show you each skill first and then let you have a chance to practice.

Some skills may need more practice than others. During the session, you will be given feedback and tips to improve on for next time.

From there multiple skill circuits will be organized, in order for you to practice and develop each skill demonstration. Once you are ready, you will take part in your final evaluation.

During your final evaluation you will showcase all of the 24 skills and receive an individual score for each exercise.

You will also be debriefed thoroughly and your coordinators will continue to encourage you to practice and fine tune your skills.

We will be assessing you based on the evaluation criteria outlined in the PADI Instructor Manual. Each skill will be given an individual score ranging from 1-5.

In order to score a:

• 5 – the skill must be performed correctly with slow and with exaggerated movements. It should come across as easy.
• 4 – the exercise is performed correctly and in a slow enough manner to break down the critical steps of the skill.
• 3 – the skill is executed correctly, however, it was done in a manner that was fast and you were unable to clearly showcase the critical steps of the exercise.
• 2 – the exercise was performed with significant difficulty or error.
• 1 – the exercise was unable to be preformed

In order to fulfill your objective for the skill evaluation, you must: Demonstrate all scuba and skin diving skills, scoring at least a 3 on each skill, and scoring at least 82 points total, with at least one underwater skill scored as a 5.

As all PADI courses are performance based and not time based, you will have lots of opportunity to develop your skills before your final evaluation.

Your PADI Divemaster Skill Circuit will be conducted by either one, or both of our Divemaster coordinators; Platinum Course Director Andrea Warren & Staff Instructor Kieran Hooley.

Both of your coordinators are dedicated to your personal development within your training program and will be with you every step of the way.

They may also be joined by other member(s) of our pro level training team.

All of our team members are highly trained when it comes working mainly with professional candidates and will do as much as they can to help you throughout your course.

As well as all the standard diver equipment, a dive professional must also possess:

• Time-monitoring device
• Compass
• Knife/cutting tool
• Two surface signaling devices — one audible and one visible
• Instructions for use for dive computer or RDP/ eRDPml

During your Skill circuit you will not need any additional equipment. You will just want to make sure that you are using equipment that you are comfortable and familiar with.

This will depend on a few things. First of all, your Divemaster coordinators will produce a schedule for you based on the amount of time you have dedicated towards your training.

In this time period, they will try to give you as many opportunities as possible to develop your skills. This is due to the fact that this course is performance based and not time based.

Saying this, you may need additional training in order to successfully meet the performance requirements for you dive skills workshop.

The first and second skill circuit will be focused primarily on your understanding of “demonstration quality” and breaking down all of the 24 skills.

From here, your coordinators will decide how many more sessions you will take part in before your final evaluation.

This is something they will discuss with you and together you can decide the path that works best for you.

Why not? Our Pro-level team is committed to teaching at the highest of standards and bring out the best in our divers.

It only makes sense to promote one of the most important primary dive skills, as much as we possibly can.

We truly believe that we owe every diver that walks through our doors, only the best, when it comes to training.

This is one way we can achieve this and allow for our divers to flourish. Especially when it comes to our pro-level candidates.

You can check out our blog, written by Course Director Andrea Warren, about the importance of neutral buoyancy as a dive professional.

Hopefully, this will allow for you to better understand the value of training in this manner and how it will benefit you in the future.

Of course! We will be conducting the majority of your skills and workshops, completely mid water, with the exception of areas where it does not make sense.

For example, during your Discover Scuba Diving Workshop in Confined Water, we will be conducting the session, as realistic as possible.

During this experience program, the student does not need to complete any sort of buoyancy training.

In this case it would be unrealistic to complete all skills neutrally buoyant.

That being said we will be doing everything else completely neutral. This includes standard workshops such as:

• Search & Recovery
• Deep Dive Scenario
• ReActivate
• Discover Scuba Diving Program – Additional Open Water Dive
• Discover Local Diving Program

We will also conduct all additional specialty training completely neutral as well. This all makes sense to give you every opportunity to fine tune your buoyancy skills and allow you to become a stronger diver overall.

By completing our training programs this way, we can take any skill and easily turn it into a buoyancy clinic.

We are sure you are familiar with the saying “Practice makes perfect.” Although our sole purpose is not focused on perfection when it comes to skill development, we are certainly fans of the philosophy behind the phrase.

The only way to get better at something is through repetition. We believe that this is the only way to instil proper muscle memory and allow for things to come across as easy.

Unfortunately, out of the 24 skills you will be participating in, only 5 of them allow any sort of buoyancy practice.

Due to this, we have decided that the best way to give you ample time to work on buoyancy is to conduct all skills neutral.

This will help you to progress and assist with development of your demonstration abilities when it comes to your fundamental dive skills.

Technically by PADI standards, there is no requirement when it comes to conducting skills neutrally buoyant.

There are two skills that in order to get a 5, must be conducted neutral:

• Mask Removal & Replace
• Regulator Recovery

Other than that, it is not mandatory, but something we just highly recommend. Completing skills neutral can be challenging at the beginning and we understand that everyone progresses at a different rate.

We will of course allow you to do skills in whichever position you feel more comfortable, however, we will encourage you to continue to challenge yourself further and always do your best.