Some certified divers find pool practice meaningless. But I think it can be important even when you dozens of dives. I have a friend who can't dive regularly. She often dives as my buddy so appears in many of my photos. Under water she's relaxed, she barely use air, her buoyancy is perfect- but only from the 5th minute of the first dive. Somehow she has problems with the first dive of the trip especially when she hasn't dived for a while.
Next week our group will go to the Adriatic sea for a dive trip and I offered her to join me on a pool practice. She came and when we drove to the pool I said my plan is to do some challenging exercises. I said "to swim around for an hour is useless so prepare some difficult but rewarding under water tricks". In the first 5 minutes she was scary as usual. So we started with the simplier skills. In a few steps we did the mask clearing, mask removing, buddy breathing. But we didn't stop. We swapped our masks under water. We did it while we swam. We removed each other's mask. We made mask clearing during buddy breathing. And finally I showed to do buddy breathing and mask swapping. Although until this point she did everything fine my buddy became nervous. We surfaced. She said she wasn't able to do it. I said "OK, I believe you - but first let's make a last try". So we descended. We started buddy breathing in a calm rhythm. I removed my mask. Later she removed hers. We swapped them, cleared them - and that's all.
After the pool session I said to her she can be proud. This is not a typical exercise during the OW course. To be honest it's quite useless in the real life but very good if you want to know your limits. Hopefully she won't be so nervous next time during the first dive. It's very good to experience you are able to do more than you expected. Now she surely know she's better diver than she thought. That is the reason why I like pool dives.
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