The Diver
You Become

On almost every fun dive we run off the Lebanese coast, I watch the same thing happen: a diver with good gear, decent buoyancy, and a kick that’s quietly undoing everything else.

After years of guiding on the Alice B,the reefs at Tabarja and Safra — I’ve stopped being surprised by it. Finning technique is the skill that gets skipped in training and costs divers for years without them knowing. This guide is what I cover with every diver who asks why they’re working so hard to keep up.

It feels identical from the inside. From the outside, I can spot it in three seconds. The knee-driven flutter churns water downward, stirs sediment, burns air, and fatigues the legs early. The divers who’ve been doing it for ten years are often worse than the ones who’ve been diving for two — the habit is just more deeply set.

On a typical fun dive, I’ll see three or four people doing this. None of them know.

At Lebanese sites like Tyre and Enfeh, this gap is the difference between an untouched reef and a damaged one. It doesn’t demand a new skill — just a broken habit.

Heels draw toward the buttocks, knees spread outward, fins sweep back in a smooth arc — then the diver coasts. The momentum carries them forward while the legs do nothing.

Most beginners rush that glide. They feel the movement slow and immediately kick again, never letting the stroke complete. A patient frog kick covers more distance per breath than a hurried one covers in three.

A few years ago, a diver on one of our Alice B penetrations caught the silt with a single flutter kick about two metres inside the wreck. Visibility dropped from eight metres to near-zero in seconds. The dive ended there. That diver is now one of the most methodical frog-kickers in our regular group — the experience converted them faster than any pool session could.

We run at least two pool sessions on this before every first wreck penetration. We still give corrections underwater on the actual dive. That’s not failure — that’s how it works. The hip-outward rotation maps to nothing in a person’s movement history above water. It takes time. It’s worth it.

The fins never fully open outward — they stay tucked, propulsion coming from a tight ankle flick. The reduced thrust means even slight positive buoyancy sends the diver upward during recovery. This isn’t a kick for divers still thinking about their buoyancy.

Not a kick — a pivot. The opposing fin strokes cancel linear movement and produce only rotation. The coordination is easy. Keeping depth neutral while executing it is not. Most divers rise or sink on their first attempts, then reach for the BCD to correct it, which makes it worse.

Fin tips angle downward and press forward and inward — toward each other, in front of the body. Water moves forward; the diver slides back.

The challenge is purely proprioceptive. You cannot see your fins. The stroke has to be internalised until it can be executed blind.

Most divers plateau somewhere between stages one and two and stay there — not because the path ends, but because nobody watching their kicks has told them it continues. If you dive with us, that changes. We’ve been on these sites long enough to know exactly what the Alice B does to a diver who isn’t ready for it, and exactly what it looks like when someone finally is.