The Man Teaching Amputees to Scuba Dive Has Been One for 25 Years
Manfredi O&P — Serving Monmouth & Ocean County, NJ since 1958
Ken Hoffman has been an amputee for more than 25 years. He is also a NAUI Certified Course Director who dives all over the world, and on Saturday, September 26, he is going to spend an afternoon in a pool in New Jersey teaching amputees to breathe underwater.
That combination is the whole reason this works.
A new amputee standing at the edge of a pool with a tank on their back is running arithmetic. What happens when I go under. What happens if something goes wrong. Who exactly is coming to get me. Those questions don’t get answered by a brochure or by a stranger with a clipboard.
They get answered by somebody who has already done it, who they trust, who has the same physical challenges they’re worried about.
This is the third year Manfredi O&P held this Adaptive Scuba Diving Event.
Saturday, September 26, 1:00 to 4:00 PM, at the ESCNJ Aquatics and Fitness Center in Parlin, New Jersey.
If you already know you want in, the number is (732) 380-0366 and space is limited.
If you want to know what you are actually signing up for, keep reading.
The rest of this is the answer.
It started in a room full of chairs
Ken Hoffman - NAUI Dive Instructor
Out on a Limb is Manfredi O&P’s monthly amputee support group, and Ken is the group leader. It meets the last Thursday of every month, chairs in a circle, and it’s where a good number of these divers met each other in the first place.
A support group is good at one specific thing: it puts you next to somebody further down the road than you are. It allows you to ask questions and navigate common challenges more quickly.
What a room with chairs has a harder time doing, is getting you out of your comfort zone and experiencing something new and exciting.
Challenging personal beliefs and pushing past self-imposed limits are how we all grow.
So the Scuba clinic is that same group plus some new faces, with the chairs taken away and the room filled with water instead.
A first-timer walks onto the pool deck already knowing three or four of their comrades, before a single tank comes off the rack.
What actually happens under water
On land, a limb difference is a running negotiation. If it is a leg, that is the socket: weight here, pressure there, a hundred small balance adjustments an hour that few in the room can see, and even fewer understand. If it is an arm, it’s every task ever built for two hands, navigated with creative solutions.
Water changes the terms, and it does it with physics rather than attitude. Standing chest-deep, most of your weight is already off you. Once you leave the bottom there is no ground reaction force at all, so for as long as you are in the water column the limb carries no weight.
Entry, exit and the ladder are another matter — that part is still full weight-bearing. That’s why we have plenty of helpers in addition to an entry ramp ready for you!
Most everyday prostheses are not built for water. Metal corrodes, foot shells hold moisture, and microprocessor knees and feet have no business in a pool — check your own components with your prosthetist, because water ratings vary. Strapping an ordinary dive fin to a prosthesis also turns out to be the least efficient way to move a body through water. So most divers leave the leg on the side and go in with an adapted fin, or with their arms.
This is also one of the few rooms all year where the usual pecking order stops applying. Above-knee divers trim differently than below-knee divers. An upper-limb diver spends their attention on handling gear rather than carrying load. If you arrive in a chair, nobody in that pool is moving more free than you are.
It is not effortless. The tank is heavy before you get in, buoyancy is a skill you work at rather than a gift the water hands you, and moving yourself through water without a leg is its own kind of work.
Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, though, most divers stop thinking about the leg at all. That’s the part they talk about in the parking lot and for months to come.
Beyond the clinic: LifeWaters and the pathway to Scuba Certification
Ken Hoffman recently became a regional contact for LifeWaters, a national nonprofit running adaptive dive training and certification for veterans, first responders, and civilians with disabilities.
LifeWaters goal is to provide training and scuba opportunities while trying to decrease the cost of training and travel for people with disabilities.
For a lot of amputees an afternoon in a pool is the whole ambition, and that’s a perfectly complete answer.
For some it’s not. They finish the clinic and want to know what the next step looks like, how they can become certified divers and answering that used to mean pointing amputees out of state to work it out alone.
With Ken’s help and LifeWaters resources, the Manfredi O&P Learn to Scuba Dive Clinic could be a doorway (for those interested) into a future of underwater adventures.
If you’re an amputee veteran or a first responder, make the call.
Same number, 732-380-0366. Ask for Ken’s info.
We’ll connect you with him, so he can get you the proper answers to your questions.
If you’re not local to New Jersey, check out the LifeWaters website to learn more! https://www.lifewaters.org/
Getting to the new location is easier than it sounds
We’re excited to announce the event will be held at a new pool this year.
Meet our new hosts - The ESCNJ Aquatics and Fitness Center.
Parlin might sound like a hike for you Ocean County folks, but it’s not much further than the Eatontown Office, and we think you’ll appreciate the new facility.
We hope you’ll trust us!
Take the Garden State Parkway North to the Cheesequake service area, AKA the “Jon Bon Jovi” rest stop. You don’t even have to get back on the highway. A local access road runs from the rest area straight to the aquatics center.
The facilities are gorgeous and Ken is very excited to share it with everyone. It’s run by the Educational Services Commission of New Jersey.
Come get in the water
Saturday, September 26 · 1:00 to 4:00 PM
ESCNJ Aquatics and Fitness Center, 333 Cheesequake Rd, Parlin, NJ 08859
Call (732) 380-0366
Email info@manfredioandp.com
You do not have to be our patient. If you are an amputee anywhere in New Jersey, you are invited.
Every level of limb loss is welcome. Upper limb, lower limb, above knee, below knee, bilateral, congenital. If you have never watched somebody with your particular setup get into a pool, that is exactly the reason to come.
You don’t need to know how to dive, and you don’t need to own a mask, a set of fins, or a tank. All the necessary equipment is provided. You will not be handed it and pointed at the deep end, either. Nobody goes in alone, and you will be in the water with somebody who already knows what a prosthesis does down there and what changes when you dive without one. Underwater breathing, the gear that keeps you safe, then buoyancy control, in that order, at your pace.
And you’re allowed to just watch. We would love you to push past your own comfort zone and get wet, because that is the point of the whole afternoon. But if your health keeps you out of the water, or you would rather sit on the deck this year and take it in, come anyway. Watching is how plenty of our divers start, but jumping in is how WE ALL begin!
About the health screening
All skill levels means all diving skill levels, including none at all.
Participating in Scuba does come with a health screening, and we would rather you have it in now than on the pool deck. When you RSVP we will walk you through the medical questionnaire. It asks about cardiac, respiratory, neurological, ear, surgical and medication history, and a few answers need your doctor's signature before you can dive. It’s a phone call and a signature, and it is the entire reason we want the form in your hands early.
Limb loss alone is not automatically disqualifying. It never has been. But only your physician can clear you to dive.
If you are reading this for somebody else
Your husband, your father, your daughter, a patient you saw last month. Send it to them, and then make the call together. Plenty of divers come with somebody, and the person who ends up in the water is very often not the person who found the flyer.
Call (732) 380-0366.
Manfredi O&P has been making prosthetic devices for amputees in Monmouth and Ocean counties since 1958, and in all that time the work has never ended at the device.
A prosthesis that holds up on a sidewalk is the beginning of the answer, not the whole of it.
That’s why there is a pool on the Manfredi O&P calendar every September, a Golf Course every June and a Support Group every Month.
Healing is never linear, and it most certainly does not have a rule book. What works for one person may or may not be a solution for the next.
One thing we know for certain is events such as these, and surrounding yourself with people who understand, provides an opportunity for personal growth far beyond physical healing.
So come join us this year.
We hope to see some new faces who are up for an exciting challenge this year!
If you or someone you love should see this–or better yet–NEEDS to be a part of it!
Please share and don’t hesitate to reach out.
Call 732-380-0366
Here are some photos from previous events to get you excited!
Who makes this possible
The Ocean County YMCA in Toms River, who gave a room full of amputees pool time before anybody could prove the idea would work. The first two years happened in their building, and we are grateful to them for letting us splash down in their water.
The ESCNJ Aquatics and Fitness Center, run by the Educational Services Commission of New Jersey, for the room to grow into.
LifeWaters, for doing such amazing work at national scale and for giving amputees in New Jersey and beyond a chance to explore something special in themselves.
Out on a Limb support group members and group leader Ken Hoffman-whose leadership and encouragement is simply remarkable. The growth we’ve seen from all of you has been profound, and special to witness. You encourage each other and help each other grow every month.
We’re excited to see you dive into this next one together!
