GUE Open Water class documentary

[g1138]

I think in a short course it is better to give students the knowledge and practice of critical thinking lessons so they can apply it to their future diving career. You can only get so far with just in-water practice. Giving them knowledge to work on after the class is over, is far more beneficial. When you can get them to resist instinct AND have that extra knowledge to apply their lessons alone then that really comes out as the advantage over having no knowledge and just in water experience, which may or may not achieve what these divers have achieved within the 10 days.

Also I don't know about you, but I think if you have to windmill your arms to regain balance, then you've been watching too many cartoons and have a horrible sense of balance. Centrifugal force around your arms does not sway you forward or backwards, rather bending at your hips and knees while leaning does the job just fine. I've never been a windmill arm type of guy, and everyone else I've seen windmill usually end up falling over. That or they bend at the waist at the last minute and save themselves.

Also most babies I've seen run with their arms at their sides or slightly up like a bird.. Most babies that fall, fall flat on their face. At least in my experience.
If you're referring to toddlers and up then that's a different story, because then they realize that their hands taking a fall is better than their face. So I think it's more of a habit than instinct.

Not trying to be nit picky here, but I think divers with your experience (balance wise) might find resisting arm movements more challenging than others. Some can take to it easier if it's just explained to them. Others just need to do it over and over again to create a new habit.

Guess what I'm trying to spit out this late at night is that this style of training isn't the end all of all training techniques. It works for some but not for others, just like every other technique. But it does work.

Just my 2 cents

 

[Hepcat62]

BP/Ws: They are required for all GUE courses AFAICT, and easy proper trim is the usual reason given for it. But trim can be reached in rental rec gear with proper instruction. I know because I teach only people in standard recreational gear and I have learned how to turn out trim calm divers in short courses in rental rec gear. It's not a given, but it is achievable. In that sense GUE is maybe(to a small degree) using gear (BP/W) to solve a training issue. (I am not a GUE diver or instructor.)

While custom fit and the resulting stability are certainly factors in choosing the BP/W as the standard configuration, consider that another of GUE's core educational values is that skills should not need to be unlearned and relearned over the course of one's diving career. Adopting the BP/W as a standard part of a holistic system in the recreational phase allows for core skills to remain (effectively) 100% consistent when making the transition to doubles and more technical diving.

 

[divad]

I watched most of the video, skipping forward here and there, but i thought the whole course was not at all applicable to teaching scuba in the US. All the students were young, fit and trim...ANYBODY can teach them... lets see them do the same with American dive students.. 15-20 yrs older and 40 -60 lbs heavier..QUOTE]










Are you saying Americans are slobs?.....................mmmmmmmmmmmmm now that you mention it.

 

[beanojones]

Pulling out the soap box a bit here, so take this with a grain of sugar

While custom fit and the resulting stability are certainly factors in choosing the BP/W as the standard configuration, consider that another of GUE's core educational values is that skills should not need to be unlearned and relearned over the course of one's diving career. Adopting the BP/W as a standard part of a holistic system in the recreational phase allows for core skills to remain (effectively) 100% consistent when making the transition to doubles and more technical diving.

While this is an eminently laudable goal, it is the sort of goal that only someone who forgot what it was like to be an Open Water student can have. It is a great stance for GUE to have as the basis for the Fundies course. It just has little relevance with OW training, which should retain as its entire focus, the student's comfort level at this level.

I think in a short course it is better to give students the knowledge and practice of critical thinking lessons so they can apply it to their future diving career. You can only get so far with just in-water practice. Giving them knowledge to work on after the class is over, is far more beneficial. When you can get them to resist instinct AND have that extra knowledge to apply their lessons alone then that really comes out as the advantage over having no knowledge and just in water experience, which may or may not achieve what these divers have achieved within the 10 days.

Read TSandM's linked dive diary.It should be required reading for all instructors before teaching each and every OW course. Hers was not a compressed course. All OW divers care about, and all they remember from their OW course is written below:

OMG Tanks are heavy!
OMG I Can't use my nose!!
OMG They made me take my mask off under water!!!

Thinking that OW students can learn, or should retain, any book knowledge during their first exposure to diving is simply not being aware of the level of bizarreness the UW world exposes a OW diver to. Nothing, and I mean nothing: no knowledge, no experience, no instincts learned in the above water world are applicable to the U/W world. We spend out entire lives subjects to gravity,and then we go under water and we can 'fall' up. Nothing prepares us for this. I can write volumes of poetry about weightlessness, but nothing prepares anyone for what it actually is like, let alone the sensation of 'falling' up, or being weightless, and the radical instability they creates. Put your face in the water and not hold your breath? What?

All we can hope for is that we train muscle memory to have the OW students stop trying to import any of their experience, instincts or knowledge gained heretofore in the above water world. And we train them how to replace useless, or worse counterproductive actions, with positive, effective action. Every new instructor and divemaster is convinced they invented diving, and convinced that their talking is the key to teaching diving. The only key to diving is to be in the water, and then be in the water some more, because that is all diving is: being underwater successfully. This GUE OW course is a perfect mirror of, frankly, an inexperienced OW instructor trying to talk too much, instead of putting himself firmly in the students shoes, and staying there. All inexperienced instructors think they invented diving and want to talk way, way, way, way too much. Maybe the instructor is not an inexperienced OW instructor, but he acts just like every new OW instructor acts.


This instructor is busy talking about himself, and at his students. He is failing to see and hear what their actions are clearly telling him. He is congratulating himself on how much he told them, instead of noticing that his divers are still twitchy, still facing the sun, still on the surface with masks off and unprotected airways. At one point, he has even managed to turn his back on his class exiting the water, leading (not following, leading) his class out of the water while the one diver in the back with no mask and an unprotected airway was struggling to remove her fins which she could not see because she had already taken off her mask. Where was her buddy? How did she manage to get in the situation that she still had her fins on but had no mask and an unprotected airway? Was anyone keeping an eye on the ocean to warn her about waves? Because the instructor was busy with more important things than ingraining safe dive behavior, the answers to these questions are obvious. She had no buddy, no one was watching for waves, she had no idea how she ended up with her mask off, airway unprotected, and her fins still on. Students (and assistants in this case) had clearly not had it ingrained that "the dive's not over until you are standing on solid ground". The ocean is unforgiving. He probably lectured a lot about ocean awareness but he clearly never bothered practicing it, so of course the students will find themselves confused by the hassle when shore diving in the real world, and they will have not tools to keep out of harm's way. Lectures are silly nonsense. Ingraining safe diver behavior happens when it is enforced at every point of training so that it flows naturally from every diver on every dive. It does not need to be remembered because divers would simply not even do it any other way. To put it bluntly, a basic Divemaster Candidatte who did what he did under my watch would be in for some remediable reading about control, role modeling, and ocean awareness.

He has filled their heads with words which they will forget, and yet not managed to create a zone of comfort for his divers. Worse yet with some of his training he has patterned them into bad, dangerous dive behavior. It's inexcusable. And it is completely understandable, and completely predictable. The only word of advice to give a new instructor is shut mouth, open eyes and open ears. I can see on video, what he could not see in person, because he was too busy talking.

The only key to teaching divers is to first empathize a lot, then empathize a lot more, and finally to empathize a whole lot more. All that matters is students comfort in the water at the completion of OW. Because without it, operational neutral buoyancy is not possible, and and based instinctive actions are suppressed and not replaced. Words do not create comfort, successfully operating in the water does, because comfort is something that only the diver can create in herself. The divers in the video are still having to consciously repress above water instincts. There in simply no way in hell any book learning is running through their brain while they fight the twitches. If minds are not clear, then self improvement made from dive to dive is not happening.

"You can only get so far with in water practice.

I must have water in my ears. (Which is dangerous, because I know I have only fluffy cotton candy between them.)

What is the point of anything in a dive class if it is not directly servicing the in-water practice? All that matters is the in-water practice. The rest of the course is there to prepare them to understand the answers to "Why do I need to behave a certain way: why can't I hold my breath, why do I have to equalize,use dive tables, etc". And to explain why nothing they think they 'knew' before the course will help them, and instinctual behavior is not effective, and may be dangerous so new habits must be made, not by stifling instincts but by replacing instincts with effective replacemet behavior. And the students have enough reps that correct behavior is burned into muscle memory.

Once the muscle memory is ingrained, knowing why we do 'X' is pointless except to an instructor. I know we are talking about diving on the internet, and thus saying "talking about diving is pointless" is a little self-contradictory, but that's because we are not talking about diving but about the philosophy behind teaching.

 

[amascuba]

Why GUE uses Backplates:

1. It grows with the diver. It allows to use a single system that grows with them from single tank recreational diving to double tanks with stage, deco bottles, and even into rebreathers. There is no need to learn how to dive multiple BCD's. It promotes muscle memory of deployment and stowing of things like SPG's, backup lights, primary lights, primary second stage, stage and deco bottles.
2. It has a single piece webbing, no quick releases, other than the waist buckle, and no padding. This ensures that there are minimal failure points and enables a proper fit. Padding on BCD's is there to provide comfort on the surface, but in the water, the padding will compress leaving you with a BCD that doesn't fit in the environment that you really want it to fit the most. Plastic quick releases on BCD's become brittle and tend to break over time. It would be a shame to have to scrub a dive because one broke on the way to the dive site. Even worse if one broke in the water during a dive. Beyond that, they aren't really needed. Getting in and out of a backplate is easy on land as well as in the water.
3. The backplate places weight over the length of your back, where you need it the most. Add a wing to the mix and it provides lift above the core of your body. This inhibits a more trim like attitude in the water. Jacket BCD's try to wrap a bubble of air around you which helps to prohibit a trim like attitude. Typically they also leave most of the ballast around the hips, which pulls the legs down, creating more of a diver who is vertical. It's not efficient for swimming as you are having to break more of the water column to swim, which means that you are working harder to move through the water, which can affect your breathing rate.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

While this is an eminently laudable goal, it is the sort of goal that only someone who forgot what it was like to be an Open Water student can have. It is a great stance for GUE to have as the basis for the Fundies course. It just has little relevance with OW training, which should retain as its entire focus, the student's comfort level at this level.

Read TSandM's linked dive diary.It should be required reading for all instructors before teaching each and every OW course. Hers was not a compressed course. All OW divers care about, and all they remember from their OW course is written below:

OMG Tanks are heavy!
OMG I Can't use my nose!!
OMG They made me take my mask off under water!!!

Thinking that OW students can learn, or should retain, any book knowledge during their first exposure to diving is simply not being aware of the level of bizarreness the UW world exposes a OW diver to. Nothing, and I mean nothing: no knowledge, no experience, no instincts learned in the above water world are applicable to the U/W world. We spend out entire lives subjects to gravity,and then we go under water and we can 'fall' up. Nothing prepares us for this. I can write volumes of poetry about weightlessness, but nothing prepares anyone for what it actually is like, let alone the sensation of 'falling' up, or being weightless, and the radical instability they creates. Put your face in the water and not hold your breath? What?

All we can hope for is that we train muscle memory to have the OW students stop trying to import any of their experience, instincts or knowledge gained heretofore in the above water world. And we train them how to replace useless, or worse counterproductive actions, with positive, effective action. Every new instructor and divemaster is convinced they invented diving, and convinced that their talking is the key to teaching diving. The only key to diving is to be in the water, and then be in the water some more, because that is all diving is: being underwater successfully. This GUE OW course is a perfect mirror of, frankly, an inexperienced OW instructor trying to talk too much, instead of putting himself firmly in the students shoes, and staying there. All inexperienced instructors think they invented diving and want to talk way, way, way, way too much. Maybe the instructor is not an inexperienced OW instructor, but he acts just like every new OW instructor acts.

It really depends on the student ... because particularly with OW students, their wants, learning style, aptitude, attitude, and physical abilities are all over the map. I've had students who I had to work with ... literally ... for many dives before I could get them to flood and clear a mask comfortably. I've also had students who all I had to do is show them the same skill once and they were completely comfortable doing it. Some only want to learn enough to get "clearance" to go underwater ... others can't seem to get enough information, and would spend an entire class session pursuing a single aspect of knowledge in great depth if I allowed it. Some don't want to put effort into the class ... others make me tired just watching how hard they try.

You can't "stereotype" students ... particularly OW students. They just come in too many variations. That's why any "standardized" approach to training them is, ultimately, less than optimal.

You brought up TSandM's dive log ... I remember it well ... it's what caused me to make an effort to meet and dive with her when she was a very new diver. In some ways she reminded me very much of myself at that stage ... pretty inept, but with a serious desire to improve. And you'll never meet anyone who will be more willing to put effort into improving. DIR was made for people like that ... and all you have to do to sell them on the concept is let them know that it exists. I knew the first dive we did together that she wasn't just going to drink the Kool-Aid ... she was going to bathe in it. What gave it away was a simple word ... "why". DIR appeals to a certain type of person ... one who needs more than just the mechanics of diving. You're critical of this instructor because you believe he's talking too much ... and, perhaps because of my exposure to the type of diver who is drawn to DIR, I see that approach as filling a need for these students ... one that appeals to their learning style.

Although I've taken a couple GUE classes, and generally adopt the fundamentals of that diving style, I am not DIR. I don't "promote" DIR to my students ... but if I see one who I feel is compatible with that style of diving, I'll tell them so, and point them in the direction of a DIR diver or instructor for more information. I've had OW students who I've felt would benefit from learning that style right out of the box ... and I've told them so.

You have your way of teaching ... and I don't doubt that it works very well for your students. But I think it works better to evaluate the needs of students as individuals, and tailor classes to how they learn and how much they want to learn. Some of my students learn best by understanding concepts ... others learn best by doing. I try to evaluate that as the class progresses. I'm thinking back to a few students I've had who literally filled my email inbox with questions before class even started ... they wanted to know everything. Not surprisingly, without exception they ended up taking the DIR path. It wasn't because of anything I said or did ... it was because that style of training filled a need for them. Your way ... or mine ... was only sufficient to get them started ... and put them on a path they would've eventually found anyway.

I just don't see a downside to putting them on that path to begin with ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[amascuba]

Why GUE uses Backplates:

1. It grows with the diver. It allows to use a single system that grows with them from single tank recreational diving to double tanks with stage, deco bottles, and even into rebreathers. There is no need to learn how to dive multiple BCD's. It promotes muscle memory of deployment and stowing of things like SPG's, backup lights, primary lights, primary second stage, stage and deco bottles.
2. It has a single piece webbing, no quick releases, other than the waist buckle, and no padding. This ensures that there are minimal failure points and enables a proper fit. Padding on BCD's is there to provide comfort on the surface, but in the water, the padding will compress leaving you with a BCD that doesn't fit in the environment that you really want it to fit the most. Plastic quick releases on BCD's become brittle and tend to break over time. It would be a shame to have to scrub a dive because one broke on the way to the dive site. Even worse if one broke in the water during a dive. Beyond that, they aren't really needed. Getting in and out of a backplate is easy on land as well as in the water.
3. The backplate places weight over the length of your back, where you need it the most. Add a wing to the mix and it provides lift above the core of your body. This inhibits a more trim like attitude in the water. Jacket BCD's try to wrap a bubble of air around you which helps to prohibit a trim like attitude. Typically they also leave most of the ballast around the hips, which pulls the legs down, creating more of a diver who is vertical. It's not efficient for swimming as you are having to break more of the water column to swim, which means that you are working harder to move through the water, which can affect your breathing rate.

Here are some examples of me and my transition to backplate and wing from a jacket BCD:

This is June 2005 - somewhere between 50 and 80 dives.



In the picture above, I was using a jacket BCD, which I had purchased straight out of my OW class. All my ballast were in weight pockets that were around my hips and the air cell surrounded my core and back. It was very hard to attain a trim like attitude in such a configuration. When I could attain it, I couldn't hold it effortlessly.

This is June 2007 - Around dive 150 - 200.



In this picture, I'm wearing a 6 pound backplate. It was effortlessly for me to attain and hold trim, even while assisting OW students.

 

[g1138]

beanojones, I'll have to agree with NWGratefulDiver in that you can't stereotype students. That was the word I was looking for.
There are students who fit your description and probably will benefit a lot more from your teaching curriculum. However there are students who like me have spent their entire chilhood swimming every summer and not just on the surface, but under the water. There are students who would beg their parents to go snorkeling and then get yelled at for diving to the bottom of the ocean.

Some students already have a natural ability to cope with the underwater environment because they've spent much time already in it, without a source of air. I'll read TS&M's blog if I can find it. But right off the bat my experience with Basic OW was not her's. Everything came easy for me, I was up to the challenge. For me, the only thing that came hard with scuba was modesty and understanding that I wasn't the top shot I thought I was, that there were many different diving styles, equipment, and knowledge that I had to learn.

You'll have students who are primarily tactile learners by nature, then there's the rare audio learners, you may also have visual learners. Each one cannot be taught with just one method of teaching.

I'll have to disagree that the point of a Basic OW class is just in water practice. Knowing your physics, tables, dive planning, trains of thought in general etc is important. GUE takes it a step further by focusing on what some agencies would refer to as adv buoyancy techniques. If you look on this board there are many posts about divers trying to have backkicks and buoyancy explained to them. So you cannot say that it should be just in water practice that will achieve these things to stellar textbook examples.

The divers in the video already spend around 5-7 hours in the water a day, everyone needs a break from practicing. Sometimes practicing too much in one sitting ruins your muscle memory. Your muscles get tired, so too does your mind. Sometimes you need to switch off one side of your brain and move on to another side, give your muscles a break and let everything rest and reset.

 

[TSandM]

The dive log is linked in my sig line.

I think this has turned into a very interesting discussion of different approaches to teaching. I'm not sure how much Jesper actually "talked" during the class, and neither is anyone else here; we only know the very short bits that Valentina caught on film. I do think that Bob is right, and that this kind of instruction can appeal more to people like me, who want everything laid out and all the "whys" answered. I also think that, if as I hope someday to do, I end up a GUE OW instructor, I will keep the ideas of empathy in mind.

It's already been mentioned, but the reason for starting students in a backplate in the GUE system is that that is the equipment you will use to do 7 kilometer cave dives and video documentation of the Atlanta at 400+ feet. "Starting with the end in mind" is not just the title of the OW book. Although the vast majority of divers will not do those dives, GUE believes in starting them out with the ideas and equipment that will work, if they end up entertaining those ambitions. And an awful lot of us do . . . says the woman who told her Fundamentals instructor that she had no technical diving aspirations at all, and just wanted to be "the best recreational diver I can be."

I do have to say that, at the end of all this back and forth, I remain totally unconvinced that it matters where you have a student hold his hands, in terms of extinguishing hand swimming. Hand swimming goes away when a) the student becomes consciously aware of the fact that he is doing it, and b) he has some other way to achieve the stability he's trying to get with the action. Someone who is losing his balance in the water will do what he has to do to regain it, whether his hands are behind his back, underneath him, or out in front. But having gear that fits and is close to correctly balanced (something GUE instructors ARE good at, in general) helps a student reach stability a bit faster. And I wouldn't be surprised that having the hands out in front where you can see them helps some people recognize when they are moving them! (I know having students carry a light in Puget Sound makes them immediately more aware of the amount of hand movement they still have.)

Oh -- and I wonder if some of the things are situation-specific. I couldn't figure out at first what "unprotected airway" meant, except in the context of the brief Rescue clip. Now I realize you want the students with their masks on and their regulators in their mouths at all times until they are on dry land. I know that isn't the practice of many instructors here in Puget Sound -- we have no waves. We don't teach surf entries, because we don't do them (and if I had to guess, I'd guess most of the instructors here would have a bit of trouble someplace like Southern California!). It's very common to take the mask off and debrief during the surface swim in to shore, and then stand up, take fins off, and walk out. I don't know the place where they were doing the OW class in the film, but the water appears very shallow and very calm, and I suspect they probably teach as we do.

 

[DennisS]

My instructor asked if I was conducting an orchestra on one of my early dives. I gave him a blank stare and he asked what was I doing with my hands. I still smile and check my hands when I see a newbie, "conducting an orchestra"