GUE Open Water class documentary

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Thank you very much for spending so much time on your answer, beano.

We saw different things. I saw faces lighting up as the course went on and the interviews continued. I saw people saying that they couldn't yet reach the bar, but saw progress and knew it WAS reachable. And that's the way I have felt through a lot of my training -- the classes were challenging and I didn't always rise to the challenge, yet I came out knowing what the goal WAS and that it was attainable, because the person who was teaching me had attained it.

I'm not sure what your point about resting on the bottom is. Until I began doing significant macro photography, I had never had any reason to want to rest on the bottom, and in fact, on dives where we were instructed to do that (like the manta dive off the Big Island) I found it more difficult to do than to rest, neutral in the water column. I don't think I would ever evaluate a student on his ability to lie on the bottom, because I can think of so few occasions where that is a useful skill -- and most of us can quickly figure out how to do it, if we have to.
 
Then you had good training, thankfully. You got my point about not being on the bottom then, though clearly I did not express it so well. I never evaluate a students ability to do it, its just not ever needed except at 'mission specific' times. Unfortunately many(most?) recreational scuba students are trained overweighted on their knees so they think scuba starts at the bottom. Compared to that, this GUE course looks good.

But.

For me, the problem with much of scuba training is that neutral bouyancy is not actually addressed, just checked off a list of 40 skills, rather than integrated within the course from top to bottom.

The great thing about the GUE/DIR training in things like the Fundies course is that neutral buoyancy is addressed, from the head to the toe of a diver with every bit of kit. My (obviously unclearly stated) point was that I think GUE, with this course, is trying to address a physical activity from an intellectual rather than a physical standpoint, which is inefficient, and possibly ineffective. I can lecture and show video for hours and never get the point across as fast as setting the diver up in a situation where they learn something themselves in a matter of minutes. When they learn it themselves, it locks into longterm memory, and muscle memory, because they experience it rather than get it told to them. It's faster, it's more efficient, and it sticks, because it is not something told rather it is something experienced.

A diver making jerky arm/hand motions, randomly clenching their fists, is simply carrying a level of stress that worries me.If I saw a diver (outside of their initial time on scuba) acting like this, I would readying myself to react to a panicked diver. More to the immediate point, it shows they are not actually operationally neutrally buoyant, even if they are at midwater. In their last dives, those student were still trying to make corrections to trim and balance to some degree of hand/arm motion and fist clenching. (Frankly the instructor was using rather jerky hand motions himself, which is obviously part of the problem).

Forcing divers to be perfectly neutrally buoyant cures this in CW, because they have to have let go of this stress or they are at the surface from high lung volume. Those GUE divers were in good trim because they were told to be, rather than because it simply is the natural way to dive if neutrally buoyant. I can tell this because those random arm twitches, hand waves, and fist clenchings are only done by divers carrying a significant stress level. High Level of stress= High lung volume= not actually neutrally bouyant if carrying a normal lung volume.

Edit: If that video is free from copyright restritions I could edit together what I saw that bothered me. That much editing I can do.
 
I do agree with you -- hand motions are made by divers who are trying to correct instability with their hands.

I learned that from my Fundies instructor, who told us that hand motion was "information", and that we should note our use of the hands and figure out what we were trying to correct, and fix it some other way. Hand motion disappears fairly quickly if you analyze it in that fashion.

I'll have to go back through the video to look for what you are seeing as jerky hand motions on the part of the instructor. I have been in the water with quite a few GUE instructors, and if there is one quality they have all shared, it's an impressive quietness as divers.

As far as the "setting the student up in a scenario to learn", in my experience, my GUE (and my UTD) instructors have been utter masters of this. I didn't learn to stay together as a buddy pair because they told me to; I learned to do it because if we got too far apart, the instructor would throw one of us a major problem that would require a buddy's assistance (often being out of air) so that we would see how being apart or not paying attention would impact our ability to be of help. I didn't learn to pay attention to where my buddy was because they schooled me on it; I learned it because if I turned the wrong way in the water, my buddy lost his mask (modeling that I had kicked it off, which my husband nearly did to me on Thursday). You are totally correct that experiential learning is the most powerful reinforcer. My GUE classes have combined thorough classroom preparation with a great deal of experiential learning, and the end result has been a fairly durable education.

To this day, I will look around me to see if it's okay to turn in a given direction, because I don't want to kick anyone; and buddy separation beyond a certain distance makes me profoundly uneasy, because I know what it means from a practical basis. I'll bet these students came away with some of those lessons, too.
 
I just watched a short section of it again - the last part where they were diving as "finished" OW divers. I see that they have their hands held in a closed position, but they didn't strike me as "clenched." I wonder if they were holding them that way just so as not to have them in easily accessible "hand wavey" position. You know, like how an open hand would make it easy to use it as a "fin." If they are striving not to do that (and yet know they may have bobbles since they are beginners), maybe that was their way of eliminating temptation. If they don't have their hands in an open position, they have to hold them some other way.

I dive with my hands clasped. They aren't typically tense, but I wonder if it might look that way to an observer?

(And I would not put it beyond me to have them tense up from time to time if I'm having a buoyancy or trim "moment" but would rather get it under control with breathing and/or larger arm, posture, or leg movements vs. resorting to hand waving. Sometimes in that case I may clench slightly?)

Blue Sparkle

PS: At 31:50 one of them is successfully back-kicking. But I'm not jealous :wink:
 
special finning generally originates from a feeling of being head heavy, the cause is not always perfectly 'clear' and can range from from tank position, body position, or a bit too much air in the feet of drysuit... but with a bit of time spent watching diver after diver, other indicators become clear and can generally be fixed easily. Same with happy feet... that kicky kicky is our own natural instinct to keep from going ass over teakettle.

I am not at ALL a fan of just telling someone to stop using their hands, putting something in it or telling them to clench their fist so they can't do it, because that doesn't solve the problem. I agree it just adds stress load and eats bandwidth. Unless of course they are already perfectly balanced and are just using it in place of a helicopter or back kick :wink:

We are picking apart a video of an OW class, shot on the fly, that is not even really a full representation of what the class has/will become. It is telling the story of an agency breaking 'new ground'. it is not necessarily the story of how the class will be run when done with local instructors and local waters :)

people have given great feedback and food for thought, and it is neat hearing how other instructors run similar classes independent of denominations and agencies... As most of the people who have commented here are instructors or leadership staff, i would recommend that we take pause and none of us get so caught up in our own perceptions and dogma that we are prevented from seeing the positives and negatives of all of our methods, and can allow ourselves to learn from each other :)
 
PS: At 31:50 one of them is successfully back-kicking. But I'm not jealous :wink:

Oh yes the back kick: The true reason why I want to take the Fundies course. I can move backwards, but I never feel particularly good at it. Maybe because until I saw it in a video of a GUE course I guess I simply never though of doing it well. I use my bad back kick to maneuver but never demonstrate it, and never see students copying it, at least not intentionally. (Though I did have a referral diver come to me who managed to propel herself backwards unintentionally with a hilariously exaggerrated bicycle kick. Thighs are as wide as fins sometimes, I guess.

Helicopters just come naturally once buoyancy and thus trim is established. Most of my OWs try and can do some kind of helicopter because apparently they see me doing it, and they say it looks cool so they want to try it, and so they do. I don't teach it or intentionally demonstrate it. But I simply do not want them to see my horrendous back kick ever, for fear it would scar them for life. Let them learn how to back kick from someone who can do it, and teach it, properly.

The Fundies course is quite simply the best thing to happen to diving education in a long time. I am not so sure about this course, but hey...
 
I am not at ALL a fan of just telling someone to stop using their hands, putting something in it or telling them to clench their fist so they can't do it, because that doesn't solve the problem. I agree it just adds stress load and eats bandwidth.

Okay, I see what you mean. You would rather see the hand-wavey so that nothing is being masked or over-compensated for. Kind of like not getting kitchen flooring that hides dirt, because you would rather just see it and clean the floor.

Do you see the divers in the video (say, at the end when they are out diving at the end of the class) as having clenched hands? I thought they were just holding sort of loosely closed... well I don't know why, but maybe just because they have to hold them some way? But I'm still figuring out how to dive myself, so I don't have an expert/experienced perspective.

I'm not sure what I would do with my hands if I didn't clasp them... what would you (or beanojones) suggest as a good way to hold them? (Say, for these students.)
 
Disclaimer... I work in surgery, as a scrub, so i don't like anything that hides dirt, makes it harder to clean :wink:

i will have to watch again, but my first impression was that the divers were still a bit unstable, but trying REALLY hard. kind of like me in my fundies class with Bob when he said "your trim is great, but you are working way way too hard". keeping that in perspective, these diver kids have like 25-30 dives whereas I had 20 years of tech diving experience and a fair number of dives :)

I think they were at appropriate level for their experience. they look reasonable in the water but not yet one with it.

My only concern is that folks get a bit too wrapped up in being perfect trim/perfect form and skip over the crazy-wonder-amazing-underwater-blows-yer-mind stuff before they even start...

what to do with hands... eternal question. I usually have my light and video camera or scooter in my hands but if i'm just hanging out, i do the arms out thing, forward and 'up'... they are totally relaxed... i can see my gauges, they are happy and warm and just hangin' out...

Pray to the plankton god! Head back, arms up! (visual is one of the weird tele-evangalists throwing their arms up and head back, which flattens your back and gets your head back which fixes a lot of things all at once) anyhow, this makes my arms into big stabilizing pontoons.

I use dry gloves so that allows air into the gloves and my hands to stay uber warm, and if i want to, so stable that i could take a nap in the position (arms up and out, legs out a bit and relaxed, not forceful perfect bent at 90)

My tanks are old HP102's, and are notoriously head heavy, so take what i do/say with a grain of salt. Nice worthington tanks trim out much easier and then i can have my arms and legs in 'prettier for pictures' position without effecting fore/aft trim so much. you have to grok the gear YOU have as opposed to what those of us who yap on the 'tard net have :wink:

That said, i'm from the 'school' of Bob Sherwood and Richard Lundgren (Richard's form can be seen in the USS Atlanta video) and they are both 110% about stability of platform in the water... Stable Platform is first... until you have that (AKA buoyancy), you are working too hard... you can try to force 'trim' all day long, but until you have trim in a stable platform, all the rest of the skills (INCLUDING back kick and valve drills) are going to be overly difficult.

Really, once you have platform and fore/aft balance sorted, the rest gets a lot easier. You'll find yourself thinking "why again was i struggling?"



Okay, I see what you mean. You would rather see the hand-wavey so that nothing is being masked or over-compensated for. Kind of like not getting kitchen flooring that hides dirt, because you would rather just see it and clean the floor.

Do you see the divers in the video (say, at the end when they are out diving at the end of the class) as having clenched hands? I thought they were just holding sort of loosely closed... well I don't know why, but maybe just because they have to hold them some way? But I'm still figuring out how to dive myself, so I don't have an expert/experienced perspective.

I'm not sure what I would do with my hands if I didn't clasp them... what would you (or beanojones) suggest as a good way to hold them? (Say, for these students.)
 
First holy heck, am I wordy today or what? But BlueSparkle asked so maybe somone are interested in the response. If not, then at last I get to think things through by writing them down, and read other people's interesting responses.

I'm not sure what I would do with my hands if I didn't clasp them... what would you (or beanojones) suggest as a good way to hold them? (Say, for these students.)

As you sussed it out, arms forward can allow for otherwise obviously counterproductive behavior to be masked. But it also goes little deeper than that for me.

The "As for me" answer is that as I am not a GUE diver/instructor, and I would rather have students not using their hands and arms for anything (picking their noses or scratching their butts is fine) that is not directly manipulating gear, or making hand signals. For both the "I cannot be sure what is going on" part, but for the bigger part, they are likely going to be trapping themselves in a bit of an "Instinct/fight the instinct" cycle. Stifling instincts creates noise and raises stress which makes the "zen" of neutral buoyancy hard to approach because it creates an "off the top of the lungs" breathing pattern. Plus even if they can fight down the urge to wiggle the arms, and they only use elbow out pose for stability, what happens when the hands are need to hold a light, of a camera, or a slate and a pencil, or their dive buddies hand, or their mask? If arms are needed for stability, then when they need to use their hands, where does the replacement stability come from?

I get why GUE wants the position because they want the gauges mounted on the wrist, and they are readying people for scooter use so they want the arms forward position stamped in. But IME (in teaching mostly OW to tourists), it just encourages students to use their hands as aerofoils/stabilizers which encourages them to at least start to attempt to use them for propulsion and/or stability. (At least I can see ) the students in the video rolling tension through their appendages as they do the instinctive (but counterproductive) thing and start to use their hands and arms only to remember to stifle themselves. It is because beginning divers will always want to use their hands that I emphasize to students that hands are the only to manipulate gear or hand signal. But to make the lesson stick I make sure the divers are completely neutral while doing other training stuff and watch the little arm twitches propel them slowly to the surface, because a truly neutral diver will propel themselves to the surface with the usual beginning diver arm motions, including obvious things like pushing up off the bottom with their hands, but even less obvious things like the rolling and twitching of shoulders and extended elbows in the pray position. The nature of the shoulder joint moving mostly below the plane of the body causes this. IME, Neutral OW students 'learn' without me teaching it that an arms forward position is counterproductive. It's why I generally make all hand signals right in front of my mask, and otherwise model arms at the sides. Elbows out just starts them into a cycle of instinctive twitching, and stifling the desire to twitch, IME. And that's what I see the students in the video doing, starting to move their arms to gain stability, and then stifling that urge. Any time there is that noise of "Oh don't do that" running through their heads, it is interfering with enjoyment, learning, fun, whatever. I want my students learning sometimes through solving problems their land instincts create, not learning though the repetitive act of stifling an instinctual urge to do something. First I just don't think that approach works: at the end of ten day course the divers in the video were still twitching their arms, because they are just stifling an instinct rather than giving in to the instinct completely, trying that instinctual approach out and seeing for themselves that it just does not work. The first time my OW students end up at the surface with their hand waving they will realize that the instinctual response to use their arms even just a little or even just as stabilizers is a non starter, because it is just too hard to overcome land instincts, even in a 10 day course. Stabilization is the job of fins and leg position. After the arm wavers/twitchers end up at the surface, I explain why they have ended up at the surface. If they want to keep ending up there, they should continue to use their arms. Only rarely do they even continue to leave their arms forward. When they do though, they tend to end up in the instinct/stifle instinct cycle, which in and of itself can mask slightly negative diving because even that ends up creating an upward force, that has to counterbalanced by staying slightly negative, which is counteracted by breathing off the top of the lungs.

Since I know that arm twitches cause student divers to end up at the surface, or at least sends them in that direction, I am making the further inference that while the GUE OW divers in the video are at midwater and temporarily neutral, they too might be breathing off the top which allows quick exhalation to correct for the upward propulsion of the arm waving. If they were truly neutral the twitching would probably send them up more. Perhaps I am overanalyzing, but honest, I have worked through this a great deal, and arms in front (for beginning divers) is just a non-started. They have not had enough time to remodel 20 years of above-the-surface life experience into appropriate underwater instincts. The main goal of an OW class is to create an experience in which we allow divers to see that their instinctual body motions (and even their proprioception), successful and correct as they have been to this point on land, just don't work underwater. (Yeah, and teach them how to do whatever with the gear. But that is all secondary busywork to creating divers.) And we need them to see heretofore successful land-based instinctual responses fail as quickly as possible, so they discard the instincts, and start practicing new behavior patterns that are successful. But to remove the instinctual response, sometimes we just have to remove the precipitating urge to use ingrained land instincts. In this case arms forward is just too inviting a pose. New divers can stop arm movements but only by keeping the thought "Don't use your arms, don't use your arms, don't use your arms" flashing through their forebrain. Instead of the "I love being weightless" and "Ooh pretty fish" that I want them thinking about.

Arms is front just seems to allow new divers to keep envisioning arm usage as functional in propulsion and stability. I see it in this video from beginning to end. (I think) I know why the arms are out there under the GUE system, but it seems like the GUE approach is to intellectually approach the symptom by telling people not to do it, and not address the root cause which is that beginners with their arms forward will try and use them.
 
beano... i would like to agree with parts of what you are saying, whilst respectfully disagreeing.

arms out foreword and up absolutely acts as stabilizing devices, and give you something to do with them... if they are out and in front and just hanging out and floating there, and you've been fully versed in moving with fins (AKA helicopter,back kick, etc...) and most importantly, you grok fore/aft balance with combo of kit and body position, you'll find that even very new divers have no need/desire to special fin (I am NOT a GUE instructor, but i have mentored many 'right out of OW' divers who go on to do well in Fundamentals). In fact, having them up and out will help the diver naturally find a very stable body position. if you have not tried it, give it a go :) (I was not a believer, i was happy tucking one hand in my waist belt or clasping both in front/below me... until i tried the arms out thing and learned something new)

it really has not so much to do with scootering or gauges or whatever... its simply if the diver is properly balanced, they don't need the hands as auxiliary fins. using hands is indication of instability much of which can be sorted with kit and body or incomplete execution of fin based alternate propulsion methods, which can be taught if the instructor or mentor is patient to even the most uncoordinated student :)

you are correct to say that 'what works on land doesn't work underwater' but the hands out is a basic urge when someone feels as though they are falling... if you tell someone to stop moving their body (aka hold still) and they start tilting head down, their brain/body perceives that as 'falling forward' and voila! hands out!

where do you encourage your new divers to put their hands?

think for a minute about skydiving... where do the skydiving instructors tell even the most basic of folks doing tandem jumps to put their arms for maximum stability?

another thought... if an instructor is teaching divers to do primarily a standard 'flutter kick' their legs are extended. the lever action of the legs out will counteract head heavy tendencies of some of the kit, as will the flat nature of the fins. in this case, you are correct, arms can be tucked in and down or wherever, because in this case, the legs are the overwhelming balancing force. but stop moving those legs so much and bring them in slightly and its a whole new ballgame. one of dexterity and balance. and in all honesty, for some, that is much of the fun of it... its like flying an airplane or trim tabs on a boat, you become very in tune to how even small motions effect the wraparound scuba vehicle that is your body :)

with regards to body position of standard OW students, saying 'don't have arms out because my students with legs extended don't need them out there and its not helpful' is simply comparing apples to oranges.
 
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