How soon to take AOW after OW?

[MXGratefulDiver]

Several of my AOW grads went on to choose the GUE route. The local GUE instructor told me my students always came in well prepared for Fundies ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[runsongas]

i waited till after 50 to 60 dives before taking AOW. most of my diving after OW was diving from shore locally so didn't really feel a need to jump right into another class. it is kind of optional if you already feel comfortable diving independently, but you get less out of the class if you do a bunch of diving before taking the class.

 

[Johanan]

Fundamentals... foundations... core skills.... are more than just buoyancy, trim and propulsion. What is important is that the diver can apply all of their current skills without losing buoyancy control or situational awareness.

You are right and I quite agree. What I meant, was that ability to hover, maintaining a proper trim, gives a good basis to master most of the other skills, in order to apply all of them. The basic skills like air sharing, mask clearing etc. should be practiced while hovering, not kneeling on the bottom. In my experience, if the buoyancy control and trim doesn't work, nothing else works properly. Then just maintaining buoyancy and position is a huge contributor to the task load. It is very difficult to learn something if you are busy with these issues.

Regarding the kicks..., well, even in open water the popular bicycle kick or even a proper flutter kick are not very helpful for manoeuvring, not damaging corals etc.

 

[gcarter]

...I had explained that I wanted to get a few dives under my belt before starting Advanced Open Water. To me it seems it would be smart to get a handle on breathing, buoyancy control, and comfortable with my own equipment before starting more instruction....

^^^^^^^^^
This.

Edited addition:

You don't need a course to work on skills development. Find an experienced buddy (or buddies!) willing to mentor your skills. Find a LDS that runs free DM led dives. Dive often.

Don't take a course JUST for the card (although AOW is a prereq for many ops for deeper dives).

Don't take a course to develop comfort when it means that you are passing up on possible new knowledge / skill acquisition. I.e., you will not pick up the skills you could from the navigation dive in AOW if you spend all your time trying to manage your buoyancy,

If you want to get what you should form AOW, get some comfort first and THEN shop for an AOW instructor who will give you some value out of your AOW dives.

 

[TMHeimer]

You are right and I quite agree. What I meant, was that ability to hover, maintaining a proper trim, gives a good basis to master most of the other skills, in order to apply all of them. The basic skills like air sharing, mask clearing etc. should be practiced while hovering, not kneeling on the bottom. In my experience, if the buoyancy control and trim doesn't work, nothing else works properly. Then just maintaining buoyancy and position is a huge contributor to the task load. It is very difficult to learn something if you are busy with these issues.

Regarding the kicks..., well, even in open water the popular bicycle kick or even a proper flutter kick are not very helpful for manoeuvring, not damaging corals etc.

I think that with certain skills it really doesn't matter whether you learn them neutrally or on the bottom. Such things as mask clearing, reg retrieval-- to me at least -- seemed equally easy in the water column the very first time I tried them (I learned everything on the bottom). Removing and replacing the belt is probably always done in real life on the surface or in rare cases on the bottom. You very well may drop your weights in the water column, but that would be an emergency, so no putting them back on. OTOH, it is quite likely that air sharing/ascending could take place neutrally when it happens. You have to take it skill by skill.

 

[gcarter]

i waited till after 50 to 60 dives before taking AOW. most of my diving after OW was diving from shore locally so didn't really feel a need to jump right into another class. it is kind of optional if you already feel comfortable diving independently, but you get less out of the class if you do a bunch of diving before taking the class.

Depends on two things: how many in a bunch ( ) and the instructor.

 

[DevonDiver]

... I wanted to get a few dives under my belt before starting Advanced Open Water. To me it seems it would be smart to get a handle on breathing, buoyancy control, and comfortable with my own equipment before starting more instruction......I do understand that the AOW dives are mostly fun dives. .

This is where the AOW course fails to address (what I believe is) the training requirements of most OW graduates.

The entire...'AOW now or later' debate is spawned from the fact that the course itself provides neither a boost to fundamental skills, nor a progression in diving capability.

If AOW focused on developing the fundamentals introduced on the OW course, then the answer would be easy; do it sooner rather than later. Build strong foundations from the very start, as a platform on which to build quality experience.

If AOW focused on developing more advanced diving competencies, a skill-set beyond OW-level certification, then the answer would also be easy; do it later, after first gaining experience and getting your fundamentals refined.

In reality, AOW can be both... or neither of those things. That depends entirely on the individual instructor. The course is flexible enough to be focused on building fundamentals or building progressive, more advanced, skills. It just requires an equally flexible instructor who can identify and deliver the specific training that the student actually needs.

For anyone considering when to conduct AOW training, the answer is simple: decide what you need to achieve and find a motivated instructor with the flexibility to provide exactly that.

Honestly, I do wish that PADI would scrap the existing AOW course. The syllabus and standards, on paper, fulfill neither of the purposes outlined above; and any satisfaction or goal achievement derived from the training stems only from the motivation and flexibility of the individual instructor. That's generally a rare thing: not many instructors have the instructional expertise, experience, motivation or professional freedom to tailor AOW to achieve individual student goals.

PADI courses aren't supposed to be reliant on instructor interpretation, flexible application or teaching beyond the written standards: they should be of a common standard and applied similarly across the globe to meet a singular and specific training goal.

I don't see why PADI et al couldn't offer a more developmental, skill-based, course/s as a progression from OW level. The 'adventure dive' experiential program could still exist - as a cheap sampler of specialty activities; but it wouldn't form the basis of a course; especially as that course is a prerequisite necessity for access to subsequent training (a form of blackmail, really).

IMHO, there should be a course that refined and developed fundamental skills... and a course that developed a higher level of skills for more advanced diving; leading to real training for deeper dives, currents, low viz/night, DSMB use, pony cylinders etc etc..training that'd provide a real prerequisite for specialist stuff like deep, wreck and cavern diving.

In short, an Open Water #2 course and an 'Advanced Recreational Diver' course.

I'd suggest that the AOW course is only 'popular' (i.e. profitable) because students are forced to do it if they want to develop their diving to higher levels. If that prerequisite status was removed, I'd expect that interest in the course would plummet. More so if actual skill-based, developmental alternatives were offered.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Honestly, I do wish that PADI would scrap the existing AOW course. The syllabus and standards, on paper, fulfill neither of the purposes outlined above; and any satisfaction or goal achievement derived from the training stems only from the motivation and flexibility of the individual instructor. That's generally a rare thing: not many instructors have the instructional expertise, experience, motivation or professional freedom to tailor AOW to achieve individual student goals.

I'm one of those who did ... and NAUI gives me the ability to do so. When I first became an instructor I read through the NAUI AOW materials and said to myself "I can't charge people money for that ... it's mostly just a review of what you were supposed to have learned in OW class". So I looked at the standards and wrote my own materials that would cover everything mandated, but added what I felt were necessary skills and knowledge to be able to competently do unassisted dives in Puget Sound. For the 12 years I was teaching (I retired at the end of 2015) it was my overall most popular class. I found that there are a lot of people out there who are happy to pay for longer, more comprehensive classes as long as you can provide them in a way that has the student walking away feeling like they got their money's worth. I had folks come to the Seattle area from places like Minnesota, Colorado, California, and North Carolina to take the class (some of them because they read about it on ScubaBoard).

As indicated earlier, I pretty much mandated some dives between OW and AOW. For those students who wanted more instruction between the two classes, I developed a four-dive workshop ... tailored to the individual student's needs ... to help them develop the basic skills they learned in OW and become comfortable with them, in order to be able to get more out of the AOW class once they were ready for it.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Like Bob I did the same thing with the SEI AOW class (which at the time was the YMCA class with a new name). Looked at it and saw that it kinda sucked and did not really address the conditions my students were most likely to want to dive in. Or dive safely in other areas.

Deep without an extensive discussion of gas management and emergency deco procedures that gave people access to deeper dives was stupid.

Tasks like writing one's name backwards or opening a lock to check for narcosis? Dumb. Neither is a dive related task. Showing how colors wash out? Really. Locally below 50 feet everything is brown, grey, or greenish. To see those features that even you most likely need a light. Which negates the color washout phenomena. Better to spend time on actual dive related tasks.

I've had students come for my AOW from South Carolina, Cincinnati, and New York. Places where they could have taken someone else's class for a lot less money.

For some a workshop between OW and AOW is mandatory. Usually to get them sorted out weighting and trim wise and/or on rescue skills that are included in the SEI class that to my knowledge only NAUI, CMAS, and BSAC also include in their basic course.

AOW is in some cases a ticket to dives that OW divers don't have access to for liability reasons. That ticket gives them the access. Often times with no new knowledge, skills, or wisdom. That it does that for no other reason than the ops butt is covered in an emergency and the shop or instructor has a few more bucks in their pocket is a shame.

It is also scary that there are people with an AOW card that I know their instructor would not allow one of their loved ones to dive with. Yet they issued them a cert.

 

[TMHeimer]

I use frog kick once in a while to mix it up and maybe prevent cramps. I even do this with my SPLIT fins. Most of the time I dive solo right on the bottom looking for shells and flutter-kicking up a storm (particularly over silt bottoms, but even over sand). No coral here (or on the N. Gulf of Mex. coast, or around NYC where I dive) to care about. Man what freedom. When I assist with classes, of course, I have to change things up.