lamont
Contributor
#1: Not talking to your instructor
Send e-mail to the instructor if they're out of town. Ask them about logistics questions, find out what their opinion is on every point in this post. Ask about how the course is going to be setup. Ask about your gear config. Ask detailed questions about Primer vs. Rec vs. Tech and how you fit into that, etc. Before the course they're your best resource.
An important thing to discuss with the instructor is going to be total cost. In some situations fills and site fees may be included with the price of the course. Under most circumstances, though, students should expect that GUE registration, gas fills, rentals, site/quarry/spring and boat fees, instructors expenses (fills, site fees, travel, lodging, expenses, etc) are not included with the cost of instruction. Flying in an instructor can be a costly proposition, best done by splitting the costs over multiple classes or multiple students. The difference between flying to the instructor and flying the instructor in may not be substantially different. When it comes to the cost of flights, as well, its generally better to get enough money to the instructor up front so that they can buy their tickets and get a cheaper price -- wiring the instructor money at the last minute to get expensive plane tickets is a mistake that can be easily avoided.
#2: Not taking Primer first
Without mentoring you should probably take Primer as an entry level introduction to GUE diving and the standards and spend time time with an instructor. This class is currently the best kept secret in GUE, but utilizing it would likely prevent a lot of frustration with fundamentals. If you are already diving with a lot of DIR/GUE trained divers you can probably skip the Primer, but otherwise Primer is likely a better idea.
#3: Going into Fundies expecting a Tech pass.
There is simply no way to go from being introduced to many of the skills and the standards and being able to pass the course without considerable mentoring beforehand from a senior diver who understands the standards (and that mentor should be Tech2, Cave2 or Instructor level, most Fundies students will not have the experience yet to be able to effectively mentor). Most other technical training will also not have sufficiently high standards to allow the student to progress through and gain a Tech pass right out of the gate.
It is far better to take either Primer first, or to shoot for a Rec pass. To go from introducing the concepts to someone the first time to passing at a Tech level will take 25-50 dives at least, and there's no way to structure the course to allow that much time -- which is what Provisional passes and Rec passes are about.
Without DIR/GUE mentoring the student should expect to take the course twice. If the cost seems high, then I would strongly suggest the Primer course first as an introduction, followed up by Fundies later.
#4: Changing gear right before Fundies
Slapping on doubles and taking Fundies a few dives later is the really classic mistake and comes up over and over again in class post-mortems. If you are shooting for a Tech pass you should have compliant gear that you've been diving in for 25-50 dives without changing anything. If you don't normally dive doubles, take the class in single tanks and shoot for a Rec pass -- you will probably get *more* out of the course by doing that than slapping on doubles and struggling with unfamiliar gear.
If you've only recently changed your gear around to get it compliant (bought a backplate, ditched ankle weights, started using a long hose, etc) then you should probably not be immediately going into a fundies course. Its generally going to be more productive to get your gear sorted out first and start diving it, and then once you're comfortable to sign up for a course and spend a few months diving that way.
#5: Buying the wrong gear
Make sure that if you're getting new gear that its the right gear. Talk to your instructor about your choices. Don't make any hasty, expensive purchases right before the course without really confirming that you're doing the right thing.
#6: Taking a 6-person course
While the standards allow for a 6-person course, this creates logistical issues, and I'd warn students away from signing up for courses this size. A 4-person course in 2 teams of 2 works well, particularly when there's a tech-oriented team and a rec-oriented team, otherwise the sweet spot is the 3-person course made up of students at roughly the same level.
#7: Not thinking your buddies experience levels matter
The other students in the course will affect your success and you should make sure that you're not the odd one out. Having courses with 2 students that are relatively new and rec-oriented with one tech-oriented student, or vice-versa can be hard on the course. Its best if there's someone there diving the same gear with roughly the same experience and goals.
#8: Any site will do for the class [ stolen from Rainer ]
Find calm water. For an introductory class covering the fundamentals of better diving, you probably want to eliminate challenging water conditions. This likely means avoiding taking the class in places with strong surge, ripping currents, crashing surf, or big swell/waves. If you easily get sea sick, probably best not to schedule a class that requires boat dives in unprotected open water. This is particularly an issue if you're traveling for the class or flying an instructor in. If your only access is to water via a boat or shore entry, consider what bad weather would mean in terms of you being able to reschedule if you're blown out.
I think sheltered coves, protected bays, quarries, lakes, or springs probably offer the best chances to maximize in-water time. Pools are not a decent substitute. They simply (in the vast majority of cases) lack the depth required to adequately practice timed ascents/descents, air-sharing ascents, bag shoots, and toxing diver recoveries. Pools are "ok" for learning propulsion techniques and the basics of s-drills and valve drills.
#9: Shorter courses vs. longer courses.
The 5-day course is generally going to be preferable when its available. There's a tradeoff where student and instructor burn-out starts to exceed the utility of more time in the water, but often another day can make the difference where the instructor can see the elements which are necessary to get the Rec pass instead of the provisional, or the Tech pass instead of the Rec pass. The 5-day course may also help if you have to call a day due to sea sickness or other logistical problems.
#10: 5 straight days vs. split courses
With a local instructor one option is to do a split-weekend course with 2 or 3 weekends 'off' in the middle to practice. This can greatly reduce burnout and can let the student get in some solid diving outside of class to brush up on skills. Obviously, this is only an option with a reasonably local instructor. If you are flying in to the course or the instructor is flying in to the course this isn't going to be available to you.
#11: Not thinking about mundane logistics.
You'll need fills for the course. Consider that with long days you won't have a lot of time for filling. If possible get some extra tanks and be able to rotate tanks through the local fill station and dive a set while the other is dropped off for fills.
You'll need food. Make sure to get some bananas for the potassium to eat in the morning. Probably want to some fairly high energy balanced carbs/fat/protein setup and ready to go. If you're taking the 5 day course you probably want food for 5 days ready with minimal prep work (trust me, eating mexican gas station food on the final night of Cave 2 because I ran out of food and every place was closed was not a high point of the course for me -- stock up and make it easy on yourself, so that food stress is zero).
#12: Not getting proper nutrition
The logistics of having food around is one thing. Eating pizza delivery for 4 nights straight may seem like a solution, but most likely one that your GI tract will start to rebel against. Consider also that your instructor will need breakfast, lunch and dinner, and most likely some coffee or redbull (sufficient team redbull supplies is often critical).
HYDRATION is also important. P-valves and bottled water are good. Get familiar with your P-valve well in advance of the course as well, this is another thing to not be attempting to figure out in the middle of the course.
#13: Not allowing for a few days before the course
If you are flying in, its best to fly in a day or two early. Get your logistics figured out, figure out what you're going to be eating, what the equipment/rental/gas situation is, meet your buddies and ideally get a pre-class dive or two in.
#14: Going into class without good stress management tools. [stolen from Ben_ca]
Prepare both your mind and body for long days. The class will be taxing both mentally and physically. Work on fitness. Swimming, running and being fit in general will help you deal with the stress of the class. Mentally prepare for the ups and downs. Don't dwell on the failures of the last dive... talk about what happened and regroup as a team. Holding grudges and blaming each other will only tear the team apart.
Encouragement and support go a long way to making the class a success.
#15: Not having any support network or time for yourself
Pulling in support from more advanced divers that have been through courses like this and the cave/tech curriculum can help. They'll have already made mistakes they can help you avoid.
Getting people out for some beach support to supply coffee and fetch the odd forgotten weight belt or whatever can really help the course move more smoothly.
Having people to talk to and commiserate with who are outside of the bubble of the course can also be useful. Frustrations can run a bit high at times and blowing off steam pressure with an external person can be good.
At the same time, getting some alone time, particularly for people who recharge while alone can be very critical. If you are bunking with someone after flying out, consider that you may need a quiet space somewhere, or some exercise time away from everyone in order to keep your mood stabilized.
#16: Treating it like any other diving course.
This is not like your PADI Rescue course. It is both more physically and emotionally demanding. It is much longer. There's more land drills and lot more course work and instruction. Video reviews are invaluable teaching aids but take up more time and require more commitment from students and teachers.
If you add to that the logistical issues in either you flying somewhere or the instructor flying to you, then it really becomes a much different experience. Even with a solid shop and local instructor providing support, you should spend more time on pre-class fitness, logistics of your own food, saying goodbye to your family and job for 5 days, and making sure your equipment is dialed in.
NOTE: obviously with a local instructor and local shop some of this should get vastly simplified. Fills should not be a problem, logistics should run smoothly, just make sure your fridge is full and you make a quick bag lunch every day or know where you're going to be eating. I have to assume the worst case that you're flying out to the instructor or that the instructor is flying to you, and that some of the logistical problems will therefore fall on your shoulders. You should still take the responsibility to confirm with the instructor+shop to figure out how the days will run, how fills will happen, what the dive sites will be, etc.
[ BTW, thanks to everyone posting in this thread -- I've entirely plagiarized a few answers directly from participants and given credit, but there's also a lot of posts that I've lifted snippets from and edited for concision or emphasis and added to this, and most of this post now is based more on contributions than what I set out to write initially ]
Send e-mail to the instructor if they're out of town. Ask them about logistics questions, find out what their opinion is on every point in this post. Ask about how the course is going to be setup. Ask about your gear config. Ask detailed questions about Primer vs. Rec vs. Tech and how you fit into that, etc. Before the course they're your best resource.
An important thing to discuss with the instructor is going to be total cost. In some situations fills and site fees may be included with the price of the course. Under most circumstances, though, students should expect that GUE registration, gas fills, rentals, site/quarry/spring and boat fees, instructors expenses (fills, site fees, travel, lodging, expenses, etc) are not included with the cost of instruction. Flying in an instructor can be a costly proposition, best done by splitting the costs over multiple classes or multiple students. The difference between flying to the instructor and flying the instructor in may not be substantially different. When it comes to the cost of flights, as well, its generally better to get enough money to the instructor up front so that they can buy their tickets and get a cheaper price -- wiring the instructor money at the last minute to get expensive plane tickets is a mistake that can be easily avoided.
#2: Not taking Primer first
Without mentoring you should probably take Primer as an entry level introduction to GUE diving and the standards and spend time time with an instructor. This class is currently the best kept secret in GUE, but utilizing it would likely prevent a lot of frustration with fundamentals. If you are already diving with a lot of DIR/GUE trained divers you can probably skip the Primer, but otherwise Primer is likely a better idea.
#3: Going into Fundies expecting a Tech pass.
There is simply no way to go from being introduced to many of the skills and the standards and being able to pass the course without considerable mentoring beforehand from a senior diver who understands the standards (and that mentor should be Tech2, Cave2 or Instructor level, most Fundies students will not have the experience yet to be able to effectively mentor). Most other technical training will also not have sufficiently high standards to allow the student to progress through and gain a Tech pass right out of the gate.
It is far better to take either Primer first, or to shoot for a Rec pass. To go from introducing the concepts to someone the first time to passing at a Tech level will take 25-50 dives at least, and there's no way to structure the course to allow that much time -- which is what Provisional passes and Rec passes are about.
Without DIR/GUE mentoring the student should expect to take the course twice. If the cost seems high, then I would strongly suggest the Primer course first as an introduction, followed up by Fundies later.
#4: Changing gear right before Fundies
Slapping on doubles and taking Fundies a few dives later is the really classic mistake and comes up over and over again in class post-mortems. If you are shooting for a Tech pass you should have compliant gear that you've been diving in for 25-50 dives without changing anything. If you don't normally dive doubles, take the class in single tanks and shoot for a Rec pass -- you will probably get *more* out of the course by doing that than slapping on doubles and struggling with unfamiliar gear.
If you've only recently changed your gear around to get it compliant (bought a backplate, ditched ankle weights, started using a long hose, etc) then you should probably not be immediately going into a fundies course. Its generally going to be more productive to get your gear sorted out first and start diving it, and then once you're comfortable to sign up for a course and spend a few months diving that way.
#5: Buying the wrong gear
Make sure that if you're getting new gear that its the right gear. Talk to your instructor about your choices. Don't make any hasty, expensive purchases right before the course without really confirming that you're doing the right thing.
#6: Taking a 6-person course
While the standards allow for a 6-person course, this creates logistical issues, and I'd warn students away from signing up for courses this size. A 4-person course in 2 teams of 2 works well, particularly when there's a tech-oriented team and a rec-oriented team, otherwise the sweet spot is the 3-person course made up of students at roughly the same level.
#7: Not thinking your buddies experience levels matter
The other students in the course will affect your success and you should make sure that you're not the odd one out. Having courses with 2 students that are relatively new and rec-oriented with one tech-oriented student, or vice-versa can be hard on the course. Its best if there's someone there diving the same gear with roughly the same experience and goals.
#8: Any site will do for the class [ stolen from Rainer ]
Find calm water. For an introductory class covering the fundamentals of better diving, you probably want to eliminate challenging water conditions. This likely means avoiding taking the class in places with strong surge, ripping currents, crashing surf, or big swell/waves. If you easily get sea sick, probably best not to schedule a class that requires boat dives in unprotected open water. This is particularly an issue if you're traveling for the class or flying an instructor in. If your only access is to water via a boat or shore entry, consider what bad weather would mean in terms of you being able to reschedule if you're blown out.
I think sheltered coves, protected bays, quarries, lakes, or springs probably offer the best chances to maximize in-water time. Pools are not a decent substitute. They simply (in the vast majority of cases) lack the depth required to adequately practice timed ascents/descents, air-sharing ascents, bag shoots, and toxing diver recoveries. Pools are "ok" for learning propulsion techniques and the basics of s-drills and valve drills.
#9: Shorter courses vs. longer courses.
The 5-day course is generally going to be preferable when its available. There's a tradeoff where student and instructor burn-out starts to exceed the utility of more time in the water, but often another day can make the difference where the instructor can see the elements which are necessary to get the Rec pass instead of the provisional, or the Tech pass instead of the Rec pass. The 5-day course may also help if you have to call a day due to sea sickness or other logistical problems.
#10: 5 straight days vs. split courses
With a local instructor one option is to do a split-weekend course with 2 or 3 weekends 'off' in the middle to practice. This can greatly reduce burnout and can let the student get in some solid diving outside of class to brush up on skills. Obviously, this is only an option with a reasonably local instructor. If you are flying in to the course or the instructor is flying in to the course this isn't going to be available to you.
#11: Not thinking about mundane logistics.
You'll need fills for the course. Consider that with long days you won't have a lot of time for filling. If possible get some extra tanks and be able to rotate tanks through the local fill station and dive a set while the other is dropped off for fills.
You'll need food. Make sure to get some bananas for the potassium to eat in the morning. Probably want to some fairly high energy balanced carbs/fat/protein setup and ready to go. If you're taking the 5 day course you probably want food for 5 days ready with minimal prep work (trust me, eating mexican gas station food on the final night of Cave 2 because I ran out of food and every place was closed was not a high point of the course for me -- stock up and make it easy on yourself, so that food stress is zero).
#12: Not getting proper nutrition
The logistics of having food around is one thing. Eating pizza delivery for 4 nights straight may seem like a solution, but most likely one that your GI tract will start to rebel against. Consider also that your instructor will need breakfast, lunch and dinner, and most likely some coffee or redbull (sufficient team redbull supplies is often critical).
HYDRATION is also important. P-valves and bottled water are good. Get familiar with your P-valve well in advance of the course as well, this is another thing to not be attempting to figure out in the middle of the course.
#13: Not allowing for a few days before the course
If you are flying in, its best to fly in a day or two early. Get your logistics figured out, figure out what you're going to be eating, what the equipment/rental/gas situation is, meet your buddies and ideally get a pre-class dive or two in.
#14: Going into class without good stress management tools. [stolen from Ben_ca]
Prepare both your mind and body for long days. The class will be taxing both mentally and physically. Work on fitness. Swimming, running and being fit in general will help you deal with the stress of the class. Mentally prepare for the ups and downs. Don't dwell on the failures of the last dive... talk about what happened and regroup as a team. Holding grudges and blaming each other will only tear the team apart.
Encouragement and support go a long way to making the class a success.
#15: Not having any support network or time for yourself
Pulling in support from more advanced divers that have been through courses like this and the cave/tech curriculum can help. They'll have already made mistakes they can help you avoid.
Getting people out for some beach support to supply coffee and fetch the odd forgotten weight belt or whatever can really help the course move more smoothly.
Having people to talk to and commiserate with who are outside of the bubble of the course can also be useful. Frustrations can run a bit high at times and blowing off steam pressure with an external person can be good.
At the same time, getting some alone time, particularly for people who recharge while alone can be very critical. If you are bunking with someone after flying out, consider that you may need a quiet space somewhere, or some exercise time away from everyone in order to keep your mood stabilized.
#16: Treating it like any other diving course.
This is not like your PADI Rescue course. It is both more physically and emotionally demanding. It is much longer. There's more land drills and lot more course work and instruction. Video reviews are invaluable teaching aids but take up more time and require more commitment from students and teachers.
If you add to that the logistical issues in either you flying somewhere or the instructor flying to you, then it really becomes a much different experience. Even with a solid shop and local instructor providing support, you should spend more time on pre-class fitness, logistics of your own food, saying goodbye to your family and job for 5 days, and making sure your equipment is dialed in.
NOTE: obviously with a local instructor and local shop some of this should get vastly simplified. Fills should not be a problem, logistics should run smoothly, just make sure your fridge is full and you make a quick bag lunch every day or know where you're going to be eating. I have to assume the worst case that you're flying out to the instructor or that the instructor is flying to you, and that some of the logistical problems will therefore fall on your shoulders. You should still take the responsibility to confirm with the instructor+shop to figure out how the days will run, how fills will happen, what the dive sites will be, etc.
[ BTW, thanks to everyone posting in this thread -- I've entirely plagiarized a few answers directly from participants and given credit, but there's also a lot of posts that I've lifted snippets from and edited for concision or emphasis and added to this, and most of this post now is based more on contributions than what I set out to write initially ]
Last edited:
broke a couple of those. Paid the price.
