What if DIR Evolved Elsewhere... (take two)

[Mike Edmonston]

i've been informed of that in GUE courses. happy now?

Yes, thank your fine instructor.

i think the brittannic video has JJ going head down to enter a compartment as well... breaking trim at 400+...

Very nice, I have not seen the vid, but would love to. Maybe the trim idea just needs to filter down through the ranks. Then again, it could just be an internet thing.

 

[Thalassamania]

Trim (as in DIR horizontal trim) is so much BS anyway. It's rationalized as making for better deco, a concept that there is no data to support. Submersibles dive in DIR-like trim and go up and down due to the mechanics of their ballast tanks and clump weights, organisms in the water point their head in their direction of travel and then go, adjusting their buoyancy to hold station not to arrive on station.

I don't judge a diver based on his or her ability remain flat, that's just an artifact of moving weights around on the body, hell ... I can set up just about any diver so that they're not only flat, but so that they can't be anything else.

I judge a diver on his or her ability to take and motionlessly hold just about any attitude in the water, head down, right side down, 45 to the vertical, etc., even plain old DIR-flat, but only as part of their box of tricks.

 

[limeyx]

Trim (as in DIR horizontal trim) is so much BS anyway. It's rationalized as making for better deco, a concept that there is no data to support. Submersibles dive in DIR-like trim and go up and down due to the mechanics of their ballast tanks and clump weights, organisms in the water point their head in their direction of travel and then go, adjusting their buoyancy to hold station not to arrive on station.

I don't judge a diver based on his or her ability remain flat, that's just an artifact of moving weights around on the body, hell ... I can set up just about any diver so that they're not only flat, but so that they can't be anything else.

I judge a diver on his or her ability to take and motionlessly hold just about any attitude in the water, head down, right side down, 45 to the vertical, etc., even plain old DIR-flat, but only as part of their box of tricks.

I never put much stock in the flat trim==good deco honestly, even though I have heard it bandied around.

I think we have to remember that most reports we get here, and most people (sort of by definition) are likely from DIR-F classes where you have to start somewhere and for open water, flat trim is a pretty good place to start in general, and so this I think is why you see a lot of DIR-F divers focused on it.

Definitely it is better to be able to hold any position in the water.

I think that one thing I have really benefited from is having good mentors, because if you do just take GUE training in isolation, you get a narrow view of certain things (somewhat out of time-based necessity).

Also, with all the bashing backwards and forwards, Lynne is probably somewhat justifiably concerned that she will catch some stick for being "out of trim", and the classes she has been in probably have harped on about trim especially as trim (and by extension) positioning in the water is often harder to "get" in doubles than singles.
Heck, my trim in doubles is far from great, and it's been harped on about in Tech1, Cave1 and NAUI trimix1. I just seem to have a head-heavy "body type" and being short, not much "lever" with my legs so it's harder to maintain a position. More diving seems to be helping but it's an uphill struggle.

IMO there is nothing wrong with being head up/down or whatever is actually needed for the environment, but for general swimming along a flat bottom in cave, OW or wreck, flat trim definitely seems more streamlined and give you a good non-silting position.

I have exited Mayan Blue in MX, and it was almost a perfect PADI-style vertical ascent as that is the only way I saw it as being possible to make the entrance (and I still touched stuff).

Maybe a Cave III instructor could do it horizontal and I would love to see that

 

[lamont]

Trim (as in DIR horizontal trim) is so much BS anyway. It's rationalized as making for better deco, a concept that there is no data to support.

no, its primarily because it makes it easier to break trim up or down and kick. in particular if you've got a runaway inflator and you are head-up you begin the runaway ascent unflared, your initial nervous kicking will make the problem worse, and you need to do a 180 in order to kick down.

i took a very recent tech1 couse with the training director and horizontal trim for more efficient deco wasn't mentioned.

Submersibles dive in DIR-like trim and go up and down due to the mechanics of their ballast tanks and clump weights, organisms in the water point their head in their direction of travel and then go, adjusting their buoyancy to hold station not to arrive on station.

DIR divers also break trim head-down to dump out the rear dump, break trim head-up to dump out the drysuit, break trim head down to swim down and break trim head up to swim up.

I judge a diver on his or her ability to take and motionlessly hold just about any attitude in the water, head down, right side down, 45 to the vertical, etc., even plain old DIR-flat.

sure. the DIR position is that "DIR-flat" is a better default trim position. they want to see divers returning to that position if they need to get out of trim for some other reason, and they want to see them staying in default trim when they're stressed. if a diver is doing a tie-off where the bottom contour requires a 45 degree head down trim, though, they should be able to do that tie-off while keeping their body "quiet" in a 45 degree head down position.

 

[Thalassamania]

I think we have to remember that most reports we get here, and most people (sort of by definition) are likely from DIR-F classes where you have to start somewhere and for open water, flat trim is a pretty good place to start in general, and so this I think is why you see a lot of DIR-F divers focused on it.

You are likely right.

no, its primarily because it makes it easier to break trim up or down and kick. in particular if you've got a runaway inflator and you are head-up you begin the runaway ascent unflared, your initial nervous kicking will make the problem worse, and you need to do a 180 in order to kick down.

It's nice to find some consensus.

I do wonder about this whole "runaway" inflater thing. 10K+ dives and I've never had it happen, never seen it happen and never even heard of it happening ... except at the intersection of the internet and DIR divers, which I guess I can understand that given the Q/C problems that Halcyon had and how that would have a much greater effect on the DIR community.

Is this real or an artifact of something else?

 

[b1gcountry]

Alright, this thread has even gotten quite opinionated already. As the OP of the first thread, my intention was to try to bring up the idea of whether the system that is used by agencies like GUE, and the WKPP is truly a viable solution for all kinds of diving.

There would definitely have been differences if the founders of this approach originated somewhere where the water was really cold, and the gear would certainly look different, but most of the gear differences would be relatively minor in the grand scheme of what we consider "DIR" today. (I think at least) I was trying to ask whether there would be any fundamentally opposite decisions on certain things if it happened elsewhere. Many people like to characterize DIR diving as a "be-all, end-all." I'm still trying to decide.

TS&M had a good answer when she mentioned the Health-Centric approach to diving might have been influenced quite a bit by the mindset in the locality where it was developed. I've always questioned whether DIR would have such a mindset on the team mentality if it was developed in a spearfishing type of circle. The "Team" concept might be very different if everyone on the team was a competitor of some sort...or it might not have proven a viable safe scenario, even when it was desirable to do so...

This kind of gets back to the question of whether a certain system can be applied to diving universally. As I said in the first post, I was bored, and things were slow...

Tom

 

[limeyx]

Yes, thank your fine instructor.



Very nice, I have not seen the vid, but would love to. Maybe the trim idea just needs to filter down through the ranks. Then again, it could just be an internet thing.

I think it is partly an internet/fear of being criticized issue.
Also, by the time you get to cave, tech 1/2, GUE sort of assumes you somehow osmosed quite a bit of technique from DIR-F, which is not always easy, and can be seen as a potential flaw in the training in some ways.

Danny did not specifically mention adapting trim to the passages in our cave class, but had we not done so, I am pretty sure he would have said something.

 

[Mike Edmonston]

sure. the DIR position is that "DIR-flat" is a better default trim position. they want to see divers returning to that position if they need to get out of trim for some other reason, and they want to see them staying in default trim when they're stressed. if a diver is doing a tie-off where the bottom contour requires a 45 degree head down trim, though, they should be able to do that tie-off while keeping their body "quiet" in a 45 degree head down position.

Very well said. And 100% accurate. There needs to be more education into that line of thinking in the DIR community.

 

[lamont]

I do wonder about this whole "runaway" inflater thing. 10K+ dives and I've never had it happen, never seen it happen and never even heard of it happening ... except at the intersection of the internet and DIR divers, which I guess I can understand that given the Q/C problems that Halcyon had and how that would have a much greater effect on the DIR community.

Is this real or an artifact of something else?

2 divers that I dive with have had it happen to them. One of them is Pete Gelbman and his writeup on the hit he took is widely avilable online, including GI3s comments in gavinscooters. Another diver had a runaway on a big dive and got it under control. I know in the latter case it had nothing to do with a halcyon inflator, and I don't know about Pete's case, but IIRC that had more to do with detuned apeks regulators not acting as an OPV before the LP inflator went...

 

[JeffG]

I do wonder about this whole "runaway" inflater thing. 10K+ dives and I've never had it happen, never seen it happen and never even heard of it happening ... except at the intersection of the internet and DIR divers,

Twice for me. Both times ice diving.