When to start considering CCR training

[hroark2112]

doctormike, I think you should definitely go back to OC.

Please forward your unit to me in Raleigh for proper disposition.

 

[doctormike]

doctormike, I think you should definitely go back to OC.

Please forward your unit to me in Raleigh for proper disposition.

Hah! That is SO generous of you... not many people would go out of their way like that for a fellow diver.

 

[stuartv]

The first time I saw a pair of divers sporting CCRs was when I was diving in a spring cavern near Ocala Fl. Since then it has been a dream of mine to one day get to dive bubble-free further into the freshwater caverns. I am an engineer and a very techy person.The whole idea of breathing a closed system intrigues me. Not to mention having the ability to get the perfect gas blend for any depth to extend bottom time.

I have pondered the same question. I know I am on a path that will eventually lead me to going CCR.

What I have determined is that every CCR dive is built on a foundation of OC diving in case I have to bail out. So, it makes sense to me that I would want to be COMPLETELY competent to do any dive on OC before I would do the same dive on CCR.

From there, my next step in logic is that I should then identify what my future goals are likely to be and proceed to get completely competent on OC in those areas before I pursue CCR.

My long term goals are diving to explore deep wrecks. The goal that started me on tech training is to dive the Monitor some day, which is in 230 - 240 feet of sea water. So, I want to become a solid, competent hypoxic trimix diver on OC first, before I start over on CCR. And I have to add that when I first started diving, I had no interest in tech diving whatsoever. I fully expected to just dive reefs and look at pretty fishes and thought I would be totally satisfied with that.

With your expressed interest in caverns, the number of dives showing in your profile, and your self-professed techiness, I could easily imagine your interest in caverns blossoming into full-on cave diving. And for that, it seems like you'd eventually need deco training and probably trimix as well. My 5th and 6th dives after completing OW certification were in Mexican cenotes and that sparked my interest in that, too. Cave training is on my To Do list - after Adv Trimix. So, 2 to 3 years away before I would start on Cave training.

Regardless of if the horizons of your interest expand or not, if you only have somewhere less than 50 dives, then let me say I know how you feel when you say you feel like you're ready for more. I got certified a bit over 2 years ago and now have about 120 dives. I felt exactly the same way as you. I did the SDI Wreck diving full specialty when I had 30-ish dives. That included learning how to run a reel to lay a guideline when exploring the exterior of a wreck in low visibility and that really showed me that I wasn't actually as good on buoyancy control as I thought I was. I started tech training at right around 50 dives. That gave me another dose of humility on the subject.

So, really, my point is, before you jump into CCR, I would encourage you to take some more advanced OC training that MIGHT (just maybe) help reveal to you, however good you are right now with your buoyancy control and trim, how much room there is for improvement. After you see that, then you can make a better informed decision for yourself about whether you are ready for CCR training.

Personally, having learned a lot more about how much better I could and want to be, I am seriously investigating taking the GUE Fundamentals course, just to help improve my basic diving skills like buoyancy control and trim. The more training I have done, the more I think my skills have improved from where they were, and, at the same time, the lower and lower my opinion has gotten of where my skills actually are. Despite feeling like my skills are better now than they ever have been, I rate my skills the lowest on an overall scale of 1 to 10 than I ever have. After my first 20 dives, I might have given myself a 7 or 8 on the scale for buoyancy control. Now, I am a LOT better than I was and I would give myself about a 5. Maybe a 6, if I'm feeling froggy.

Good luck with whatever you decide!! :-D

 

[Rilelen]

Despite feeling like my skills are better now than they ever have been, I rate my skills the lowest on an overall scale of 1 to 10 than I ever have. After my first 20 dives, I might have given myself a 7 or 8 on the scale for buoyancy control. Now, I am a LOT better than I was and I would give myself about a 5. Maybe a 6, if I'm feeling froggy.

I think this is a really important point. You can't know what you don't know until you know it. In psychology, that's called the "Dunning Kruger" effect, and I think it's incredibly salient in these discussions, when we're trying to decide if we're ready to seek out more advanced training. Essentially, doing an activity, and judging how well you are doing at that activity, require the same set of skills. You can't accurately judge how good you are on buoyancy control, until you get really good at buoyancy control. That paradox leads a lot of people to think they are competent at something, before they're even competent enough to judge their own competence.

 

[stuartv]

I think this is a really important point. You can't know what you don't know until you know it. In psychology, that's called the "Dunning Kruger" effect, and I think it's incredibly salient in these discussions, when we're trying to decide if we're ready to seek out more advanced training. Essentially, doing an activity, and judging how well you are doing at that activity, require the same set of skills. You can't accurately judge how good you are on buoyancy control, until you get really good at buoyancy control. That paradox leads a lot of people to think they are competent at something, before they're even competent enough to judge their own competence.

I'm not sure I agree with that. There are plenty of YouTube videos showing people demonstrating really good buoyancy control. Even at a very early stage for me, if I had watched one of those videos then gone and tried to do the same things, I would have known I wasn't nearly as good. And if I had a buddy video me and watched that afterwards, I think I would have been WELL able to judge that I was really bad.

When I did the Wreck course and was trying to swim through a tunnel made of PVC, while laying line along the way, I was terrible at it and I could TELL that I was terrible at it.

I don't think the problem is so much judging yourself. For me, anyway, the problem is in knowing what things to do in order to assess myself. E.g. try to swim through a PVC tunnel and lay a line. I definitely did not have to have remotely good skills to still be able to judge that my skills were really bad.

 

[CptTightPants21]

I'm not sure I agree with that. There are plenty of YouTube videos showing people demonstrating really good buoyancy control. Even at a very early stage for me, if I had watched one of those videos then gone and tried to do the same things, I would have known I wasn't nearly as good. And if I had a buddy video me and watched that afterwards, I think I would have been WELL able to judge that I was really bad.

I don't think the problem is so much judging yourself. For me, anyway, the problem is in knowing what things to do in order to assess myself. E.g. try to swim through a PVC tunnel and lay a line. I definitely did not have to have remotely good skills to still be able to judge that my skills were really bad.

but then we have (but actually posted before, which is just strange)........

The more training I have done, the more I think my skills have improved from where they were, and, at the same time, the lower and lower my opinion has gotten of where my skills actually are. Despite feeling like my skills are better now than they ever have been, I rate my skills the lowest on an overall scale of 1 to 10 than I ever have. After my first 20 dives, I might have given myself a 7 or 8 on the scale for buoyancy control. Now, I am a LOT better than I was and I would give myself about a 5. Maybe a 6, if I'm feeling froggy.

To OP,

The 2nd Stuart quote is true and something that I and other on this board warn new divers about. Failing to find a better description, there is a real "lack of perception" that all new and many, who could be called "experienced", divers have.

There is no insta-fix, but the most important ingredient is continuous and varied instruction from MULTIPLE and well regarded instructors. GUE is an easy one to recommend, but there are plenty of others who fit the bill, but don't carry the GUE label. In all honesty, sometimes there are instructors who are "well regarded", but really the label isn't completely deserved. By shifting up instructors, you are escaping the bubble of the previous class and having an independent third party judge your skill and the quality of the previous instruction; just as the next instructor/class will judge the previous two.

The next two ingredients are time and experience. This example will probably be useless in 10 years, but think about how slow of a typist you were when you were first learning in school and see how fast your are now; what changed? Nothing. Just time and DOING.

When is a person ready for CCR, it is difficult to say. I would say they should have an absolute minimum of 300 dives, doing at least 50 dives a year. 3+ Tech quality instructors--either different courses or even retaking a course just to gain exposure; a good instructor can always add and build on what was done previously. If you don't take away at least one thing from a new instructor, something is off--either with you or the instructor.

If/when I start CCR, I'll have more than double all the minimum requirements listed above and same could be said of the two dozen or so CCR divers I know.

Just like scuba itself, everyone gets into CCR for their own reasons, some people want to go super deep, others like DoctorMike have one, but never plan to do anything deeper than 200. Where you go with the CCR isn't as important as what you did before you got there. It's a cliche, but if you need to ask if you are ready for CCR, there is a good chance you're not. Have fun though, because there is a whole world out there for you to blow bubbles at....

 

[northernone]

I'd recommend a trial dive.

Everyone has opinions on readiness and prerequisites. I have a friend with several thousand dives I would be scared to see in a ccr training session and a former freediving companion who I'm confident would learn to dive on CCR without an open water cert first.

Regards,
Cameron

 

[KevinNM]

You can't accurately judge how good you are on buoyancy control, until you get really good at buoyancy control. That paradox leads a lot of people to think they are competent at something, before they're even competent enough to judge their own competence.

Diving with a GUE or other extremely skilled tech instructor will show you whether you have buoyancy control or not. They will be stationary and nearly motionless and hold depth as if they were hanging on wires. And you probably won't.

So yes, you can judge your competence when you don't know enough, but there are highly skilled people out there who can tell you. You just have to listen to them when they suggest you are not ready. Like this guy:

I flew my wingsuit into trees… and woke up in a hospital! – Topgunbase

If you read it you'll see that multiple more skilled people suggested and hinted he wasn't ready to do these jumps and that there were things he needed to work on, but he didn't want to hear that. Well, now he's listening. Don't be that guy.

Instructors who won't take your money if you are not fully ready to go on are probably going to cost more than the one you will sell you all the training and gear you want, but they might greatly reduce your chance of dying. And unlike casual dive buddies they will tell you directly that you are not ready and what you have to do, not just hint at it.

 

[Rilelen]

Not to get too totally off-track, but I do totally agree with Kevin, Stuart, etc. - it's part of the reason why good instructors and good *objective* feedback (like watching yourself on video) are so incredibly valuable. It tells us something we might not (yet) be equipped to see for ourselves. Stuart's example of trying to lay line and swim through a PVC tunnel is a great one, because part of the point of good drills (in any domain, not just diving) is safely putting students into scenarios where their limits do become apparent. Part of a skillset is having that baseline of more complex scenarios (or really excellent exemplars) with which to compare yourself. A typical brand new vacation diver is unlikely to have those points of comparison.

I do want to point out that when I say that inexperienced people aren't good at judging their own competence, I don't mean that people think they're a 10 on buoyancy control (or whatever skill; this is equally applicable to other domains) when actually they are a 1. It's more that inexperienced people are likely to think they are a 4 when really they are a 2, and that their estimates (on average) tend to be biased upwards. With more experience and greater skills (which includes exposure to a broader range of scenarios and exemplars), people are better at precisely estimating their current skill level and tend to lose that upward inflation. A highly skilled diver (or driver, or engineer), for instance, is going to relatively better at recognizing that line between "appropriately challenging" and "too much for my current skill set," than a new or inexperienced one.

 

[PfcAJ]

I don't mean to minimize the risks. I am VERY aware of the additional issues related to CCR diving. But you bring up an interesting question. Let me hear your thoughts on this. I respect your insight and experience, I'm not trollingl

If - in general terms - you are saying that you shouldn't do X activity if the risk is greater than Y, then what is the difference between choosing to do, for fun, a dive that raises your risk to Y because of the addition of CCR issues and a dive that raises your risk to Y because of the intrinsic nature of the dive.

I mean, why would you chastise one diver for doing a recreational dive on CCR, but not chastise another diver for doing a pinnacle dive with all of the training and experience? The fact that a diver simply WANTS to go to 700 FFW in a cave is a choice to do an activity for fun that doesn't need to be done and involves a tremendous amount of elective risk. These aren't military missions. This isn't commercial diving.

I actually really like CCR diving, and I don't plan on diving to hypoxic trimix depths ever. I find it fascinating, I like the gear, I like reading about it and I like talking about it. I like diving my CCR. It has made me excited about diving again in a new way. I'm looking forward to getting better at it and continuing my training. But I hear you and I guess my question is - should I give it up and go back to OC?

Just got back from doing a rebreather dive

My view is to use the tool for the dive, and don't make it more complex than it needs to be.

If the point is to go see something cool, don't make it more risky than need be. If you want to see a 40ft reef, don't add complication that doesn't need to exist. Likewise, if you want to do a big deep cave dive (and have all the prequisite training and experience), keep it as simple as possible.

My gripe is adding complexity needlessly. The goal is to see cool stuff. I'm all about seeing cool stuff. But if you want to see it, do it safely and stack the deck in your favor.

I like my rebreather too. It's awesome. I like to learn about them and the physiology. I totally get where you're coming from. I could use my rb on all my dives. But I don't, because some dives don't require it and it adds unneeded risk. I still get to see cool stuff though, and that's the purpose behind all the gear. It gets us somewhere we couldn't otherwise get.