Most useful specialty courses

[BDSC]

My suggestion would be to get in more dives, practice what you have already learned, and just have fun. You may eventually decide you don’t need to spend money on more courses. Maybe spend the money on dive trips and equipment.

The only course I would recommend would be rescue. A lot of the other stuff you can learn yourself by just diving or diving with an experienced buddy or mentor.

 

[guyharrisonphoto]

I think you answered your own question--if your buoyancy and trim are not up to snuff, take the PADI peak performance buoyancy course (or another agency equivalent) as your next training. I would not recommend GUE fundamentals as that is a real boot camp, is very long (a week), hard to arrange, and is expensive. Not that I say it's not great training, because it is, but it is probably overkill for where you are right now as a vacation diver looking to improve basic skills. The PADI course can be worked into your next vacation, is only a day, plus the training dives, and a moderate cost. Seems like the best for your needs. After that, spend your money diving and not training, there is nothing like experience to put your training into practice and get more comfortable.

You have the basics covered for most types of recreational diving (your advanced course only gets you to 30M??). But, before I do deep, I would do buoyancy. Comfort in the water, and good air consumption are prerequisites for safe deeper diving and should be first in your training.

 

[Storker]

Some get hooked on photography....but usually too early in their diving careers, because it ought to come *after* one has nailed buoyancy, not before or even during the nailing.

Allow me to claim that this is very diver dependent. If the diver is too focussed (pun intended) on their photography, I agree with you. OTOH, if the diver has their priorities right, is aware that their primary, secondary and third priority should be diving and being a decent buddy, and is willing to drop their camera at any moment to spend all their available bandwidth on their diving, they can start shooting pretty early in their diving career.

The shots will be crap for the first hundred or so dives, but shooting won't unduly affect their diving. Which is priority #1, 2 and 3. Cite: My own UW shots.

 

[Jryan1204]

I think you answered your own question--if your buoyancy and trim are not up to snuff, take the PADI peak performance buoyancy course (or another agency equivalent) as your next training. I would not recommend GUE fundamentals as that is a real boot camp, is very long (a week), hard to arrange, and is expensive. Not that I say it's not great training, because it is, but it is probably overkill for where you are right now as a vacation diver looking to improve basic skills. The PADI course can be worked into your next vacation, is only a day, plus the training dives, and a moderate cost. Seems like the best for your needs. After that, spend your money diving and not training, there is nothing like experience to put your training into practice and get more comfortable.

You have the basics covered for most types of recreational diving (your advanced course only gets you to 30M??). But, before I do deep, I would do buoyancy. Comfort in the water, and good air consumption are prerequisites for safe deeper diving and should be first in your training.

Yes, the advanced course just does the first dive of the deep dive specialty which allows you to go from 18m to 30m. The deep dive specialty would then have three more deep dives to certify down to 40m. I looked into GUE. While it would be nice to get that level of training they are not really available where I am located and I don't have the time to really travel to the training locations. The reason I didn't do buoyancy as part of my advance class was that the instructors opinion was that we will be working on buoyancy on every dive, so he merged it into the other dive classes and he would critique our buoyancy and go over the different kicks and proper positioning, breathing techniques etc. When it comes to buoyancy and control I know what I am supposed to be doing. I just have difficulty actually doing it. The problem is I don't live in an area with diving within easy access so I only get to go diving on vacation once or twice a year (depending on where my vacations are to), and being out of the water for so long sets me back a fair amount in my progression as a diver. I'm considering heading down to Belize or Honduras just for a short dive holiday this summer just so I don't get too rusty. It may be worth it to take the buoyancy course just to have an instructor watch my form and and point out where I am going wrong. I already have travel scheduled for Japan in the Fall so I was going to do a few dives there, but diving in Japan is obviously a lot more expensive, so I may not want to take courses in Japan vs just doing fun dives.

 

[Jryan1204]

My suggestion would be to get in more dives, practice what you have already learned, and just have fun. You may eventually decide you don’t need to spend money on more courses. Maybe spend the money on dive trips and equipment.

The only course I would recommend would be rescue. A lot of the other stuff you can learn yourself by just diving or diving with an experienced buddy or mentor.

Would you recommend I do rescue sooner than later or is it better to have done several regular dives before going back and doing rescue? I'd probably try to do the CPR/first aid stuff at home to cut down on the length of the course. I have prior emergency medical training so the medical portion will be pretty quick for me to get through.

 

[EireDiver606]

I think you answered your own question--if your buoyancy and trim are not up to snuff, take the PADI peak performance buoyancy course (or another agency equivalent) as your next training. I would not recommend GUE fundamentals as that is a real boot camp, is very long (a week), hard to arrange, and is expensive. Not that I say it's not great training, because it is, but it is probably overkill for where you are right now as a vacation diver looking to improve basic skills. The PADI course can be worked into your next vacation, is only a day, plus the training dives, and a moderate cost. Seems like the best for your needs. After that, spend your money diving and not training, there is nothing like experience to put your training into practice and get more comfortable.

You have the basics covered for most types of recreational diving (your advanced course only gets you to 30M??). But, before I do deep, I would do buoyancy. Comfort in the water, and good air consumption are prerequisites for safe deeper diving and should be first in your training.

I’m quite shocked at this response to be honest. Surely the best thing is to build a solid base rather than have an instructor tell you to keep flat during the whole dive? Maybe PPB can be a very good class with the right instructor but sadly I’ve heard of a good few stories of PPB being a glorified hold-your-hand instructor dive.

I would highly highly recommend taking GUE Fundamentals and do would many here on SB. Whether the diver is at a level where they can pass or fail doesn’t matter. IMHO, personally, I think that no matter what your skill level is, no matter where you want to take your diving, you should if you can take this course which builds a solid fundamental set of diving skills. It doesn’t matter if you fail it, you’ll be a better diver overall anyway after. Fundies isn’t a week long either, it’s 4 days.

The PADI curriculum is great for vacation divers, but in the long run, IMO, I think it’s the more expensive and less beneficial to you as a diver. But that’s just my personal opinion.

However, I completely agree to your last point. It’s much better to get in a good few dives before your next course. Course hopping isn’t real diving and the courses won’t help if you don’t implement and practice your skills yourself on your own dives.

What does everyone think?

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Yes, the advanced course just does the first dive of the deep dive specialty which allows you to go from 18m to 30m. The deep dive specialty would then have three more deep dives to certify down to 40m. I looked into GUE. While it would be nice to get that level of training they are not really available where I am located and I don't have the time to really travel to the training locations. The reason I didn't do buoyancy as part of my advance class was that the instructors opinion was that we will be working on buoyancy on every dive, so he merged it into the other dive classes and he would critique our buoyancy and go over the different kicks and proper positioning, breathing techniques etc. When it comes to buoyancy and control I know what I am supposed to be doing. I just have difficulty actually doing it. The problem is I don't live in an area with diving within easy access so I only get to go diving on vacation once or twice a year (depending on where my vacations are to), and being out of the water for so long sets me back a fair amount in my progression as a diver. I'm considering heading down to Belize or Honduras just for a short dive holiday this summer just so I don't get too rusty. It may be worth it to take the buoyancy course just to have an instructor watch my form and and point out where I am going wrong. I already have travel scheduled for Japan in the Fall so I was going to do a few dives there, but diving in Japan is obviously a lot more expensive, so I may not want to take courses in Japan vs just doing fun dives.

What part of New York are you located? (I'm assuming not the city). Maybe Trace Malinowski would be close enough: Scuba Coach Trace Home.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I’m quite shocked at this response to be honest. Surely the best thing is to build a solid base rather than have an instructor tell you to keep flat during the whole dive? Maybe PPB can be a very good class with the right instructor but sadly I’ve heard of a good few stories of PPB being a glorified hold-your-hand instructor dive.

I would highly highly recommend taking GUE Fundamentals and do would many here on SB. Whether the diver is at a level where they can pass or fail doesn’t matter. IMHO, personally, I think that no matter what your skill level is, no matter where you want to take your diving, you should if you can take this course which builds a solid fundamental set of diving skills. It doesn’t matter if you fail it, you’ll be a better diver overall anyway after. Fundies isn’t a week long either, it’s 4 days.

The PADI curriculum is great for vacation divers, but in the long run, IMO, I think it’s the more expensive and less beneficial to you as a diver. But that’s just my personal opinion.

However, I completely agree to your last point. It’s much better to get in a good few dives before your next course. Course hopping isn’t real diving and the courses won’t help if you don’t implement and practice your skills yourself on your own dives.

What does everyone think?

It is not possible for me to agree more. The performance requirements of PPB should have been covered in OW.

UTD Essentials or GUE Fundamentals, while more expensive than mainstream agency courses, offer skills improvements far, far, FAR greater than what would achieve with the average mainstream agency instructors. There are exceptions of course, but I'd bet those exceptional instructors have either a cave or DIR background.

 

[Storker]

The PADI curriculum is great for vacation

Too bad I didn't realize that before going all the way to RD on the PADI ladder.

Because I'm definitely not a "vacation diver".

 

[EireDiver606]

When it comes to buoyancy and control I know what I am supposed to be doing. I just have difficulty actually doing it

It could be an equipment balancing issue. Also try to keep your arms out and back in a slightly bent C.

The reason I didn't do buoyancy as part of my advance class was that the instructors opinion was that we will be working on buoyancy on every dive, so he merged it into the other dive classes and he would critique our buoyancy and go over the different kicks and proper positioning, breathing techniques etc.

That sounds like a good instructor who cares about his students