Modularized Training vs all-at-once

[MichaelMc]

BSAC was modularizing their content, at least spitting off various levels of side-skills (say Boat1/2/3, Nitrox1/2) from being locked to an overall level of progression. That looks interesting. But does not break up/reduce the OW level. There was a nice spreadsheet of what (Skill Development Courses) went where, but I can't find it again. Just the general progression and 'specialties' chart. Document

The cave community seems to be saying it may be un-wise to have 'just a little cave' as sticking to that seems hard. And its not like they say: you did the reel but not the silt out, so you're good to start. Nor generally run blue light specials on quickie classes.

GUE teaches supervised diver, as do others as try dive that can be repeated with a DM. Though the GUE seems more extensive:
"normally conducted over three days. It requires a minimum of eight confined water sessions, two open water dives, and at least twenty-four hours of instruction, encompassing classroom lectures, land drills, and in-water work." Which covers 300yd swim test, 50' underwater swim test, OOA donate and ascent, +- 30 degree 5' trim, nitrox, and comprehension of the components necessary for backward kick.
Huhh.

One class teaching a fuller version of most stuff might be GUE RecDiver1, and certainly Military/Commercial scuba dive school. So it does exist. The GUE Rec1:
"usually conducted over five to six days and includes at least ten aquatic sessions (confined water sessions) and six open water dives and at least 40 hours of instruction, encompassing classroom, land drills, and in-water work."
Explore GUE Courses

I'm not a GUE diver, and know Rec1 is not taught often.

 

[Bob DBF]

Passing on the anecdotes about ye good olde times, it's a fact that from a purely pedagogical pov many students learn more easily by being given bite-sized chunks of the curriculum rather than having to swallow a whole cow in one helping.

My issue with the concept is having the first bite sized peice, and having it considered the whole cow. The four day resort class gets the same OW card as the three month university class. The resort class would be like taking a Cavern class and given a Full Cave cert, because they can take the "bite sized" training later.

Have and enforce restrictions on the cert, say OW 60' Resort. Or better completely rename the progression of certification and enforce the restrictions at each level.

But it's all BS anyway since agencies have no intention of policing their instructors, now or in the future, so whatever standards there are can be ignored as they are now.


Bob

 

[loosenit2]

At the end, the 10% of us who were certified had got a level of training very close to a Navy Seal

I realize this post is a bit tangential to the topic but why do folks always compare civilian training to extreme military training? Navy BUDS is not a scuba diving course, it is designed to produce a highly skilled group who have standardized tactical procedures, operate as a cohesive team, and don’t quit. The training fundamentally is in the military profession, the use of violence to accomplish political aims. For military applications, diving is a means to an end; whereas for most recreational divers it is the ends. I would put money that most cave divers are more skilled scuba divers than seals or military divers in general, that does not mean they can dive under the same conditions as a military diver, they are different skill sets.

 

[MichaelMc]

I realize this post is a bit tangential to the topic but why do folks always compare civilian training to extreme military training? Navy BUDS is not a scuba diving course, it is designed to produce a highly skilled group who have standardized tactical procedures, operate as a cohesive team, and don’t quit. The training fundamentally is in the military profession, the use of violence to accomplish political aims. For military applications, diving is a means to an end; whereas for most recreational divers it is the ends. I would put money that most cave divers are more skilled scuba divers than seals or military divers in general, that does not mean they can dive under the same conditions as a military diver, they are different skill sets.

BUDS is the OW class of being a SEAL, with dive phase being 7 weeks. After a conditioning and surface swims phase, then land warfare phase. Then comes advanced training, experience, more advanced training, .... None of which really involves silt prone environments deep in a cave. So yes, SEALs are not expert cave divers, nor even novice ones. It is not on the mission list. Stay undetected underwater, despite any issues, is on mission list.

What may be relevant from BUDS is creating panic resistant individuals, who dive; one aspect of a good cave diver. Or at least they weed out those who are not. Pool dive #6 is a make or break pool comp test, on double hose twin 72s, where the instructors try to panic them underwater. Mask and fins disappear. The double hose gets wrapped in progressively worse gordian knots. Ultimately driving them to the surface, after a controlled shutdown of the now 'useless' rig. And specific ascent procedures. Conducted one at a time with a diving medical officer and support team at pool side and very exact instructors, so no actual drowning nor embolising occurs, mostly.

In any diving, panic kills. BUDS produces panic resilient divers in short order. A decent proportion entering have zero scuba experience. Though attrition rate is high. I think it is the panic resilient, will continue to work any problem under water diver, that people are focusing on. Not necessarily good trim or propulsion technique. Though ultimately breaching from loss of buoyancy control, on a rebreather, or letting bubbles escape, equals getting shot at by the enemy's harbor defense forces, or having hand grenades lobed in at you. So....

Dive Pool Day 1: Pool 1 is AquaLung Familiarization (aka, for those with no experience, how to scuba dive)
Dive Pool Day 2: Pool 2 and 3 are Ditch and Don, Day and Night
Dive Pool Day 3: Pool 4 and 5 are Gear Exchange and Pool Proficiency
Dive Pool Day 4: Pool 6 is Pool Comp test.
Then OC compass dives, then one pool dive for rebreather, then rebreather dives.
They do a buddy breathing double hose pool swim. I believe on both OC and rebreather.
There is no BC worn; pointless with that whole no bubbles thing...
This does come after a long underwater swim, bobbing about with hands and feet tied, swimming a lap that way, recovering a mask from the bottom in their teeth that way. So a fairly though skin diver training phase before the dive phase. Though not at all focused on deep decent.

If the bet you propose is that cave divers in general are more panic resilient underwater, and are better at continuing to work the problem despite conditions. That might be a tough bet to win.

 

[loosenit2]

BUDS is the OW class of being a SEAL, with dive phase being 7 weeks. After a conditioning and surface swims phase, then land warfare phase. Then comes advanced training, experience, more advanced training, .... None of which really involves silt prone environments deep in a cave. So yes, SEALs are not expert cave divers, nor even novice ones. It is not on the mission list. Stay undetected underwater, despite any issues, is on mission list.

What may be relevant from BUDS is creating panic resistant individuals, who dive; one aspect of a good cave diver. Or at least they weed out those who are not. Pool dive #6 is a make or break pool comp test, on double hose twin 72s, where the instructors try to panic them underwater. Mask and fins disappear. The double hose gets wrapped in progressively worse gordian knots. Ultimately driving them to the surface, after a controlled shutdown of the now 'useless' rig. And specific ascent procedures. Conducted one at a time with a diving medical officer and support team at pool side and very exact instructors, so no actual drowning nor embolising occurs, mostly.

In any diving, panic kills. BUDS produces panic resilient divers in short order. A decent proportion entering have zero scuba experience. Though attrition rate is high. I think it is the panic resilient, will continue to work any problem under water diver, that people are focusing on. Not necessarily good trim or propulsion technique. Though ultimately breaching from loss of buoyancy control, on a rebreather, or letting bubbles escape, equals getting shot at by the enemy's harbor defense forces, or having hand grenades lobed in at you. So....

Day 1: Pool 1 is AquaLung Familiarization (aka, for those with no experience, how to scuba dive)
Day 2: Pool 2 and 3 are Ditch and Don, Day and Night
Day 3: Pool 4 and 5 are Gear Exchange and Pool Proficiency
Day 4: Pool 6 is Pool Comp test.
Then OC compass dives, then one pool dive for rebreather, then rebreather dives.
They do a buddy breathing double hose pool swim. I believe on both OC and rebreather.
There is no BC worn; pointless with that whole no bubbles thing...

You are correct in saying that there is a 7 week dive program in BUDS, but that 7 weeks is part of an overall 24+ week program. Much of the methodology of the diving portion is not geared towards producing excellent divers, but as you say panic resistant individuals, whom I would add also have a certain never quit mentality. They do do open and closed circuit training.

My point though was that civilian training should not be compared to military training to convey a sense of competency. Civilian dive training is more effective at producing good divers than military training, because it is more focused on diving and not other objectives. I would also point out there are multiple ways to produce panic resistant divers, the hazing methodology used in the military is one way, iterative exposure to ever increasing demands combined with experience is another, and as Tursiops pointed out in the long run the modular approach does work better.

To tie this back to The original topic military training tends to be the equivalent of zero to hero programs that are much maligned, rather than the iterative/modular training programs being discussed that produce better divers overall.

 

[Jackie Treehorn]

I first off question where this topic is. This is not a basic scuba discussion. Even if it is about OW.

As I have seen it, the OW course (or at least the one I had in Mexico) was enough. It was fast and after it was over I had little to no confidence. In other words, I learned one of the major topics taught in the course: Dive to your own limits.

I had no friends that dived. But I wanted to continue. So my next trip was to Key Largo and it was to complete an AOW course with Buoyancy concentration. Basically I knew that since I had no one I trusted to mentor me along, I'd pay for it via additional training.

Lots of dives, and lots of training (up thru TDI Trimix) later, i've taken friends/family right out of OW and gave them that mentoring that was not available to me when I started.

My point in this is that I think the program is good as-is. The OW training gives them enough information to know that if they go beyond their limits, there is a real possibility they could hurt themselves. These people are all adults and should be able to make their own decisions based off their ability, dive conditions, and their network of friends.

 

[MichaelMc]

First, I would not recommend any attempts to replicate the early phases of BUDS dive training, without their institutional history and medical support as backup.

On hazing. The military, special warfare, has psychologists and physiologists on staff. They gave up inept hazing methods a while ago. Directions and correction are precise, and about prior directions. Students are counseled on how to do better. Queried as too issues. Particularly in dive phase or land phase where weapons and explosives are involved. Yes there is yelling and firing of blanks and of smoke. It is not indiscriminate. There is also further training and workup before they deploy. Many more modular skills that are not covered in BUDS. So BUDS does not get them to hero phase.

And only a few start BUDS without existing scuba training. So its schedule should not be taken to say you can get non heavily pre-screened and arduously skin diver trained people from no scuba to pool comp in 6 pool sessions.

If most dives are low vis or night navigation dives with no lights, that produces fairly decent divers by any definition; non cave, non AN/DP, non-trimix. They really do want them at some distant spot underwater with the package they are carrying. Though I would not claim trim would be good, which is a strong lack for modern rec diver.

Nor would I say SEALs are trained to just a small set of tactical responses. But yes, BUDS just uses a short list of basics.

 

[Angelo Farina]

I realize this post is a bit tangential to the topic but why do folks always compare civilian training to extreme military training?

You are right. My comparison was not correct.
In fact the training method of the OW course I followed in 1975 was somewhat different from the training method used by Italian COMSUBIN incursors (our equivalent to Seals), despite we were using exactly the same CC rebreather (ARO).
Instead, the FIPS training method used had been created in the fifties by Ferraro and Marcante. Ferraro was the most famous Italian incursor during WW2, he did sunk 5 or 6 English vessels, using the ARO and hand-placed bombs. Also his wife was trained as a frogwoman, although she does not result to being employed in actual military actions against enemy vessels.
The training method developed by Ferraro and Marcante was aimed to recreational divers, but was strictly derived from the military approach, removing the part about using weapons, and replacing it with more training about underwater salvage operations. It was also the method employed for training the underwater staff of the Firefighter Corp.
9 years after following that OW course, in 1984 I was hired as firefighter for one year, and during the three months training period I encountered again exactly the same method, which was not used anymore for training recreational divers, but was still in use for firefighter divers...
So I used the wrong comparison: we were not trained as Seals, we were trained as firefighters.
And also the Swiss Cantonal Police of Zurich was using the Ferraro-Marcante training method for their rescue divers...
More info on the Ferraro training method here: Scuba Diving Education | Luigi Ferraro

 

[formernuke]

I understand the reasons for modulized training. Not over whelming and of course getting money by teaching other classes... but I'm against it.

My open water taught me how to kill myself, suck down a tank and destroy reefs. At the time I thought it was fine because I didn't know what I didn't know. The same for my advanced, I guess I knew enough to know that I needed more so i went for master.

I met my master instructor because i got a new toy (drysuit) and wanted to play, went to a shop by a popular site and asked the owner if he knew any one who was willing to jump in the water in December in new England, he said call this guy he is always up for diving. That intsa buddy became a regular buddy.

During this time I took a class from a local GUE institute, the class did not count for any certs and promised to only make you a better diver, it was also very expensive. After completing it the instructor said hey your diving has improved drastically over a short period of time, I know I've been coaching you, by the way I'm a instructor and I know your thinking of expanding your dive education. Your ready for my master program if your interested.

Fast forward to now, I was reviewing my deep dive book and it only teaches half of how to find your sac, wtf, so if I switch tank sizes I have to retest and recalculate my air time at depth... got me thinking why the hell was this not taught in OW, why was I not taught frog kick in OW etc...

 

[Aviyes]

Everything I'm reading is that it is more about the mentorship during/following OW, instead of the type of course.

Having gone through 3 different career field technical schools while in the military. None of those truly prepare you for your actual job. They give everyone a baseline training that they can apply as they continue to learn from mentors and gain practical experience. Training can only take you so far.

I felt my OW instructors were great at preparing me for diving. I didn't need a long course. 1 evening of classwork, 1 day of pool work and 1.5 days of open water was all that was needed. I jumped straight into AOW to gain a few more dives under the purview of an instructor, but even that was more checking the boxes. I gained a lot more experience just heading on a trip to Bonaire and doing a mix of boat and shore diving with more experienced divers.