AOW necessary?

[ggunn]

About all the skills gained from AOW can be accumulated with dive experience, however, AOW is also the doorway to a rescue cert, skills you won't gain through dive experience and that cert will make you an exponentially better diver, safer diver and an asset to other divers, not to mention open doors to dives you're restricted from, not in Coz but elsewhere.

I have no interest in getting a Rescue Diver certification, and virtually all the diving I do is around Cozumel. If and when I plan a dive trip to where AOW is necessary I'll get mine then.

 

[mmmbelows]

Yep, after the 5th time you said it, I think everybody got it, but I still don't think anyone has even mentioned wanting to talk you into it

 

[jonhall]

About all the skills gained from AOW can be accumulated with dive experience

Agree

however, AOW is also the doorway to a rescue cert, skills you won't gain through dive experience and that cert will make you an exponentially better diver, safer diver and an asset to other divers, not to mention open doors to dives you're restricted from, not in Coz but elsewhere.

Do you only have to have Underwater Navigation training to take Rescue? Whether only that course or the AOW course is the gateway to rescue cert., can't one still become a better diver by practicing/experience?

I do feel that anyone, with an interest, can become better at certain aspects of diving, such as rescue skills, without taking a course, given they can get information and have access to a pool/ocean to practice.

Having said that, wouldn't you feel more comfortable if you knew every dive you went on had an experienced rescue diver in the group?

 

[cvchief]

AOW certification is, among other things (and some would say primarily), a source of revenue for certifying agencies. It may be a faster track for accumulating some skills but it's not anything that you can't learn from experience.

Or maybe it is just the rest of what the open water class ought to be? I think it is a great class to take VERY soon after OW.

And I do want to take rescue. I think I have a certificate for a free class in Coz. I just have to find it and find the instructor!

 

[1KWIK_69]

What would I learn about buoyancy in an AOW class that I haven't learned in 20+ years of diving?

Can you test out of an AOW cert class?

How ya been Gordon! You wouldn't learn much about buoyancy control with your experience, but most divers don't have that. Lol I've always been of the opinion that Peak Performance Buoyancy should be part of the regular OW cert. My LDS actually throws that specialty in with their regular open water package. To get the card though, you'll have to fill out the knowledge reviews and get wet with an instructor to demonstrate your skills.

 

[boulderjohn]

How ya been Gordon! You wouldn't learn much about buoyancy control with your experience, but most divers don't have that. Lol I've always been of the opinion that Peak Performance Buoyancy should be part of the regular OW cert. My LDS actually throws that specialty in with their regular open water package. To get the card though, you'll have to fill out the knowledge reviews and get wet with an instructor to demonstrate your skills.

My reply will be predictable to those who know me.

When I first started instructing, if you followed the curriculum to the letter and did not provide additional free swimming time, students would finish the confined water portion of the OW class with only a couple buoyancy exercises completed and nearly no time spent swimming while neutrally buoyant. They would have spent nearly the entire class planted firmly on the bottom of the pool. Then they would go to the OW dives, and many would do all the skills again firmly planted on the bottom. They would thus become certified with almost no experience with true neutral buoyancy diving. PPB was a necessity.

That is all changing. PADI now encourages instructors to have all students neutrally buoyant and in horizontal trim from the very first part of instruction. They prefer that students NEVER be on their knees, firmly planted on the bottom. Students who learned with that approach under the old standards (and it was permitted then) had more experience with neutral buoyancy during their OW class than is in the PPB class.

But the curriculum has also changed. A student who learns under the new standards will have much, much more practice with neutral buoyancy during the class.

In summary, a PADI student learning today from an instructor who uses the recommended approach and follows the new standards carefully should be very much in control of buoyancy from the start and should not need the old PPB class.

 

[asherlc]

In both the SDI Scuba Diver course and the NAUI OW course I took, we did the PPB stuff of fin hovers, lung control, etc.

 

[1KWIK_69]

Just like anything else, experience and watching what others with more experience do will teach you more than you'll learn in a short course. Most of our AOW students however, were newer divers with few dives under their belts. AOW is a good and useful class for newer divers. At the very least, it gives you a head start on improving your skills. It gives you additional skills to practice as your dive totals go up. Many of our students went straight from OW to Advanced before their island trip, and I guaranty that spending the little extra time learning to get their weights correct and trimmed properly in the lake made their expensive vacation dives much more enjoyable. How many of us have seen new divers lugging around 20 lbs of lead to stay down when their anxiety is high and they're breathing at the top of their lungs at the start of a dive, and then needing to add a ton of air to their BC to stay off the bottom later in the dive?

 

[Bob DBF]

Lol I've always been of the opinion that Peak Performance Buoyancy should be part of the regular OW cert

It used to be, it was separated out, along with other skills, so divers could get certified faster.

A local instructor requires Peak Performance Buoyancy as the first dive of AOW in his classes.


Bob

 

[1KWIK_69]

Like I said, our LDS throws Peak in for free as part of the regular OW package. It not only turns out better new divers, it also gets one specialty out of the way towards AOW. Which when you think about it, might also be a marketing ploy to entice them to pay more later to finish the AOW, so it's good for everyone.