Damselfish
Contributor
I would say for most people - practice a little more (but not too much) before AOW, you'll get more out of it if you feel like you have your act reasonably together. And, think of AOW as OW2 rather than "advanced" anything.
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I don’t think that is an organizational philosophy, that is a difference in the tables that are being used. You should not feel free to use PADI RDP rules with NAUI tables, or vice versa.In PADI, dive time (known as bottom time) is taught as starting from the moment a diver begins their descent to the moment they begin their final ascent to the surface. Ascent time and safety stop time are not included in bottom time. This potentially gives the diver more time at deeper depths than with NAUI who calculate dive time as starting from the moment the diver descends to the moment they reach their safety stop....since ascent time is counted it leaves much less time to explore at deeper depths....but it is not just about time at depth, there is a fundamental difference between the two organizations in how they are looking at nitrogen loading. Divers who stick with a single organization for training may never even be aware of this difference
I don’t think that is an organizational philosophy, that is a difference in the tables that are being used. You should not feel free to use PADI RDP rules with NAUI tables, or vice versa.
Actually, just making sure a less experienced diver doesn't read it that way. I understood completely.Call it what you want, I was simply pointing to the fact that there are differences between the certifying organizations, and by training through multiple organizations one can develop a broader perspective on diving. Never insinuated/implied that the rules for one set of tables could/should be mixed and matched with another. I am sorry that you may have inferred that I did.
-Z
Of course my instructor tried to sell us on the advanced open water course immediately. I've heard some say it makes sense to do that, since it includes a review of fundamentals and fixes any bad habits before they get too ingrained. But it seems a little reckless to me to go right from basic certification to something that will allow me to dive much deeper and take on all sorts of other challenges before I've even practiced the basics. I know if I did the night diver course, I'd want to start doing night dives right away. But, um, I only did a mask removal in the ocean once, while kneeling on the bottom, only one CESA, only planned one dive myself, etc. I didn't feel like I really got a handle on buoyancy control until the very last dive. I kind of wish I could just do the ocean dive portion of the course over again several times until it was all second nature, before I futz around with depths that might make me stupid.