The feedback is the key. When my brother was doing his checkout dives, I had him wear my spare/loaner dive computer. Then in the evening after the first day, we downloaded the logs and took a look at the graphs. They were significantly non-square, of course. 
As we looked at them, I asked him about various peaks and valleys. What was that really big spike? Ah, it was when his buddy started going out of control and he swam up, stopped the ascent, and helped him back down. A big valley or two came when he got caught up watching fish and descended below his planned depth.
Now, considering it *was* a supervised checkout dive, nothing was egregiously wrong. Still, just looking at the depth profile graph gave him much needed perspective on what was actually happening in his diving. After the next day, we downloaded his dives again and found they showed *much* less in the way of deviations from the plan. He paid more attention to his buddy, which precluded any quick ascents to catch him, and when he was watching fish, he made it a point to keep track of where he was in the water. He *didn't* spend the whole dive trying to be square, and he actually had a much more enjoyable day of diving.
Without the computer profile data, all he would have is a surface-to-surface time, a maximum depth, and an almost completely subjective and obviously unreliable feeling about how the dives went. (In my experience, even the scary students think everything was coming up roses. :biggrin With the data, he could see where things didn't go according to plan and give at least a modicum of thought to the reasons why.
The truth is that very few people seem to get bent, and he could probably dive without thinking like a great many people do every day. Taking time to consider his diving and analyze the reality of it, however, certainly improved his diving and by his own admission made it more enjoyable.
As we looked at them, I asked him about various peaks and valleys. What was that really big spike? Ah, it was when his buddy started going out of control and he swam up, stopped the ascent, and helped him back down. A big valley or two came when he got caught up watching fish and descended below his planned depth.
Now, considering it *was* a supervised checkout dive, nothing was egregiously wrong. Still, just looking at the depth profile graph gave him much needed perspective on what was actually happening in his diving. After the next day, we downloaded his dives again and found they showed *much* less in the way of deviations from the plan. He paid more attention to his buddy, which precluded any quick ascents to catch him, and when he was watching fish, he made it a point to keep track of where he was in the water. He *didn't* spend the whole dive trying to be square, and he actually had a much more enjoyable day of diving.
Without the computer profile data, all he would have is a surface-to-surface time, a maximum depth, and an almost completely subjective and obviously unreliable feeling about how the dives went. (In my experience, even the scary students think everything was coming up roses. :biggrin
With the data, he could see where things didn't go according to plan and give at least a modicum of thought to the reasons why.The truth is that very few people seem to get bent, and he could probably dive without thinking like a great many people do every day. Taking time to consider his diving and analyze the reality of it, however, certainly improved his diving and by his own admission made it more enjoyable.
