how many dives until...?

[BoltSnap]

I took AOW right after OW. They really should be combined into one course IMO. But then not as many people would qualify for certification and that means less $$$ for the dive industry.

But it will also mean less people getting into diving and enjoying the ocean we all love. This is very bad for all

There is a fine line between offering an complete and comprehensive entry level course and offering an overkill PhD. program right from primary school. There has to be a balance between the need and what is reasonable

 

[Steve_C]

AOW around 20
Rescue around 50
DM around 250

I should note that I took courses like buoyancy right after OW and I never double counted for a cert and adventure dives. Figured the more dives the better.

Search and recovery is good once you have some trim especially the part on working with lift bags.

.

 

[José Teles Reis]

I'm an outlier. I generally wanted to be at the point where I had nothing more to learn before taking the next step. I did take advanced a year after my OW and rescue that same year, but then I took rescue again many years later before taking my DM. I think I had about 1000 dives when I took DM. Part of the reason I waited so long was because early on I didn't have the connections to start working as a DM after I had the certification but a large part of the reason was because I felt for myself, this is the level of experience I needed in order to feel comfortable in the role.

After taking DM I worked as a DM assisting in large part with the OW course and a lot of intros for years while I started taking technical specialties. Again I built up experience as a technical diver kind of slowly. At one point the joke at the club was that I had more experience as a diver than all of the instructors combined. At the time I was one of the few people working there who was technically certified. In fact, I worked so long as a DM that one of my technical instructors was a former student. At that point I started feeling like I was standing still.

Eventually I decided to become an instructor and I did this for two reasons. First and foremost because the shop offered to pay for it, which was incredible generous and there was no way I could say no to that. The other reason was that in the time I worked as a DM I had started to build a real vision of how the OW course should be given and it was different than how I saw my colleagues doing it. However, I needed to have my hands on the wheel if I wanted to see my vision become a reality so this was the final motivation. I do now actually give OW how I think it should be done but as you can imagine in my case, it took a lot of iterations and experimentation to refine the way I do things to the point where I was happy with it.

Obviously there are still things about diving I wouldn't feel comfortable doing. For example, even though I'm an avid wreck diver and I have an ice diving certification diving in a cave, besides seeming somewhat pointless to me, is something that I don't think I'll ever get around to doing. I've been in a few (dry) caves and in one case on an extended tour of 6 hours in a cave system (again dry) with all kinds restrictions and such and even though I found it "cool", I just don't think that squeezing my butt through a little hole on scuba is something I would get much joy from. I'd rather spend that time and the money involved in travelling to interesting far away places in the tropics, but I digress.

Aside from travel, I don't really have any goals for diving per se but the last couple of years I've been taking some courses to be the "student" again. This just re-energizes me and keeps me from becoming too paradigm trapped to be an effective instructor. I guess you can see it as "sharpening the saw".

I suspect that my experience is not typical. There must be other slow-poke learners around but I guess that most divers progress a lot faster than I did.

R..

Thanks for sharing rotuner! It is really enriching to hear the thoughts of experienced divers.
What courses did u take recently?

 

[José Teles Reis]

AOW around 20
Rescue around 50
DM around 250

I should note that I took courses like buoyancy right after OW and I never double counted for a cert and adventure dives. Figured the more dives the better.

Search and recovery is good once you have some trim especially the part on working with lift bags.

.

Did you start working as DM right after you got your course ?

 

[José Teles Reis]

But it will also mean less people getting into diving and enjoying the ocean we all love. This is very bad for all

There is a fine line between offering an complete and comprehensive entry level course and offering an overkill PhD. program right from primary school. There has to be a balance between the need and what is reasonable

I dont agree with pursuing the aow right out of the owd classes. My first dives as an owd were all like: ohh i have water in my gogles oh put some air in my bcd am i ascending or descending ? never lock your breath, now let me adjust my weights, ups let me look at my computer for my NDL, i dont wanna die end of the dive hahaha atm i feel like i can enjoy the dives, i feel aware of my environment. Without a doubt, being confortable and aware creates a window for learning new Subjects and techniques

 

[mi000ke]

Just one more data point - I completed my AOW last week after 25 dives. I was at the point at which I was starting to get very comfortable underwater and had pretty good buoyancy control. I think the timing was perfect. If I had done AOW sooner that that I would not have had enough experience to have learned as much as I did. Regardless of the official names of the dives, it really was all about evaluating where my general diving skills were now and helping to advance them. And it has really motivated me and got me even more excited about diving. I also did nitrox certification at the same time, as two of my AOW dives in addition to deep (PPB, wreck) also were deep (100'), that came in handy. So I'm glad I didn't wait any longer to do AOW, but also glad I did not take the course too soon. Agree with others that 20-25 dives seems right for AOW.

 

[DevonDiver]

Divers don't need 'experience' before progressing to AOW....they need ABILITY.

Ability is supposed to arise from effective training. If a diver doesn't have sufficient ability to benefit from AOW directly after OW qualification, then their training didn't meet its goals.

Citing a need to 'gain experience' is the scam-instructor's ultimate excuse. Just blame inability on the student....

 

[Neilwood]

My experience so far (with just under 50 dives done):
AOW - after about 10 dives (including OW). I have to admit to being very very comfortable in the water before I started diving though (can't remember not being able to swim). I didn't feel tremendously task loaded by the OW skills (such as mask clears, swapping regs, etc).
Rescue - planning on taking it once I get to the point of being mentally "sorted" so that the likes of buoyancy and trim become more of a subconscious task rather than a continual thought process. Might be next year but I am in no hurry.
DM - will be a long way off in the future as, for me anyway, I would need to feel that my diving is 100% sorted prior to trying to lead/ demonstrate to others.

I will be doing other courses in the meantime though such as wreck, drysuit, search & recovery and deep.

 

[Diver0001]

Divers don't need 'experience' before progressing to AOW....they need ABILITY.

Ability is supposed to arise from effective training. If a diver doesn't have sufficient ability to benefit from AOW directly after OW qualification, then their training didn't meet its goals.

Citing a need to 'gain experience' is the scam-instructor's ultimate excuse. Just blame inability on the student....

I think there are nuances.

In one way, AOW is every bit as much a "skills" course as OW is. There are LOTS of courses, specialties and such, which are "expanding on existing skill sets". A lot of technical specialties are like this, as you know.

However, AOW teaches a couple of really fundamental things that makes it different from "specialty" courses and especially "advanced" courses. For one thing, navigation. I will try to side step the issue of whether or not the navigation requirement REALLY teaches navigation, but the objective is to do so. Likewise, deep diving is not only an "experience" dive but also fundamentally a "skills" dive.

The same can be said of a number of other specialties and/or adventure dives.

Where Andy and I DO agree (keep in mind my previous post) is that training should START from a foundation of previously gained skills and build from there. There ARE instructors out there who will try to use AOW to compensate for poor OW training. These are the ones saying that AOW should be taken on the heels of OW. In my opinion, if someone says this then they are probably trying to fix something that they didn't do right during OW. If you have taken a good OW course there should be, and I think Any and I agree about this, no reason whatsoever, to take AOW straight away.

That said, all (or most) shops will make this recommendation but it is base upon commercial interests and not "quality of training" issues, which is what you normally hear about on the internet.

R..

 

[AJ]

AOW about 20, Rescue if I ever feel like it, Divemaster = probably never, Rec Instructor when hell freezes over. Switched to GUE so I'm not sure I will ever progress with Rec training. I rather put my money and energy in Tech or Cave 1.