The Chairman
Chairman of the Board
It started with bad trim. Bad trim leads to overweighting which leads to being out of control which ultimately leads to white-knuckle diving.
If you were to design your own OW course, how would it go?
- Thread starter Eric Sedletzky
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
As I've mentioned here before, I did the OW course twice with more than a decade between the two course. The first, imo, was more thorough because of the instructor's desire to impart knowledge that was "barely" covered in the book/videos (this was before e-learning, but the material was much the same as far as I could remember).
Either way, weighting is still something I'm not sure I have right yet as "weight checks" always seem to be done at the beginning of the dive (with a full tank) and I seem to always forget to do an actual weight check when my cylinder is low again (i.e. ~500 psi where it "should" be done to make sure you're properly weighted). I followed the rule of thumb for how much weight to change going from seawater to fresh water and was still able to transfer 4 lbs from me to an underweighted diver on the first dive without having a problem getting down still (so I was "at least" 4 lbs overweights in freshwater following the guidelines for removing weight). I've dropped 4 lbs from my seawater weight since then, but may still be somewhat overweight. I'm sure I could still use some fine tuning on this and plan to keep working on it.
The number one way I'd say both classes (and my AOW) could be improved would be in teaching "how to be a buddy". I'm not talking just sharing air or doing buddy checks, but putting more emphasis on dive planning, how to swim together in different types of situations, communicating with each other, etc. My buddy during my 2nd OW class ended up much closer to the surface than to me or the dive instructor as, with just three of us in the water, I was staying with the instructor who was leading us while my buddy wandered off.... "stay with your buddy" hadn't been covered well enough for him to not realize that he had to stick with those in front of him. That was in wide open water... following your buddy through narrower swim-throughs/crevices etc should include checking on the guy behind you relatively frequently etc but was never covered in any of my classes. I had an insta-buddy that looked at me once on a 45 minute dive that he was in front for, I could have gotten snagged on the wreck and lost him 20 minutes prior and he would have figured it out much later... "how to be a buddy" should be covered in much more detail and should have the importance of it pointed out repeatedly. It does no good to have your buddy be your spare air source if they're not going to be around you when you need it.
The last area I wish were covered/covered more is how to use various propulsion methods. Flutter kicking is fine in some situations, but I taught myself frog kicking so I wouldn't silt up the water when near the bottom (I'm sure I could use improvement on my technique still, but I'm working on it) but many don't have a clue. I went first on the swim-throughs on my LOA because my buddy couldn't get it down and I wasn't going to get any decent views following him while he kicked up the silt..
Either way, weighting is still something I'm not sure I have right yet as "weight checks" always seem to be done at the beginning of the dive (with a full tank) and I seem to always forget to do an actual weight check when my cylinder is low again (i.e. ~500 psi where it "should" be done to make sure you're properly weighted). I followed the rule of thumb for how much weight to change going from seawater to fresh water and was still able to transfer 4 lbs from me to an underweighted diver on the first dive without having a problem getting down still (so I was "at least" 4 lbs overweights in freshwater following the guidelines for removing weight). I've dropped 4 lbs from my seawater weight since then, but may still be somewhat overweight. I'm sure I could still use some fine tuning on this and plan to keep working on it.
The number one way I'd say both classes (and my AOW) could be improved would be in teaching "how to be a buddy". I'm not talking just sharing air or doing buddy checks, but putting more emphasis on dive planning, how to swim together in different types of situations, communicating with each other, etc. My buddy during my 2nd OW class ended up much closer to the surface than to me or the dive instructor as, with just three of us in the water, I was staying with the instructor who was leading us while my buddy wandered off.... "stay with your buddy" hadn't been covered well enough for him to not realize that he had to stick with those in front of him. That was in wide open water... following your buddy through narrower swim-throughs/crevices etc should include checking on the guy behind you relatively frequently etc but was never covered in any of my classes. I had an insta-buddy that looked at me once on a 45 minute dive that he was in front for, I could have gotten snagged on the wreck and lost him 20 minutes prior and he would have figured it out much later... "how to be a buddy" should be covered in much more detail and should have the importance of it pointed out repeatedly. It does no good to have your buddy be your spare air source if they're not going to be around you when you need it.
The last area I wish were covered/covered more is how to use various propulsion methods. Flutter kicking is fine in some situations, but I taught myself frog kicking so I wouldn't silt up the water when near the bottom (I'm sure I could use improvement on my technique still, but I'm working on it) but many don't have a clue. I went first on the swim-throughs on my LOA because my buddy couldn't get it down and I wasn't going to get any decent views following him while he kicked up the silt..
There's a table in the course book I have, but it was essentially similar to these guidelines:
I found this linked on another site:
- Messages
- 16,409
- Reaction score
- 5,219
- # of dives
- 1000 - 2499
jclnuke, Regarding your point of better buddy training, I couldn't agree more. Seems it's just "skimmed" over with advice like "stay together". The recent (?) PADI "mini dive" made that obvious to me.
OP
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
I actually think it’s the other way around, it starts with overweighting. Overweighting causes bad trim (bad body positioning) and yo yo diving (over use of the BC).
The Chairman
Chairman of the Board
You're free to teach as you see fit. I'm not going to push a rope or put the cart in front of the horse. The few minutes I put into getting their trim correct, saves me an hour or more in the pool, lessens their frustration (learning curve) and gets them comfortable being flat in the water. It also means that when I weight them statically, I don't have to keep adding weight during the class. I stress that getting into horizontal trim is the "Scuba Position", a term coined by @mselenaous I believe. If they are out of trim, then every kick drives them up and you'll have to add weight to keep them down. It's simple physics.
I would do it exactly the way I did it.
Have a personal friend who is a technical diver and high level instructor in a couple of agencies. Instructor loved to talk about diving. We would have extensive discussions as we went along. All lessons except a few like rescue or DM of course were done one on one. When we met socially we talked about diving. We frequently discussed the hows and whys in more depth than the manual or lesson plan. I did OW, AOW, MSD, rescue, nav, buoyancy, and a couple others with him. We would do deep as part of the adventure dives but would not do deep in the quarry. Same for boat. Some things he felt had to be done in the ocean. We became regular dive buddies. I would sometimes assist in classes he was teaching. Along the way I took some courses from other divers (night, search and recovery, deep, drift, boat, dpv). I also never double dipped on dives. So while I did two dry suit dives while doing the AOW or whatever it was called, I did 2 more when I took dry suit course.
Have a personal friend who is a technical diver and high level instructor in a couple of agencies. Instructor loved to talk about diving. We would have extensive discussions as we went along. All lessons except a few like rescue or DM of course were done one on one. When we met socially we talked about diving. We frequently discussed the hows and whys in more depth than the manual or lesson plan. I did OW, AOW, MSD, rescue, nav, buoyancy, and a couple others with him. We would do deep as part of the adventure dives but would not do deep in the quarry. Same for boat. Some things he felt had to be done in the ocean. We became regular dive buddies. I would sometimes assist in classes he was teaching. Along the way I took some courses from other divers (night, search and recovery, deep, drift, boat, dpv). I also never double dipped on dives. So while I did two dry suit dives while doing the AOW or whatever it was called, I did 2 more when I took dry suit course.
Jay
Need to dive more!
If I could answer how it wouldn't go: My MAJOR gripe of PADI OW and AOW courses is the mind-numbing repetitiveness of the text/text-book and video. It's repetitive to the point that doesn't facilitate learning. In particular, the videos repeat the text, which then repeats itself, and explanatory text for pictures is repeated verbatim in the main text (of the book).
Similar threads
- Poll
