There are number of threads on SB – one going right now – about modular, sequential training for cave diving. The argument is that one should learn some new skills and then dive with them for a while and get into a comfort zone based on in-water experience, and then take the next steps. The training agencies offer modularized courses to suit that need.
The same modularized approach is deemed to be appropriate for technical training; one doesn’t jump immediately into hypoxic trimix without spending some time getting used to lesser kinds of tech dives. No one seems to argue about the concept.
The only arguments involving this modularized approach are about the detailed separation/boundaries between the various modules…an example is exactly what should (say) Cave 1 contain in its requirements, and what should be allowed for diving afterwards as a (say) Cave 1 diver? Or what should (say) the depths limits be for Deco Procedures?
There are also threads on SB that denigrate the same modularized approach for OW training as being money grabs by agencies. Never mind that the market prefers a series of shorter courses to one long one, never mind that the customers don’t all want to go deep or learn Nitrox, etc. They may wish to progress later, and then can take the next module.
Yes, I understand that OW classes used to be a “thousand hours long” and only the brave and strong passed….but that was then, and this is now, and lamenting “how it used to be” is a little like saying “so I refuse to think there might be different and better ways to do things, what I learned and how it was taught many years ago was good enough.”
If the one-course-that-contains-everything for OW training were a good idea, I suspect some enterprising agency could offer it……but it does not exist. Perhaps it is deemed that (a) the market doesn’t want it, or (b) people can’t usually absorb so much info all at once?
So I do not understand the apparently total acceptance of modularized training for cave and tech but not for OW.
The same modularized approach is deemed to be appropriate for technical training; one doesn’t jump immediately into hypoxic trimix without spending some time getting used to lesser kinds of tech dives. No one seems to argue about the concept.
The only arguments involving this modularized approach are about the detailed separation/boundaries between the various modules…an example is exactly what should (say) Cave 1 contain in its requirements, and what should be allowed for diving afterwards as a (say) Cave 1 diver? Or what should (say) the depths limits be for Deco Procedures?
There are also threads on SB that denigrate the same modularized approach for OW training as being money grabs by agencies. Never mind that the market prefers a series of shorter courses to one long one, never mind that the customers don’t all want to go deep or learn Nitrox, etc. They may wish to progress later, and then can take the next module.
Yes, I understand that OW classes used to be a “thousand hours long” and only the brave and strong passed….but that was then, and this is now, and lamenting “how it used to be” is a little like saying “so I refuse to think there might be different and better ways to do things, what I learned and how it was taught many years ago was good enough.”
If the one-course-that-contains-everything for OW training were a good idea, I suspect some enterprising agency could offer it……but it does not exist. Perhaps it is deemed that (a) the market doesn’t want it, or (b) people can’t usually absorb so much info all at once?
So I do not understand the apparently total acceptance of modularized training for cave and tech but not for OW.