Hello everyone!
I recently heard of a student at our LDS who went through an open water class and the instructor had brought up technical diving. Since then, for reasons unknown to me, the student is said to have developed a minor obsession with it.
As a soon to be technical diver, this excites me. People strapping on a set of doubles (or sidemounting) are like white buffalo around here. However, as a soon to be instructor, this worries me. The sticky in the advanced diving forum talks at great length about a diver ultimately preparing themselves for undertaking such an endeavor. After reading that thread, and being injured in an incident where a student obviously wasn't ready for the tasks asked of him, I have held off my own training for some time whilst adjusting equipment and practicing skills. All of this assumes that the diver, however, has advanced beyond the "don't know what you don't know" stage and has started independently thinking about the direction of his/her diving career and equipment.
A new diver at or prior to the open water level will rely mostly on his/her instructor and LDS for information and advice. The student has no conceptual grasp of what being in open water is like at this stage - let alone the deep, dark, and usually cold environments that many desirable tec dives take place in. For this reason, I have to ask, is it ever too soon to talk about technical diving and "plant the seed", so to speak?
Let's take this one step further - following the first OW dive, the OW student takes it upon themselves to dive the Andrea Doria, just as a hiker who climbs a grassy knoll then decides to pursue Everest. Should the open water instructor (not necessarily a tec instructor) encourage such an ambitious undertaking at such an early level, discourage the prospective diver for the time being, attempt to educate the prospective diver about the dangers involved in such an activity, or some/all of the above? Should the LDS see to it that such a diver is outfitted from the start in tec flavored equipment such as a BP/W? What if the shop staff have very little understanding of technical diving?
The student then pursues AOW and beyond - should any instructor(s) aware of the student's end goal adjust training methods to focus on the student's intent? Should these instructor(s) challenge the student (or any student, for that matter) during his/her continuing education, or should vanilla classes be taught to avoid "too much, too fast"? If an instructor is willfully ignorant to tec diving, should the student be referred to a tec instructor, regardless of the class?
I know that was a lot of questions, so to summarize - it seems to me that many introductory classes tend to focus on the rainbows and butterflies of diving, and while mention of the big bad wolf is made, we don't want to scare anybody. I'd like some opinions from both new divers, experienced divers, and instructors alike. At what point is it appropriate to introduce otherwise unknowing divers to the concepts, philosophy, and mechanisms of technical diving - and is it appropriate to continually focus on these points across a diver's education?
I recently heard of a student at our LDS who went through an open water class and the instructor had brought up technical diving. Since then, for reasons unknown to me, the student is said to have developed a minor obsession with it.
As a soon to be technical diver, this excites me. People strapping on a set of doubles (or sidemounting) are like white buffalo around here. However, as a soon to be instructor, this worries me. The sticky in the advanced diving forum talks at great length about a diver ultimately preparing themselves for undertaking such an endeavor. After reading that thread, and being injured in an incident where a student obviously wasn't ready for the tasks asked of him, I have held off my own training for some time whilst adjusting equipment and practicing skills. All of this assumes that the diver, however, has advanced beyond the "don't know what you don't know" stage and has started independently thinking about the direction of his/her diving career and equipment.
A new diver at or prior to the open water level will rely mostly on his/her instructor and LDS for information and advice. The student has no conceptual grasp of what being in open water is like at this stage - let alone the deep, dark, and usually cold environments that many desirable tec dives take place in. For this reason, I have to ask, is it ever too soon to talk about technical diving and "plant the seed", so to speak?
Let's take this one step further - following the first OW dive, the OW student takes it upon themselves to dive the Andrea Doria, just as a hiker who climbs a grassy knoll then decides to pursue Everest. Should the open water instructor (not necessarily a tec instructor) encourage such an ambitious undertaking at such an early level, discourage the prospective diver for the time being, attempt to educate the prospective diver about the dangers involved in such an activity, or some/all of the above? Should the LDS see to it that such a diver is outfitted from the start in tec flavored equipment such as a BP/W? What if the shop staff have very little understanding of technical diving?
The student then pursues AOW and beyond - should any instructor(s) aware of the student's end goal adjust training methods to focus on the student's intent? Should these instructor(s) challenge the student (or any student, for that matter) during his/her continuing education, or should vanilla classes be taught to avoid "too much, too fast"? If an instructor is willfully ignorant to tec diving, should the student be referred to a tec instructor, regardless of the class?
I know that was a lot of questions, so to summarize - it seems to me that many introductory classes tend to focus on the rainbows and butterflies of diving, and while mention of the big bad wolf is made, we don't want to scare anybody. I'd like some opinions from both new divers, experienced divers, and instructors alike. At what point is it appropriate to introduce otherwise unknowing divers to the concepts, philosophy, and mechanisms of technical diving - and is it appropriate to continually focus on these points across a diver's education?