The Philosophy of Diver Training

[Web Monkey]

I think the scorn is directed less at reliance on DMs by some divers as at policies that require DMs to treat all divers as though they are incompetent.

My trip to Roatan was a perfect example ... before I could go diving I was required to perform a mask flood and clear in front of a DM ... and when I did the exercise while hovering six inches off the bottom in three feet of water he made me do it over ... WHILE KNEELING ... so he could assure himself that I was "properly weighted"

It would have been a lot of fun to go out to the Blue Hole with him and tell him that if you need to clear your mask, you're going to go down to the bottom to do it.

Terry

 

[Web Monkey]

As well as an additional revenue generator, I think it's mainly a legal CYA for shops that rent them.

A drysuit class is a wonderful thing and I always feel bad for people that buy drysuits and don't get the class (we give the class away for free with the suit).

While it's entirely possible to dive dry without a class, it's much easier, safer and less anxiety-provoking if the diver actually knows how everything works, how important weighting and trim are and what to do when Bad Things happen.

Also, given that an untrained drysuit diver can find himself in an incontrollable, astonishingly rapid ascent, I don't think CYA is such a bad thing. A drysuit is wonderful exposure protection. However when not properly used, it's a 200Lb+ lift bag with you in it.

Terry

 

[FireInMyBones]

[sm]Side Note[/sm]
The new issue of Diver Training mentions the topic of not enough face time with the instructor in its editorial. I am writing a letter to the editor to thank him for bring up the point and offer a few suggestions I have found here for better training standards.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

As I was playing catch-up on this thread, I decided to go back and peruse editorials from dive magazines dating back to 1971.

In 1971, there was a debate about buddy-breathing. Buddy-breathing is a difficult skill to master in comparison to many scuba skills because it requires teamwork, timing, swimming and ascent skills. While it can be successfully learned and performed during training, even by the standards of training in 1971, studies showed that most divers had lost the ability to adequately perform buddy-breathing as well as other more complex skills as little as 12 months later.

In reading the editorials, training agencies have faced the same recurrent theme for the past decades. No matter how long training lasts and no matter how intense it may be, if divers don't dive and don't practice, they will lose their ability to proficiently dive and perform basic, individual, team, and emergency skills.

I was thinking about PADI vs. PDIC vs. GUE as far as diver training and I realized they are all right, they are all wrong, and if that wasn't so, there wouldn't be any arguments with valid points on the Internet.

For example, PADI has a really decent and safe skill set. It isn't so much that they've reduced training standards as much as they've allowed the reduction in training time to become problematic. If we took today's PADI course and gave PADI instructors the same amount of time that they had years ago when it took a week to teach a class, the quality of the PADI OW diver would be far better than ever because it would give the student a chance to really master a few basic skills while the instructor was able to really clean up trim, buoyancy, propulsion, task-loading and team skills.

This is exactly what GUE has done. GUE really just has a few simple skills, but GUE emphasizes trim, buoyancy and propulsion. The recreational or GUE-F diver often has better skills than many instructors from other agencies because attention to mastery of trim, buoyancy, tasks and team skills require demonstration quality performance while maintaining total control. The problem with GUE is that many divers spend too much time practicing and not enough enough time developing experience. The philosophy also limits the diver to team diving in like equipment and fosters less independence.

With PDIC, training time is longer, but training time is also loaded with complex skills. Without practice, skills like buddy-breathing, no mask buddy-breathing BC-assisted ascents, 3 ways of regulator clearing, individual and team skills, physical endurance, and rescue skills will atrophy. While such training produces a more athletic and confident diver, and while the training is designed to teach the diver to think and act independently of instructors and buddies, more training time and emphasis on performing all skills in proper trim is needed to achieve the precision of a GUE type skill set. Also, without practice, a diver may remember being able to perform a rescue or emergency skill, but be less ready in reality.

I think the solution for more intelligent training is to have longer training that focuses on developing the stability, trim, buoyancy and propulsion techniques that will be the foundation for handling anything else such as an air share.

The solution for encouraging divers to maintain their skills has no easy answer.

Expiration dates on C-cards might help, but as the 1971 study I was reading about showed, within 12 months skills were found to atrophy. Maybe rescue C-cards should expire if nothing else?

Maybe training divers to practice valve drills and air-sharing at the start of every dive would help promote proficiency?

Even diving every day won't help you maintain emergency skills.

Whatever must be done - if something should even be done - would have to be a grass roots movement toward promoting more diving and more skills practice.

Perhaps if the diving industry pushed local diving and the importance of local dive centers and instructors we would find the vehicle that will keep divers diving and find ways to make training fun?

 

[Walter]

Maybe rescue C-cards should expire if nothing else?

What would be the point? I've never shown my rescue card to dive.

 

[TSandM]

Even diving every day won't help you maintain emergency skills.

I had this brought painfully home to me when I did my Cave 2 class. Although I had spent a year and a half accruing almost 100 cave dives (and, of course, doing valve drills and S-drills before many of them, as well as those drills in open water) the complex skills, like lights-out air-sharing exits, and crossing the team over the line, had atrophied. The guy who had done his cave class ten years earlier was in even worse shape. And this is in a culture where skills practice is so common that it sometimes interferes with people getting out and doing "real" dives!

But I do think that it would help if open water students were told, repeatedly, that they should practice air sharing frequently, and orally inflate their BCs at the end of every other dive or so just to keep those skills sharp -- AND if they saw their instructors and DMs DOING those things. My experience was the opposite; after OW, nobody even did buddy checks, let alone emergency skills, until I got into my Rescue class.

There may be some things that the DIR community has wrong, but the virtually universal practice of skills is not one of them.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

What would be the point? I've never shown my rescue card to dive.

Yeah, that's true. I was just pulling ideas out of the air. I guess that wouldn't work very well. If we incorporated first aid, AED, O2, CPR and rescue into the same course that might promote in-water training?

But, that's still not a very good idea.

Works pretty well in lifeguarding, but that is because you don't have a million C-cards to update.

 

[DCBC]

While it can be successfully learned and performed during training, even by the standards of training in 1971, studies showed that most divers had lost the ability to adequately perform buddy-breathing as well as other more complex skills as little as 12 months later.

Given the choice of teaching something that will require repetition within the next year or so, or prohibiting it from being taught in the first-place, I'd have to opt for the former. Retaining diver skills is a concern, but unless these skills are being taught, retention isn't a factor.

I agree that "the solution for more intelligent training is to have longer training that focuses on developing the stability, trim, buoyancy and propulsion techniques." How long do you think it will take the industry to catch on, or do you feel that the lure of increased profit is too great?

 

[oldogre]

Fortunately the DIR community is not the only one that practises skills, my local SSAC club does.

 

[Thalassamania]

Therein lies the problem with these discussions ... they always seem to boil down to extremes.

In some respects, 100 hours of training can be just as bad as 10 hours ... because it will inhibit a diver's development.

Inhibit a diver's development? I just can't see a problem with having 100 hours and 12 dives in which to learn the things that some of the foremost experts in diving have found out over the last 60 years as opposed to self-discovery after 30 odd hours of training and 4 dives in which, by and large, you learn a few important things and a bunch of crap that is dictated by by the marketeers and their legal advisers.

Of course, the proper amount of training is going to depend on the diver's learning style, goals, and diving environment. And that's the problem with any cookie-cutter solution to dive training. As I've seen many times with some of my friends who are GUE-trained, excessive training holds you back from gaining real-world experience that can, at some point, become more instructive than the structured class.

There is no doubt that diving experience is critical, now I don't know your GUE friends, but I do not see any of the people that I've trained being held back from gaining more diving experience, quite the opposite.

When is enough, enough? Personally, I think when you can achieve the goals of the class with a modest amount of challenge, and perform your skills repeatably with confidence ... even if they're not smooth and perfect. At that point, putting some real-world context to your skills will usually gain you more than repeating the skills to perfection in the artificial environment of a class.

How about repeating those skills in planned real-world situations? That's our approach.

A lot of people learn best by doing. Sure, you want to give them enough information, skill and confidence that they are moving in the right direction. But then they need to be turned loose from the class and given the opportunity to put their skills and knowledge to use outside of the class ... where they can develop an understanding of WHY they needed to learn those things. You can't do that in class, no matter how good the class is. Because a class, by definition, becomes a game of guessing what the instructor wants. It inhibits independent decision-making ... and making good decisions is one of the most important skills any diver can develop.

I beg to differ, you sure as hell can teach both the how and why ... it just takes a bit more creativity and a willingness to extend the class into real world situations and problems.

As you say, there has to be a happy medium ... more is not always better.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Not if it's just more of the same, the logical extension of which is the guy with 5,000 dives, all in the same spot. But more is also different and of increasing challenge ... that's another story. Your assumption that a longer class is composed of more mask clears and regulator recoveries is simply not valid.

As I was playing catch-up on this thread, I decided to go back and peruse editorials from dive magazines dating back to 1971.

In 1971, there was a debate about buddy-breathing. Buddy-breathing is a difficult skill to master in comparison to many scuba skills because it requires teamwork, timing, swimming and ascent skills. While it can be successfully learned and performed during training, even by the standards of training in 1971, studies showed that most divers had lost the ability to adequately perform buddy-breathing as well as other more complex skills as little as 12 months later.

But not if they had practiced the skills, the challenge became training divers to not only perform the skills in class but to also practice critical skills like buddy-breathing on a regular basis. I was taught in the research diving course at Berkeley to exchange a few breaths at the start of every dive, to this day I feel the urge to do so ... and often do.

In reading the editorials, training agencies have faced the same recurrent theme for the past decades. No matter how long training lasts and no matter how intense it may be, if divers don't dive and don't practice, they will lose their ability to proficiently dive and perform basic, individual, team, and emergency skills.

Yet how many courses include anything about how to practice?

I was thinking about PADI vs. PDIC vs. GUE as far as diver training and I realized they are all right, they are all wrong, and if that wasn't so, there wouldn't be any arguments with valid points on the Internet.
B.S.

For example, PADI has a really decent and safe skill set.

I disagree, training a competent free diver and then make the transition to scuba has been almost completely lost.

It isn't so much that they've reduced training standards as much as they've allowed the reduction in training time to become problematic. If we took today's PADI course and gave PADI instructors the same amount of time that they had years ago when it took a week to teach a class, the quality of the PADI OW diver would be far better than ever because it would give the student a chance to really master a few basic skills while the instructor was able to really clean up trim, buoyancy, propulsion, task-loading and team skills.

I don't know that it would, the average instructor would have no idea of how to use the time to any effect except redoing the skills that they had already done and that would no result in much change in their students' readiness.

This is exactly what GUE has done. GUE really just has a few simple skills, but GUE emphasizes trim, buoyancy and propulsion. The recreational or GUE-F diver often has better skills than many instructors from other agencies because attention to mastery of trim, buoyancy, tasks and team skills require demonstration quality performance while maintaining total control. The problem with GUE is that many divers spend too much time practicing and not enough enough time developing experience. The philosophy also limits the diver to team diving in like equipment and fosters less independence.

If that's actually the case, I would agree with you. But that does not need to be the case with a longer training program.

With PDIC, training time is longer, but training time is also loaded with complex skills. Without practice, skills like buddy-breathing, no mask buddy-breathing BC-assisted ascents, 3 ways of regulator clearing, individual and team skills, physical endurance, and rescue skills will atrophy. While such training produces a more athletic and confident diver, and while the training is designed to teach the diver to think and act independently of instructors and buddies, more training time and emphasis on performing all skills in proper trim is needed to achieve the precision of a GUE type skill set. Also, without practice, a diver may remember being able to perform a rescue or emergency skill, but be less ready in reality.

It seems to me to be quite possible to do both, gaining experience and achieve precision need not be mutually exclusive.

I think the solution for more intelligent training is to have longer training that focuses on developing the stability, trim, buoyancy and propulsion techniques that will be the foundation for handling anything else such as an air share.

I think that you are correct there. But what I've found is that stability, trim, buoyancy need more to be demonstrated than taught. If stability, trim, buoyancy are expected from the get go, and not "taught" as separate skill, but just taken for granted, students will copy staff and pick it right up. A few people will need special coaching, but not many.

The solution for encouraging divers to maintain their skills has no easy answer.

There is an easy answer ... just do it, that's all it takes.

Expiration dates on C-cards might help, but as the 1971 study I was reading about showed, within 12 months skills were found to atrophy. Maybe rescue C-cards should expire if nothing else?

In the science community you need 12 dives in the previous 12 months and a dive to your endorsement depth in the previous 4.
Maybe training divers to practice valve drills and air-sharing at the start of every dive would help promote proficiency?

Works for us, no reason it should not work for you.

Even diving every day won't help you maintain emergency skills.

Emergency skills, diving every day and practice will help. If you mean rescue skills, I'm afraid that yearly re-cert is the only way.

Whatever must be done - if something should even be done - would have to be a grass roots movement toward promoting more diving and more skills practice.

Go for it. All you're suggesting is basically what we've always done.

Perhaps if the diving industry pushed local diving and the importance of local dive centers and instructors we would find the vehicle that will keep divers diving and find ways to make training fun?

And if my grandmother had two wheels she'd be a bicycle.

I had this brought painfully home to me when I did my Cave 2 class. Although I had spent a year and a half accruing almost 100 cave dives (and, of course, doing valve drills and S-drills before many of them, as well as those drills in open water) the complex skills, like lights-out air-sharing exits, and crossing the team over the line, had atrophied. The guy who had done his cave class ten years earlier was in even worse shape. And this is in a culture where skills practice is so common that it sometimes interferes with people getting out and doing "real" dives!

IMHO, practice should be an integral part of every real dive.

But I do think that it would help if open water students were told, repeatedly, that they should practice air sharing frequently, and orally inflate their BCs at the end of every other dive or so just to keep those skills sharp -- AND if they saw their instructors and DMs DOING those things. My experience was the opposite; after OW, nobody even did buddy checks, let alone emergency skills, until I got into my Rescue class.

Right you are, students need to see staff behaving the ways in which they have been encouraging students to behave.

There may be some things that the DIR community has wrong, but the virtually universal practice of skills is not one of them.

I fear, from some of the comments, that practice is not an every dive thing and that it becomes more of a way to not waste what looks like it's gonna be a crappy dive.

Fortunately the DIR community is not the only one that practises skills, my local SSAC club does.

As do we, as do we.