If I lived somewhere that freediving was easy to teach, instead of doing a jackknife dive and waiting until my facemask hit the bottom, so I knew I was there, I could get enough people to make it worth my while. If you've ever seen the show Offshore Adventures, it gives Instructors great footage to teach people spearfishing, while freediving.
The freediving skills that are being discussed can all be taught in a pool.
I wish that I had the time to teach people the freediving techniques listed in this thread, during an Open Water course. The price of the OW course precludes that at the present time, especially with the gas prices skyrocketing. It's the time versus the dollars that feed the bottom line in any small business.
I'm not suggesting that you run "my" course, just that students who receive effective free diving training make better divers who are less likely to drop out. In point of fact, the time spent on free diving skills is more than recovered by the students' more rapid progression through the other skills.
Contrary to the type of diving that scientists are doing, the general public wants to dive on their vacation and that's OK. As people change, get married, have babies or feed their families their interests also change. The average life span of a scuba Instructor is 2 years. I've had my main cadre for well over 5 years. After kids grow up, I see second and third generations of new divers. I don't think putting skills that people don't need and get frustrated with necessarily make a better course. There is a time and place for freediving skills.
Now you appear to be grasping at straws for an excuse to not include freediving skills. Give it a try, for one class, I think you'll be happily surprised. I've trained plenty of divers who are not scientists or scientists to be. Some dive just on vacation, others enjoy the local waters, but almost all of them keep doing it. All of them buy a full set of gear. Most of them buy drysuits. Most of them buy a computer. Most of them buy some photographic gear. A few buy DPVs. Do the numbers yourself, what's more profitable and stable? An LDS that trains 300 divers per year, each spending about $500 with an 80% drop out rate or a shop that trains 100 divers a year each spending a couple of grand with a dropout rate of less than 10% (think about what those 90+ divers who are left will spend next year)? I know lots of families who dive, but I know lots more who boat, ski, bicycle, play tennis, motorcycle, snowmobile, fly, ride horses, hike, etc. As they age and change and get married and have babies and need to feed their families their interests don't really change, they keep doing those things, maybe cut back a little in their twenties, but they do not give their activities up, and when their careers stabilize they're right back at it. But your are right about diving ... most do seem to stop diving. We need to figure out why that is. I submit that at least part of it is that they are never really comfortable diving and, in reality, they have given up on diving before their open water training dives are done, it's just a question of time.
I do see people who have no problems with scuba move to another sport faster than someone who works hard to get it.
With all due respect, and this is not intended to do anything except make you think about the issue: your perception is that people who have no problems with scuba move to other activities faster than people who invest more time and effort to make it happen. Correct? Two problems here. The first is that it is your perception, others might recognize blocks to wanting to dive that you don't see. The second is a logical fallacy, let's grant for the moment that your perception is accurate and commitment to diving is in direct proportion to the energy put in to master the dicipline. If, by adding freediving skills to the front end we both make the student more comfortable and raise their investment of time and effort, by your own perception they should be less likely to shift activities.
No kidding!
So what're you gonna do about it? Maybe it's time to experiment with something that you've not tried before.
Just trying to keep people diving will go a long way toward lowering the dropout rate. Everyone has their own idea about what quality training is, but if people don't continue to dive, they will feel like someone just starting a cave course, when they start up again. They will have to relearn buoyancy and all that other stuff they should have learned the first time around.
You've hit on a critical point, one that I decided earlier not to address, but perhaps I should have. People who are comfortable in the water learn faster and retain more. They are more willing to undertake the activity on their own once the course is over. If they continue the activity for a number of years they will reach a level of accomplishment that they do not need to start over, they just need to refresh. But we need to teach them how to refresh as part of the training that we provide in the first place. We do that, the breathhold kata, the freediving doff and don, the scuba doff and don, the buddy breathing doff and don, the curcuit swim, these are all thing exercises that our divers have ingrained into them. These are all exercises that they can use to "tune up" anytime that they feel the need. These are exercises that will permit them to quickly recapture the confidence and skills that may have rusted a little. This is quite important since in many cases a researcher will learn to dive, put in a field season or two, then be back in the lab for an extended period before heading out on another field season.
Think it over a little, don't hold back. Please don't.
Consider what Merry Brown said, “Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom.”
