GatorKev
Guest
Welcome to the site and to diving. As you have already seen there is a ton of info on this site. To give you another view of training. I took my open water class back in 1990 in South Florida. My instructor was awesome. Please remember that this was almost 18 years ago and things have changed a bit.. Our class consisted of a few classroom sessions where we went over the book and video portions of the class (didn't give us DVDs back then). There we actually learned about the aspects of diving, basic signals, about the equipment, how things work (equipment and diving) and the possible dangers associated with diving. They also went over how to handle situations that might come up and how to use the all mighty dive table... We also had a few pool sessions. First session was more of becoming familar with the equipment and becoming comfortable in the water with equipment and getting our weight set (fresh and salt are different though). Other sessions we learned our boyancy, breathing skills, how to take equipment off and put back on (underwater) including regulator & mask removal. We also did hands on for emergency situations like releasing your buddys weights/weight belt, buddy breathing and emergency assent. Then we did 2 open water dives from a boat. First dive our instructor went over the plan and we set our weight boyancy then slowly went to the bottom while the instructor watched us to make sure we were comfortable. When we got to the bottom we one by one practiced the skills that we did in the pool (gear removal, buddy breathing, signals etc). After everyone was done we had a slow group swim the back on the boat. While waiting for our second dive our instructor went over the dive table and made sure we understood how to figure our suface inteval time and answered any questions that we had. Our second dive was more of our "first real dive" where we were able to enjoy ourselves. The instructor just keept us together, made us keep checking our air gauge and showed us the beauty... Man, the breakers reef in West Palm beach is nice... Well that is my answer to your question. Like said before, don't rush it. Good luck and be safe.