Zero to Master Scuba Diver in 10 months

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Training today is a sad joke if you can't see that you're blind.

Just wondering where I ever said anything about divers dying...I think you said that.....i just shake my head when someone finishes their O/W course and can't dive without a DM holding their hand or don't have a clue on how to assemble their gear.

I am glad i was taught the way I was .

RJP's comment about dying was sarcasm. Guess you missed that.

I was trained before you were, and I think a lot of the training today is much better than it was back then. We now have better equipment, better educational resources, and students with better backgrounds. The biggest difference between then and now is that today it is piecemeal, broken up into lots of modules so the students can go down the track they prefer at the pace that suits them, rather than being told "you have to know all of it, right now, before you can get wet." That is demonstrably untrue; diving is safer than it ever was. There are some extremely good divers being trained today, and some really crappy ones were trained back then. Today's problem is not all the students go very far down the training path. Yesterday's problem was not all the students cared enough to finish the long, arduous course. Saying you were trained 40 years ago tells me nothing about your diving skills, it just tells me about your perseverance skills.
 
All the very best... keep learning, keep asking questions. AND MAKE SURE TO keep having fun.

Thank you! And thank you for your great books! I read Six Skills and am currently reading Staying Alive. And I expect to re-read them both soon as I'm sure I'll get more out of them each time I re-read for a pretty good while yet.
 
Awesome looks like you're having a great time.

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk
 
good job Stuart , I'm only slightly behind ya re cards - was about to do my stress and rescue but had to delay because wedding planning and work taking most of time so couldn't concentrate on the material
@86 dives now / 55 hours in 11 months will hit my goal of 100 dives just before my year is up, Good job learning side mount i'm planning that next year - keep up the diving :)
 
Good job. Lots of variety in just a few dives. You beat me to (PADI) MSD by 4 months. After that I did Deep Diver then DM. No more cards for me. But these are nice goals and certainly improve your diving. Let us know when you first encounter serious sh!t hitting said fan. Hasn't happened yet for me.
 
Good job. Lots of variety in just a few dives. You beat me to (PADI) MSD by 4 months. After that I did Deep Diver then DM. No more cards for me. But these are nice goals and certainly improve your diving. Let us know when you first encounter serious sh!t hitting said fan. Hasn't happened yet for me.

For sure when I encounter serious sh!t hitting fan, I will post all about it here. :) The worst I've had so far was both 2nd stage regs freeflowing simultaneously, at about 70 feet, in 38 degree water, with 5 feet of viz. That sucked, but it didn't seem to constitute serious sh!t. Fortunately, it just interrupted a training dive and not anything cool. LOL
 
Training today is a sad joke if you can't see that you're blind.

Just wondering where I ever said anything about divers dying...I think you said that.....i just shake my head when someone finishes their O/W course and can't dive without a DM holding their hand or don't have a clue on how to assemble their gear.

I am glad i was taught the way I was .

As a diver trained and training in the new era, I don't know that I completely agree with these. I think the learner's have a significant responsibility for the sad state of learning. I completed my AOW and Drysuit courses a few weeks ago and it is a perfect example. Four of us started the course. I am still new to training, only completed my OW in March of this year, but a fast learner, willing to put in the time and effort to learn and eager to learn and get better. Another student, hasn't dove in the five years since he completed OW but again seemed willing to put in the work and learn/get better. Another diver, may have put in the book work, struggled with the practicals and then did not take the time to learn to do them correctly. Fourth diver, no book work, a little bit of natural skill but lazy in his learning efforts.

As the weekend of diving started, the last two divers were buddied and i was buddied with the other diving willing to work. Dive 1 - we start to gear up(keep in mind this is after a pool session 3 days earlier, so everyone should know how to assemble their gear). buddy and I are assembled and ready to dress, about 30 minutes later, the other divers are still struggling and we go to help them and find that one of them doesn't know how to connect her 1st stage to the tank...solve that. Gear is assembled, Instructor has finished getting floats and his gear and everything else needed for the day ready. Start dressing to enter the water, buddy and I know the other two will be slow, so we wait until they are halfway into their drysuits before we start. We still manage to be first in the water and waiting 25 minutes for them to get in. As they enter, diver #4 realizes, he has no weight built......another 15 minutes as an instructor for another course with the same shop sorts him out.
In the water both are terrible, do some skills but not well. Buddy and I struggled in learning the drysuit but figure it out. Surface, remove and replaces by my buddy and I no problem, other pair struggle and don't complete at this time. Told they can complete on dive 6 next day.

Dive 2- Diver 3 struggled so much that she is not feeling well and not confident, appears to be having a panic attack. Sits out this dive. buddy and I get half dressed, wait for weightless diver to have his gear almost on, ask if he is ready, then finish gearing up. Still have to wait 15 minutes for him. similar issues.

Dive 3 - Pre dive - other buddy team, one did not have a slate and one did not have a watch or timer of some form, as they were told were mandatory before. Same issues getting into water. Buddy and I complete all requirements for Nav dive before the other team finish the measured fin kicks. other issues plague them and we end up practicing hover while waiting.

Next dive the diver who skipped dive 2 decides not to dive for this day(probably a smart decision).
Dive 4 - same issues with gear and getting wet. In the water, problem diver had problems sinking because he changed undergarments and not weights, despite being told to recheck weights predive. At some point in the dive he has buoyant ascent as well. On SS he panics, takes reg out, panics more and tries to breath while buoy and panic from the spare gas bottle hanging from float. After dive, he is discussing issues with the instructor. Asked what happened and he refused to accept the advice given and did not believe that he was not out of air when trying to breath from the spare bottle despite still having 300 psi after recovering and finishing SS on his own gas.

Dive 5 - he is expected to redo the deep dive from before and the skills for dive two. Buddy and I did separate dive.

Dive 6 - Instructor reminds struggling diver that he still has to complete the surface skills. Before even geared up, diver says he won't bother and will just accept fail. Still allowed to dive though. Same issues throughout he has not accepted or implemented any advice from instructor, DM or other students at all from the weekend. At end of dive, he has feet at the surface and trying to hold rocks to stay down in 7 feet of water, then unable to right himself etc. wasn't happy when told to just surface swim in.

Long story short, two out of the four divers in our course failed and it was, in my opinion, completely their own doing because they were not active learners. Had they wanted to improve skills there were four different instructors and a DM all from the same shop who would have happily provided advice and remedial help. One of them did not put in the book work as required. They just seemed like they expected to show up and get a card. The other diver and I, were eager to learn, asked questions, got help when struggling and put in the work before and during. He and I both enjoyed the course and finished better divers than when we started, which is what we wanted going in.

The student has to have a significant responsibility in the learning process and while the training has become less extensive, there have been gear innovations and improvements to mitigate some of this.(Same thing in driving - think manual transmission, no power steering etc vs todays automatic etc vehicles) but also the students need to show their own motivation to learn and that, in general has reduced from society today. More and more people expect that they are entitled to a card because they paid for it. They don't put in the work required and they also don't feel the need to know and remember things, because they can just look it up. The other things is that divers today have a wealth of information available to them on the internet. I should know, I have made the most of it and try to absorb everything I can.

I think, that the issue today, is not the training but the students(and maybe for similar reasons, some instructors). The training has changed, but like others have said, it has be morphed into a multitude of courses to satisfy the immediate need for gratification and also to allow divers to customize their learning o what they want and to fit into busy schedules.
 
Congrat.s on getting a lot done quickly. Just as getting started with a BP/W setup & training/diving that way from early on shows, you may benefiting from getting trained/mentored in good ways to do things before you ingrain bad habits.

As to the 'modern basic training is insufficient' vs. 'zero-to-hero, you're going too fast, dive more before you get so much training,' I was laughing a bit but I think part of what colors this issue comes in a couple of forms:

1.) Dissatisfaction by some over the rapid completion of DM & Instructor training (which is what I usually think of when I hear zero-to-hero). Some want to see more seasoned, broadly experienced & capable divers in professional teaching roles. That's a different issue from what you're doing, but it may carry over to how people view 'accelerated' training tracks.

2.) The hubris that can accompany rapid progression (especially if you're talented & it seems easy?), as symbolized by the recent death of 'Dr. Deep.'

If you keep a humble spirit & conservative, thoughtful diving practices, more power to you.

Richard.
 
Diving to get your skills nailed down is certainly a worthwhile goal. I'd suggest spending the next couple hundred dives seeing what's out there before taking the next step. to do otherwise risks burning you out, or at least it would have me. Learn all the fish, the nudibrachs and everything else it never ends.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom