Difference between Utd and Gue?

[boulderjohn]

Lynne, when you say what level you want to begin, what do you mean? I know with GUE you start with the Fundies class. With UTD I noticed you could go right to Tech. Does that mean we would miss all the fundamental fine tuning of buoyancy skills and team building or is that covered in tech 1? Or, did I misread the algorithm for UTD?

A lot depends upon your background. In my case, I had gone through TDI decompression procedures when my TDI instructor crossed over to UTD. Thus, he was well aware of my status going into my own cross over, and he put me in at an appropriate level. When new students come in with tech diving experience he will dive with them first to see what skills they are bringing into the crossover. He had one case I know in which he recommended that the diver come in at one level and the diver actually asked to come in at a more basic level instead. The diver ended up ripping through the class in no time and would have been better off (at least financially) following the instructor's recommendation.

 

[B Lo]

A lot depends upon your background. In my case, I had gone through TDI decompression procedures when my TDI instructor crossed over to UTD. Thus, he was well aware of my status going into my own cross over, and he put me in at an appropriate level. When new students come in with tech diving experience he will dive with them first to see what skills they are bringing into the crossover. He had one case I know in which he recommended that the diver come in at one level and the diver actually asked to come in at a more basic level instead. The diver ended up ripping through the class in no time and would have been better off (at least financially) following the instructor's recommendation.

If the student was more comfortable at a lower level, all the more power to him. I think this might be one of those "least common denominator" type of situations. If the student wouldn’t have been comfortable starting at a higher level course, then that’s that. Too often, even if one is capable, there exists something of a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to getting into a situation that one believes is beyond their ability level or comfort.

Being comfortable and acing a lower level course would likely serve to be a confidence builder too. And, though money is important, one’s comfort and, by extension, safety in the water ought to be the highest priority.

 

[TSandM]

Tracy, some folks want to start with Essentials or the GUE primer. The highest GUE class you can start with is Fundies. UTD permits people to crossover above the Essentials/Intro to Tech level, if the instructor deems it appropriate; GUE, for all practical purposes, does not.

For most mainstream recreational divers without any other training, Essentials, Primer or Fundies in a single tank is an appropriate place to start.

 

[lobstah]

Lynne, when you say what level you want to begin, what do you mean? I know with GUE you start with the Fundies class. With UTD I noticed you could go right to Tech. Does that mean we would miss all the fundamental fine tuning of buoyancy skills and team building or is that covered in tech 1? Or, did I misread the algorithm for UTD?

Hey Tracy.

In UTD we don't feel it's necessary to make people with some experience to start at square 0 and go through whole training ladder. Depending where you are coming from and what is your experience level you may possess sufficient abilities to start training at any level. That said, if you had no exposure to DIR training ever, probably most beneficial starting point would be essentials which are designed as a cross over workshop and focus mainly on teaching procedures and protocols not taught by other agencies. This is not a pass/fail class, and doubles also as an evaluation of where you are at in your diving. We are also open to students mastering certain skills on their own and we give credit for that. We are also flexible in making courses longer to play catch up if some progression steps were skipped (like Rec 3 for example).

To give you some examples, here's what progression looked like for some of students in LA area:
Essentials->doubles mini->T1
Rec1->Rec2->T1
Essentials of Tech->T1
Essentials->Rec2
Essentials->Rec2->T1
Essentials->DPV1->T1
GUE T1->Tech Gold

Feel free to contact me directly if you have more questions at macieka@unifiedteamdiving.com. George Watson in Colorado is an excellent instructor and I'm sure he will also be glad to accommodate you. If you prefer salt water, between me and Carlsbad HQ we have various classes every month till the end of year and there's always option to fit you in one or arrange one for your team. Both Jeff and myself are open to travel, but eventually we need to find a water .

Safe diving

 

[tracydr]

Thanks so much, Lobstah! Very helpful info. At this time, we are considering an extended vacation to the NW next summer so if the plan happens, I'll be looking in the Puget Sound area for class/ instructor.
Tomorrow, take my DM written tests and next week my Dry Suit cert if all goes according to plan. Hubby bought me a drysuit as a surprise and it just came yesterday. I can hardly wait to use it!

 

[tracydr]

Tracy, some folks want to start with Essentials or the GUE primer. The highest GUE class you can start with is Fundies. UTD permits people to crossover above the Essentials/Intro to Tech level, if the instructor deems it appropriate; GUE, for all practical purposes, does not.

For most mainstream recreational divers without any other training, Essentials, Primer or Fundies in a single tank is an appropriate place to start.

Thanks, Lynne.
I know you're petite. Did you have any trouble adjusting to the doubles?

 

[tracydr]

Lynne- we are talking about coming to WA next summer for a month. Perhaps you could recommend an instructor for us? I think we'd like to try to complete GUE Fundies and perhaps, if it's reasonable, the Tech 1 as well.
Forgive me if I'm not using the right terminology, just starting to research GUE and UTD so the names of classes and levels are still a little foreign.
Basically, we'd like to achieve a level where we are able to use mixed gases, decompression and be ready to advance to other specialties, such as cave.
I dive with my husband and we would like to be able to increase our depths and bottom times beyond recreational levels so that we can enjoy dives which are more advanced. Eventually, he wants to dive wrecks, I want to dive caves and we both want the skills which we've seen in DIR type divers. Of course, we'll be doing these types of dives together so we'd like to go through the training together as well.
Am I going at this from the right direction? It sounds like either UTD or GUE will get us to our goals but since classes will be out of state would the GUE be a better value? It seems like it has bigger chunks of material in a given class so perhaps this is better since multiple classes would be more difficult to arrange?
Currently, I'm completing PADI DM training and my husband is an instructor.

 

[TSandM]

Tracy, we don't at present have a local GUE instructor. Guy Shockey is coming down from Vancouver to teach Fundamentals classes, and Bob Sherwood has come in to do Fundies and technical classes. The only GUE Tech instructor on the West Coast is Beto Nava in Monterey. There aren't very many GUE technical instructors in the US. I don't know if Guy is planning on becoming a T1 instructor or not -- it's an expensive and long process. I know, because I watched my Fundies instructor try to get through it!

We do have a local UTD instructor team, and Brian teaches through T1 and T2 (the functional equivalent of GUE T1). It would not be difficult to set up an Intro to Tech class and a T1 class, assuming you were here long enough. For cave, you could either then do a UTD overhead protocols class and cave class, or go to another agency. But you won't have access to the GUE cave curriculum, and that's the place where I think GUE really, really shines.

I didn't have anywhere near as much trouble adjusting to doubles as I thought I'd have. It was a matter of finding the right ones, and learning how to trim them out. The weight is onerous, for sure, especially about the time you start the third flight of stairs up from Grand Cenote, but if I can do it, anybody can. If you have the discipline to hit the gym, it would help . . . (I don't).

 

[tracydr]

This sounds good, Lynne. We might see about going to Monterey for the class over a school holiday for Joe. Sounds like if we want to eventually fo Cave we should start out with GUE.
I'm glad to know the doubles weren't insurmountable. I have a bad neck but it doesn't slow me down, much. Having been around horses and farming most of my life my upper body is pretty strong.

 

[mikemill]

This sounds good, Lynne. We might see about going to Monterey for the class over a school holiday for Joe. Sounds like if we want to eventually fo Cave we should start out with GUE.
I'm glad to know the doubles weren't insurmountable. I have a bad neck but it doesn't slow me down, much. Having been around horses and farming most of my life my upper body is pretty strong.

UTD has a full set of cave courses with three instructors in Mexico. Two teach out of Cave Heaven - Quality cave diving instruction and guided cave diving in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula which is a UTD Facility. A quick look shows two more cave instructors, one in Spain and the other in Italy. So GUE isn't the only choice.