Did you honor your training?

[eponym]

This question is directed at new divers. Did your instructor drill skills and techniques which you discarded after you started to dive, especially when traveling away from your training sites? Did your first forays find you on group dives where the bar for performance in the water was lower or nonexistent? Did you decide "heck, who needs trim, who needs a non-silting kick, party on!" Or did you try to honor your training?

I ask this because of a concern raised in a recent thread on a new instructor course. There are many threads on SB which bear on this topic, such as this one on buoyancy.

I would like to hear from new divers who have made one or more dive trips. What were you taught? Did you feel it was over the top? Did you continue to strive for the examples set for you in training? Did you forget everything and let the divemasters be responsible?

My particular interests are trim, buoyancy control, and the ability to stop and hold your position. I see these as the new challenges for beginner training, to agencies, instructors, and students alike.

-Bryan

 

[TMHeimer]

I'm sure this will generate many responses. My question to all divers (beginners or not) is why would anyone just forget their training and leave it all up to the Divemasters? To me, this seems
crazy.

 

[soltari675]

I didn't forget. I actually went further and took additional courses from the same instructors, such as Peak Performance Buoyancy. I have kept all that training in mind whenever I dive. My safety and possibly my buddy's, depends on it!

 

[DevonDiver]

Scuba training provides the necessary skills and knowledge to undertake specific underwater activities. A training course is merely a starting point, nothing more, nothing less. It does surprise me that some divers view training courses, especially OW and AOW, as a level of total competance. Rather than consolidating that training, they use it as a 'springboard' to venture immediately into more advanced and/or risky diving practices.

Scuba skills have to be ingrained. A training course can provide you with that skill, but it is never going to provide sufficient in-water time to embed the skill into your muscle memory at an instinctive level. Consequently, there is an expectation that the newly qualified diver will keep their diving conservative, prudent and safe - whilst they continue the longer-term process of refining and ingraining their new skills. That doesn't happen... and we see examples of it all the time.

 

[TSandM]

Bryan, I'm sorry, I'm not a new diver, but I remember being one.

If I had seen your question at that time, I wouldn't have had any idea how to answer it, because good buoyancy control, horizontal trim and non-silting propulsion were ideas I hadn't encountered yet, because they weren't taught AT ALL in my OW class (or AOW).

By the time I did my first dive trip, to Maui, I was trying desperately to be horizontal, simply because I had been reading ScubaBoard and had encountered the concept and some photographs.

 

[TMHeimer]

Scuba training provides the necessary skills and knowledge to undertake specific underwater activities. A training course is merely a starting point, nothing more, nothing less. It does surprise me that some divers view training courses, especially OW and AOW, as a level of total competance. Rather than consolidating that training, they use it as a 'springboard' to venture immediately into more advanced and/or risky diving practices.

Scuba skills have to be ingrained. A training course can provide you with that skill, but it is never going to provide sufficient in-water time to embed the skill into your muscle memory at an instinctive level. Consequently, there is an expectation that the newly qualified diver will keep their diving conservative, prudent and safe - whilst they continue the longer-term process of refining and ingraining their new skills. That doesn't happen... and we see examples of it all the time.

Yes, ingrained. I'm not quite a DM yet but think I always agreed here. My DMC Instructor asked us (after the physics/physiology classes) "now that you know all this, do you view your own dives differently'? I thought: "No, when I learned the tables in OW I took it as seriously as I ever would". Why would anyone think otherwise-- it's your life.

 

[gcbryan]

Is training something to be honored?

 

[TMHeimer]

Is training something to be honored?

Semantics. It's something to ne noted, remembered and occasionally practised.

 

[Garrobo]

"Honor thy father and thy mother sayeth the Lord". NOT your dive instructor, unless he can walk on water, heal the sick and raise the dead.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Bryan, I'm sorry, I'm not a new diver, but I remember being one.

If I had seen your question at that time, I wouldn't have had any idea how to answer it, because good buoyancy control, horizontal trim and non-silting propulsion were ideas I hadn't encountered yet, because they weren't taught AT ALL in my OW class (or AOW).

By the time I did my first dive trip, to Maui, I was trying desperately to be horizontal, simply because I had been reading ScubaBoard and had encountered the concept and some photographs.

The snorkel/lightsaber is cool.