Planning my Tech Learning adventure

[Ally_Cat]

Hi everyone! hope you're all doing well

I'm planning to get into tech diving in the near future. So far, I've have been PADI trained - almost MSD certified - however since I'm planning to switch from recreational diving to technical diving, I was thinking to also switch agency... I know "it's the instructor not the agency" (which I completely agree with btw) but surely there must be differences in material taught and skills focused on? Especially with technical diving as I'm guessing its a lot more well, technical, than recreational diving??? -please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm here to learn

Any advice, tips, points in the right direction is appreciated.
I'm based in the Netherlands, but travel whenever I can, with scuba gear in tow of course

Many thanks in advance for your help

Cheers, AllyCat

 

[Doppler]

Someone in your situation is -- just an opinion of course -- usually best served to think about learning to cave dive. That is the foundation of just about all technical diving.

As far as an agency, focus more on what YOUR goals are and find an instructor who does that type of diving and the agency denomination will fall into place.

There are many good instructors in your area. Very many more a little further afield.

Good Luck.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Agree with Steve. An Intro to Tech/Fundamentals style course is a good pairing with a Cavern course. First, you can work on trim, buoyancy, propulsion, and safety skills in intro to tech then take these new found tools into the overhead where the rocks act like a Catholic nun with a ruler. If you don't exercise good technique you either bump something or create silt. Cave training changes your mindset and helps you reverse engineer dives while promoting a less is more streamlined kit. From there, you can continue your overhead training with Intro to Cave, Apprentice, Full Cave or begin to learn how to do deco diving in an imaginary overhead in Advanced Nitrox. Quality cave skills make it easier to maintain good discipline in the technical environment

 

[taimen]

It is the instructor, not the agency.... Many established tech instructors can certify with multiple agencies and let you choose.
My personal experience is that IANTD course materials seem a bit old, and haven't been updated for a long time. The IANTD class I took was excellent and the instructor covered everything that was somewhat outdated in the materials.
Take GUE Fundamentals anyway, there are some active GUE instructors in Netherlands.

 

[Marie13]

My thinking is first consider what sort of tech diving you want to do and where. I’m all wrecks, no caves. Cold(er) water. If you want to dive local wrecks in cold water, get trained locally or at least regionally in the same conditions.

It doesn’t make much sense to me to go get trained somewhere warm in a wet suit if you’re going to be diving drysuit in cold water.

 

[PfcAJ]

Agency DOES matter.

Curriculum. Quality control. Adherence to standards. What those standards are. All of these things are agency driven.

I’d rather not learn technical diving from an org that has a chapter on aligning your chakras in its tech manual.

 

[Superlyte27]

Agency DOES matter.

Curriculum. Quality control. Adherence to standards. What those standards are. All of these things are agency driven.

I’d rather not learn technical diving from an org that has a chapter on aligning your chakras in its tech manual.

That’s hilarious about the chakras. You know when I did my OW Instructor Course with that agency and the owner of that agency I was required to do Yoga. Can you imagine me, at the time a 250lb fat guy doing yoga as part of my qualification.

Not long after that, my 11 year old wanted to become certified. I handed her the OW Manual and told her to let me know when she had finished reading it. About 10 minutes later, she comes into the living room and says, “Dad, who wrote this book, it’s riddled with spelling and grammatical errors”. I told her a guy with a PhD wrote it. LOL. She asked if he knew how to use spell check or hire an editor.

For the most part, and I know this has been hashed out over and over again, agency doesn’t matter to an extent. I can point out fantastic instructors with any agency. However, I must admit that I can’t point out a bad instructor with GUE. And no, I don’t teach for GUE. That’s not to say there isn’t bad instructors, but more to say that there must be so few of them, that I haven’t seen them. I can’t recall ever seeing a bad GUE student.

Lastly, and i’ll Get some flack for this...
If a student comes to me wanting to take cave diving, and they have a PADI Cavern Card, they either have to pay for a day of diving with me so I can evaluate them, or retake Cavern Class. There are only two PADI Instructors I’ve seen that teach a good enough cavern class to pass my Intro to Cave class.

 

[divezonescuba]

Don’t GUE instructors have to undergo recertification at any given level on a periodic basis?

 

[PfcAJ]

Don’t GUE instructors have to undergo recertification at any given level on a periodic basis?

Yes

 

[boulderjohn]

Since you specifically asked about PADI, I will assure you that the PADI tech standards and content are perfectly fine, so, once again, it comes down to the instructor.

I was a TDI tech instructor for a while, and then I switched to teach PADI tech. I think the course materials are far superior, and the course sequence makes a lot of sense.