Advanced or fundies?

[MXGratefulDiver]

Fundamentals heavily impacts your personal diving skills, like PPB on steroids. It's also an introduction to the concept of team, and a big leap forward in situational awareness.

Fundies does not address navigation, night diving, diving off boats . . . There ARE topics in the diving curriculum that just aren't there. However, the level at which AOW is often taught is so basic that someone with more than a few post-OW dives is going to be bored silly. As said above, unless you have an instructor like Bob, the standard AOW class is toothless.

That's mainly because AOW has been defined, prepared, and marketed as a direct add-on to the BOW class ... most agencies and instructors see it as little more than five more supervised dives with an instructor (aka ... "easy money").

But be aware that Fundies is not the be-all and end-all of diving knowledge, either.

Fundies is more a beginning than an end for a lot of divers, as it represents a fundamental shift in not just the skills of diving, but also the thought process that goes into how you approach your dive.

In a lot of respects, the aspects of diving that attract people to Fundies are things that could easily be taught in a more traditional AOW class ... things like gas management, buoyancy control, effective trim and finning techniques, and learning what it means to be a dive buddy. None of these things are unique to the DIR way of diving ... GUE has simply packaged them in a way that's easy to explain and understand.

It's interesting that a high percentage of the people who take my AOW class ... which is not in any way a DIR type class ... go on to take either GUE or UTD classes. Once they discover how much more comfortable it is to dive with reasonable skills and a dive buddy you can count on, they want more.

It's like a gateway drug ....

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Blackwood]

Fundies... represents a fundamental shift

Oh, is that where they got the name? I thought it was because that's where the fun dies.

 

[TSandM]

If it's where the fun dies, you have the wrong instructor or the wrong buddies!

Bob, I always thought Fundies was the gateway drug . . . but it's your AOW class?

 

[RU4SKUBA]

If you want some reference material, I'd recommend picking up 5thDX Essentials and Intro to Tech DVDs and the book "Doing It Right: The Fundamentals of Better Diving" by Jablonski. You can learn a lot from those videos and the book is helpful in understanding some of the equipment and other requirements.

 

[gbray]

If you want some reference material, I'd recommend picking up 5thDX Essentials and Intro to Tech DVDs and the book "Doing It Right: The Fundamentals of Better Diving" by Jablonski. You can learn a lot from those videos and the book is helpful in understanding some of the equipment and other requirements.

I would love to check these out. Where can I find them?

 

[ScubaInChicago]

I would love to check these out. Where can I find them?

Amazon.com: Unified Team Diving (5thD-X) Essentials of Recreational Diving DVD: Movies & TV

Amazon.com: Unified Team Diving (5thD-X) Intro To Technical Diving: Movies & TV

Doing it Right: The Fundamentals of Better Diving | Extreme Exposure

Enjoy

 

[M_Bipartitus]

I would love to check these out. Where can I find them?

If you're internet minded, many of the segments from the above-mentioned DVDs are on youtube and much of the equipment sections are very similar to those buried in the GUE website. I still recommend the DIR book as it addresses the most important ideas of teams and diving attitude rather than the focus on equipment, which is a smaller part of the whole philosophy (at least in my understanding of DIR.)

 

[Doc Harry]

I'm in the "You need to take advanced so that you have the card to show to dive ops, but Fundies will likely show you the greatest improvement in your skills camp."

That's my vote

 

[Blackwood]

I would love to check these out. Where can I find them?

At this point, I'd probably recommend waiting for the new editions. Maybe send a PM to Jeff to see how far along they are in the production process.

 

[fnfalman]

However, I went ahead and took AOW for the certification as well. Got tired of arguing with the charters down here in the Keys and flashing my log book.

That's the problem right there. Industry self-policing, my ass!!! More like racketeering.

I had an argument with a dive master and a boat captain about this.

One of my dive buddies only had OW (he had to pay for the AOW card now) but had 50-dives in SoCal water. I worked with him and had him dived with other experienced SoCal divers. We increased his depth slowly until he's comfortable at 90-something FWS.

We went out to Farnsworth and the DM weren't going to "let" him dive because he didn't have AOW card. Meanwhile there were two others who had AOW cards that they got in the Caribben vacation diving and both had less than 20-dives under their belts all in tropical water. Here we are in Farnsworth, blue water diving, and my buddy with 50-local dives, comfortable with his gears, weighted and trimmed correctly, yet somehow not as "qualified" as these two vacation divers who had never even dived California water but now going to make a blue water dive because they have AOW cards?

Anyway, I spoke to the Captain and he knew me as a repeat customer, so he said that he wanted me to stick with my buddy (duh?!!!) and made sure that he's OK.

We dived Farnsworth and had a great time, but the DM's attitude struck a wrong chord with me. AOW card my ass!!! It's a damn racket.

Anyway, take the Fundies class. At least that class would actually teach you real methods for improving your dive skills.