Beginners doing GUE fundamentals?

[flymolo]

It appears that no-one regrets taking fundamentals as beginners, and those who have done it later wish they'd done it before.

We fully expect not to pass fundamentals at our age, we've gathered that most people don't pass, but if we manage to get some very good skills and maybe achieve a provisional pass we'll be more than happy.

That’s a good attitude to have. No matter the result you will end up learning and improving a lot. Fundies also leaves you with a solid regimen of skills to work on during practice dives.

 

[Kendall Raine]

Agree with what others have said. Better earlier than later in your diving career. The skills you will learn are second to none. However, far more important than skill mastery is the mind set and critical thinking skills taught in a GUE course. Never accept what you're being taught without really trying to understand the logic. If you don't at first keep asking. While there is never only one way to do something, there is often a better way. Understanding the "why" is more important than simply memorizing the "what." Don't let peer pressure intimidate you into accepting something that doesn't seem right.

You will find plenty of divers (lots of examples here on SB) who believe GUE training is all about following one single way to configure/think about diving. Their conclusion is GUE engenders elitism, myopia, intellectual constipation and conformity (along with other unprintable afflictions). Most of these critics have not taken a GUE course. Some even conflate GUE with DIR from the George Irvine (and his sycophants) era and condemn with a broad emotional brush and no direct knowledge. GUE leadership is partly to blame for this, but that's another story.

Conversely, there are GUE students/advocates who will breathlessly debate the "correct" or "DIR" way to configure something without understanding/questioning the reasoning behind why GUE teaches what it does-and why that teaching has evolved. Frankly, they're no better (maybe worse) than their uninformed detractors. The fact GUE has evolved it's thinking on many concepts (from physiology to equipment) proves the inanity of the "only one way is correct" mindset. For that matter, many of the configuration/team concepts in GUE derived from the cave diving community long before there was a GUE. GUE is an attempt to codify best practices (in their view), not invent anything.

Last piece of advice: listen to the opinions of non-GUE trained divers. If you have developed good critical thinking skills you're quickly discriminate between those who have a sound basis in logic for their differences and those who's basis is simply that they've gotten away with it (for now). Hint; the latter outnumber the former. Your quest is to become a better diver, not a poster child of orthodox dogma.

Remember, only a Sith believes in absolutes.

Good luck.