DiveLikeAMuppet
Contributor
I think it's just a quick and easy filter when looking for an instructor as there are far too many technically skilled instructors. Everyone knows it's a bit of a disservice to students to teach 1:1 but only some compromise because rent needs to be paid. Generally the good ones will try to have former students join the class to tag along as a minimum, for the duration of the class.At the risk of diverging from topic (so if you feel like DM is more appropriate, works for me), why are 1on1 classes bad? Is it a “zero to hero” risk thing? Would love to hear your thoughts
From what I experienced, diving in a team of two to three trainees lets the instructor become a "cave shadow" (or gremlin...) From day 1, you execute a cave dive with similarly trained divers, the instructor does not intervene in the first part of the dive unless you are about to kill yourself and in the second part can throw scenarios at the team and observe how everyone reacts. Most of the time you don't even see the instructor for the majority of the dive.
You get to try different roles in the team, build additional capacity and hopefully become capable of diving without a guide or instructor.
I've experienced two extreme outcomes. I had a major disagreement with a friend who trained 1:1 and who is a high-performing diver, at least in terms of technical skills. I was on the receiving end of a bit of shouting (both of us were newbies after intro to cave with maybe 10 cave dives each) because I wasn't as good as his former instructor-teammate, haven't dived the cave 100x times and hence didn't have the perfect position relative to the cave/line outside of simulated situations.
I also went diving with another friend who trained 1:1 with someone I would call a lifestyle cave instructor. Since he wasn't high-performing, he completed intro to cave but learned to be fully dependent on the instructor and follow like a puppy. As there was no instructor or guide around on our dive, he fully latched onto me and contributed nothing to the team or dive. Which was scary.