Discussion of best practices for advancing in cave diving (moved from A&I JB thread)

[Germie]

I am not advanced enough to really feel the issue, but I feel that it actually depends on the other type of dives one does during the year. If a diver manages to do, say, 15 cave diving per year over three trips but does a lot of tech multistage and scooter diving at home, wouldn't it be very easy to go back to the previous level? Say, over 5 dives in one trip, one dive to refresh and the other to have fun?

I think it also depends on whether the system is familiar or not... in a new cave system, it is probably wise to advance step by step, while if the diver knows a specific cave relatively well (say, 20 dives in that specific system), going further would not be too much of a problem.

Would you agree with this or not?

I am especially curious because I am a non-local, and I think I reached a level where building experience is tough enough

yes of course, if you never dive at home and only dive during a trip, it is harder to hold the level you were on. You can practise a lot of skills like reelwork in open water or on a wreck. But the thing you cannot train is the awareness of reading a cave. This can only be done in overhead.

If you cannot dive for a longer period, the level you have to start on when you are back in the water also depends on the experience you had before you had to quit. A diver with just 10 dives that quits 10 years has to start over again probably. If you had 3000 dives and then quit for 10 years, there is a big chance you still know a lot.

A lot of cave divers only go 1 week per year to caves in Europe. This means that they do about 12 dives a year. Of course they will not get the experience in cave diving as someone that dives every week in the caves. But if you only dive every week the same cave, same distance, same short divetime, it is possible that the holiday cave diver has more experience on some levels.

Getting experience is in my eyes also do different divesites, or caves. So if you live in Lyon, maybe go to Italy also, or go to the Jura region. The dives in the Jura are most times only 45 minutes each as the caves are not longer, but you still get experience. The caves are shorter and narrower.
Experience is not only the amount of cave dives, also the amount of different caves you did. Then you also build experience.

 

[ginti]

yes of course, if you never dive at home and only dive during a trip, it is harder to hold the level you were on. You can practise a lot of skills like reelwork in open water or on a wreck. But the thing you cannot train is the awareness of reading a cave. This can only be done in overhead.

If you cannot dive for a longer period, the level you have to start on when you are back in the water also depends on the experience you had before you had to quit. A diver with just 10 dives that quits 10 years has to start over again probably. If you had 3000 dives and then quit for 10 years, there is a big chance you still know a lot.

A lot of cave divers only go 1 week per year to caves in Europe. This means that they do about 12 dives a year. Of course they will not get the experience in cave diving as someone that dives every week in the caves. But if you only dive every week the same cave, same distance, same short divetime, it is possible that the holiday cave diver has more experience on some levels.

Getting experience is in my eyes also do different divesites, or caves. So if you live in Lyon, maybe go to Italy also, or go to the Jura region. The dives in the Jura are most times only 45 minutes each as the caves are not longer, but you still get experience. The caves are shorter and narrower.
Experience is not only the amount of cave dives, also the amount of different caves you did. Then you also build experience.

I was in Lyon, but my profile is not updated. I am in Sicily now.

In Lyon, getting a bit of experience was not hard. Ardesh is quite close, the Lot not too far, plus one or two trips to Sardinia. I have never been to Jura, but they told me it is a better place for side-mount due to the caves being narrow, which is too advanced for me.

So now I can only dive when traveling, and to travel, I need to take a flight - pretty hard to get cave experience... but very easy to maintain high foundamental skills (trim/buoyancy/propulsion/reeling/stage management). The only thing that I really miss is really how to read a cave. At the intro_to_cave/cave1 level, that was a nonproblem due to the limited navigation, but now it is... I wonder how I will continue Maybe I'll go always to the same places until I find a way to travel more often, who knows

 

[L13]

It's a strawman argument. Obviously 'building experience over years' means that the person actually goes diving in caves regularly and not '2-3 bursts of dive over a decade'.

I was basically agreeing with you, while pointing out an important caveat which you seem to agree with. Not sure why that is a strawman argument.

 

[billgraham]

I think 99.9% of people bottom mount their SM stages. I actually dont think I saw a tm sm stage even once (granted i only dive in MX)

We did it this way 15 years ago with the sidemount CCR in Florida, I won't claim that it was perfect but I was working on it . . .

 

[billgraham]

There was a thread a while back about whether it makes any sense to do open water trimix prior to CCR training. Many people gave their opinions that it was unnecessary, and I get that no one wants to spend money on courses that take a long time and require a ton of dives to five or six or eight atmospheres to complete. I firmly believe that the more training you have doing dives that are complicated and a bit stressful under controlled circumstances, the better prepared you are for diving the CCR. It's not always about whether something is "necessary", experience in those situations is always going to help you.

 

[billgraham]

That is actually a conversation that I've had with tourist cave divers, when I mentioned I scale back after being dry for a month or two.

If you are only doing a few dives per a trip a couple of times per a year, most of the trip would be just getting back to the level you were at the end of your last trip. It would be hard to progress much further. But TBH that isn't a big deal, particularly in Mexico, there is a ton of stuff to see without getting too terribly advanced beyond full cave or stage cave level.

I used to spend a few weeks a year in Florida cave diving and that's exactly what I found, the last dive before I left finally felt good. Now, the cave is in my backyard. I was out of diving totally for a couple of years and I'm slowly finning my way back, OC sidemount for now . . .
What I see every week is divers come in and they've got their scooters and stages out, first dive. I'll go for a little solo swim dive for an hour or so, and when I come back, I see silt, scooters, bail out bottles, stages, some feet, and maybe one diver is rebuilding a CCR on the picnic table because it flooded and they just put in three new sensors . . .

Why? I understand that you all are here for a few days and you want to do everything possible, but this is supposed to be fun. When **** starts going sideways, don't try to be the ant that moves the rubber tree plant. Crack a beer, take a swim, rebuild your unit for the next day and have a laugh. Do not put your head down and keep trying to pound that square peg into a round hole when it clearly isn't going today.

Have fun and be safe!