Follow-up to competency poll

[TSandM]

Okay. About 60 percent of the people answering the poll indicated that they felt they were deficient in one or more of the four basic skills I listed: Controlled descent, accurate weighting and trim, rational gas management, and controlled ascent. Given that some of the people felt they were only deficient in gas management, that still leaves a significant number of people who felt they were unable to control their descent or ascent adequately or determine their needed weight. Would we all agree that those are pretty basic and necessary skills for safe diving? Yet these people (myself included) got certified.

So what happened? Are the divers in question too hard on themselves -- in other words, did their instructors CORRECTLY determine that they were more competent than they felt they were?

Did the instructors determine that they WERE deficient in one or more areas, but didn't think it mattered?

Did the instructors not realize that the students were deficient in one or more areas?

Did the instructors not care? (BTW, I don't like this answer and strongly believe that it rarely pertains.)

When I think about my certification, I never successfully completed a descent without holding onto the BC of an instructor. (I did one descent without that, but I lost the descent line and my instructor, and ended up on my back on the bottom all by myself.) I never attained neutral buoyancy (had to fin not to sink) and had to hold somebody's hand to remain oriented in space. In retrospect, I have a hard time figuring out why anybody thought I was well enough trained to go out and dive, even restricting the diving to the conditions in which I got certified (which was less than 10' viz, cold water, and dry suit diving). But I went to Hawaii five dives later and felt like Superman. So maybe my instructors recognized that what I was doing was difficult, and under other circumstances, I would be much more competent.

The problem was that 90 percent of my diving would be done in the conditions where I had proven myself somewhat lacking.

So -- I'd like to hear the opinions of both students and instructors. Are we new divers too critical of ourselves? Or are standards too lax? Or are instructors not taught what to look for? I really don't know the answers to these questions.

 

[Nemrod]

"Or are standards too lax?'

By and large, YES!

What if you did this, realizing you live in a cold warter area, go to your favorite pool with only a cheap plastic plate, a single aluminum 80 and a regulator (no LP, no octa, no nothing else, no wet suit, no dry suit, no BC, no nothing) and a mask and fins. Take a weight belt with a selection of small weights. Learn to weight yourself neutral with the 80, yeah, it will go positive at the end and be slightly negative at the beginning--no big deal. Learn to use your breath to control bouyancy--that is the goal grasshopper. When you can do that then begin adding your equipment all the while trying to maintain that neutral weighting. It may take several weeks to learn all that. This is why scuba courses used to take eight to twelve weeks, two nights a week, four hours a night with both lecture and pool work and each pool session began with a swim and ended with a doff and don and yes they used to flunk people. swim some laps, evaluate your fitness level, learn how to doff and don, yeah, even learn how to buddy breath. It might come in handy some day.
The idea is to stop using equipment as a crutch and instead use it to magnify the new skills and confidence you have aquired. People dived quite well for several decades before there were a such thing as a BC. I know, it will be hard to park all that fancy gear while you learn to dive without it in a pool or warm water setting (a controlled setting of course) but I think it would help develop a basic at ease with the water. Just a thought. N

 

[DiverBuoy]

So -- I'd like to hear the opinions of both students and instructors. Are we new divers too critical of ourselves? Or are standards too lax? Or are instructors not taught what to look for? I really don't know the answers to these questions.

I hate to over simplify, but it just takes time. Experience in diving, is the great equalizer.

 

[MikeFerrara]

First of all, I wonder about the 40% who said that they were not deficient in one of those areas. I also would have added other areas. Some people do just get a good instructor. Just because the agencies have their head up their butt doesn't mean that al instructors do. A few people can also just learn the stuff they need to on their own and pick up the phisical skills almost natureally (this isn't rocket science). From what I've seen in the water thoug the total here is less than 40%. I've been on charters where evvery diver on the boat was scary, I see divers in the dive parks and prety much know what to expect when I do a skill evaluation with a prospective new students. I sure don't expect 40% to be squared away.

Even so, if we take these bumber and run with them, I'd point to the standards. PADI who certifies what? 70% of the divers? does require some descent in the pool but it's that 5 point descent thing and there's nothing in the standards that says a student needs to do a good job od controling descent speed. It's taught head up/foot down, so the diver can just dump all their weight and fin to control the descent and is the origin of what I call the butt first plumit. In OW, there is one free descent with a visual only reference required and one descent with no reference visual or otherwise allowed. On the other 2 dives the student can hand walk down a line. Still, what is the "pass" criteria? They just have to live. TSandM, your description of your descents in OW class seem to indicate a standards violation even given the minimal standards that we have.

Trim isn't even mentioned in the course materials and niether is gas management. If a diver hasn't had the mechanics of trim explained to them and they haven't practiced it (weighting and body position) almost 100% will be rototilling the bottom.. If it's silty they'll leave a silt trail and if it's over coral they will be ebating it half to death whether they can see it or not. a Flutter kick is the only one required to be taught and that makes it that much worse. Of course heavy exposure protection complicates the problem but it's why you can go to a midwest quarry at 7 am and have wonderful vis and by 10 am it could be ZERO. Almost very diver you see will be leaving the same contrail behind.

Anyway, the short answer is that this is all stuff that the training standards don't require to be taught and it's all stuff that the instructor may never even have learned because it isn't required in any class.

 

[DementialFaith]

First I should mention that I managed to miss the poll while it was acive. Still, from what I've seen the definition of the poll is kinda vague, especially for the ascent part. Given a compter/gauge, I can definately make the sake 1ft/sec safety requirement, but I'm willing to bet big money that i wll be too fast without the help of gauge/computer while ascending just like the majority of the DM/instructors out there.

Regardless of the poll, I believe that the main purpose of an open water class is to make sure that you're a safe diver, not necessarily a good one. (or like others said, OW cert is the qualification to learn how to dive) It's ok if you come out of an ow class not being able to swim neutrally buoyant, since you'll know enough to not dive outside your limit and to dive to try to rach neutral. So eventually you will be able to swim neutral. Just thought

 

[MikeFerrara]

First I should mention that I managed to miss the poll while it was acive. Still, from what I've seen the definition of the poll is kinda vague, especially for the ascent part. Given a compter/gauge, I can definately make the sake 1ft/sec safety requirement, but I'm willing to bet big money that i wll be too fast without the help of gauge/computer while ascending just like the majority of the DM/instructors out there.

60 ft/ minute is a little fast for my liking. I plan on a max of about 30 ft/ minute for deeper portions of the ascent and much slower in the last 20 ft or so. The easiest way to control ascent speed is to pause every 10 ft or so. You won't get going too fast only ascending 10 ft...then just stop for several seconds. If you want to slow way down abave 20 ft like I do...say 5 ft/ minute, just ascend 5 ft and sit for a minute or a little less. Of course when stopping and starting like this, the ascent rate monitoring of a computer will be useless.

Regardless of the poll, I believe that the main purpose of an open water class is to make sure that you're a safe diver, not necessarily a good one. (or like others said, OW cert is the qualification to learn how to dive) It's ok if you come out of an ow class not being able to swim neutrally buoyant, since you'll know enough to not dive outside your limit and to dive to try to rach neutral. So eventually you will be able to swim neutral. Just thought

I think any dive is beyond the limits of a diver who can't control their position in the water since they'll have a hard time staying with a buddy, not be able to control position in the water especially in case of a problem, destroy the visability, damage the environment and so on.

 

[spectrum]

I did the poll but never posted a narrative, so here goes.

As I recall our gas planning was a suggestion not to run out of air.

Our shop did all of it's work from shore (used a quarry for deep and dark AOW) As such the OW dives were all shore dives, surface swim to 8-10 feet of water, drop down and follow the bottom. We never had to come up from 30-40 feet. On the return we were down until the water was chest deep. As such there was no practice or demo of significant ascent/descent. From what I learned here, common sense and practice we picked it up on our own. My wife didn't get the hang of it until after a slight ear injury. As for the shops perspective on ascents/descents we did do a number of them in the shallows inculding shared air ascents so I guess they had a sense that we knew the basics. Doing so in open water throught a significant depth was not even on the radar screen.

I think our shop (it's gone now) had become complacent and was teaching to a very specialized dive. What was taught was very staight forward without baloney but I felt much more should have been covered. Had I not done a lot of independent study & research I'm not sure if I'd be an avid diver today.

What we know about weight checks we again learned here, from mentors and figured out. We were told that over time we would be able to drop weight. Prior to our OW dives we owned enough gear to do weight checks on the sly in my sisters pool (and calculated the salt water offset) otherwise we would have been handed some horrendous belts.

The course was really about exception management with a free swim dive to demonstrate that we could follow the instructor through a typical shore dive. They did have excellent student to instructor ratios and when special attention was needed it was freely given including additional pool time.

I reached my dream (along with my wife) but I do worry about new divers who are not proactive independent learners.

Pete

 

[CAPT HOOK]

When we were certified, I was able to do all the skills and completed the required dives with no problems.
My PROBLEM was I was not at all comfortable during the dives! Took 35 dives before I was really comfortable underwater.
The Instructor knew this as we discussed it but he always said, just wait you'll get there.
Think i passed because my wife, the fish, was also in the class and she needed a buddy!

 

[bradshsi]

I'd point to the standards. PADI who certifies what? 70% of the divers? does require some descent in the pool but it's that 5 point descent thing and there's nothing in the standards that says a student needs to do a good job od controling descent speed. It's taught head up/foot down, so the diver can just dump all their weight and fin to control the descent and is the origin of what I call the butt first plumit. In OW, there is one free descent with a visual only reference required and one descent with no reference visual or otherwise allowed. On the other 2 dives the student can hand walk down a line. Still, what is the "pass" criteria? They just have to live. TSandM, your description of your descents in OW class seem to indicate a standards violation even given the minimal standards that we have.

Trim isn't even mentioned in the course materials and niether is gas management.

Anyway, the short answer is that this is all stuff that the training standards don't require to be taught and it's all stuff that the instructor may never even have learned because it isn't required in any class.

That's why I voted with the 60% in the poll. For me the major ommission was gas management. As Mike points out above it isn't in the OW course materials (in any meaningful way).

Now my instructor did IMO a reasonable job teaching the course material and a bit beyond it. But in the final analysis I'd have to concur that the course standards need improvement.

 

[TheRedHead]

When I think about my certification, I never successfully completed a descent without holding onto the BC of an instructor. (I did one descent without that, but I lost the descent line and my instructor, and ended up on my back on the bottom all by myself.) I never attained neutral buoyancy (had to fin not to sink) and had to hold somebody's hand to remain oriented in space. In retrospect, I have a hard time figuring out why anybody thought I was well enough trained to go out and dive, even restricting the diving to the conditions in which I got certified (which was less than 10' viz, cold water, and dry suit diving). But I went to Hawaii five dives later and felt like Superman.

No one in my class had the kind of problems you describe and I'm not sure my instructor would have certified anyone who did. BUT, my local diving conditions are 3 to 5 mm wetsuits, not drysuits and layers of underwear. I think the conditions in which you trained created many challenges that other OW students didn't face at the time of their initial training. I think if you had taken your class in Hawaii and made quite a number of warm water dives before drysuit training in more challenging conditions you would have felt much better prepared for the added task loading and physical challenges inherent in your local conditions.

So -- I'd like to hear the opinions of both students and instructors. Are we new divers too critical of ourselves? Or are standards too lax? Or are instructors not taught what to look for? I really don't know the answers to these questions.

I think you know that you have been much too hard on yourself. I can't speak of any other diver's training except my own, but I don't think it was too lax. My OW checkout instructor was quite tough and turned off my air and disconnected my BC inflator hose before the CESA from 50 feet. Gave me an authentic feel for what running out of air feels like and I was surprised to find that there was almost another breath in the tank at the surface.

If you look at training like learning to ride a bicycle, it's quite apparent that you don't go from training wheels to racing bikes in one step. Instead you take your first wobbly rides and probably fall over a couple of times, pick yourself up to try again. I don't blame my father because I fell over the first time he let go of my bike. My dad expected me to and assured me that everyone did. I think the best advice for any new diver would be go to and dive as much as possible in easy conditions such as a local lake or quarry so they can master the skills taught in a benign environment where you can't get lost and don't have to deal with anything other than buoyancy control and not running out of air.

Gas management is covered in the Deep Diving specialty and new divers are admonished not to dive beyond 60 feet. If the student reads the textbooks and takes the lessons to heart then they understand this and hopefully act accordingly.

Many people who have had the initial training experiences you did just decide diving is for the birds and never dive again. I believe in progressive exposure to more challenging conditions is the better way to learn to dive and enjoy diving. Then move on to cold water, low viz and the bouyancy skills needed in drysuit diving.