DIR- GUE Fundies in Mexico

[bradStyle]

Good luck, and enjoy! It's a tough course but *incredibly* rewarding. In the weeks and months that follow you will develop super powers

 

[h2o_hamilton]

Haha. OP here.

I did decide to take Fundies from Laurent at Zero Gravity and will be there next week for the class.

I’ll follow back up with my thoughts after. Thanks to all for the advice and recommendations.

Tell him Ham says hi, please!

 

[Pat S]

Ok, I've completed the course and had some time to do some fun diving after so I can continue to absorb and practice. During the course GUE released the new standards and courses, so things will be different in the future.

Overall: The Zero Gravity facility was excellent, the training was way beyond my expectations, and Laurent Dahan was incredibly dedicated, knowledgeable, and helpful. It was way harder than I anticipated. But my diving skills and understanding of gas planning, dive planning, etc are all massively improved. It was an incredible experience and I'm really glad I did it. I passed with a rec pass.

To recap, my goal in taking the course was to become a more competent, safer diver. I did the course in single tank, no can light, and wetsuit as I'm most experienced in this configuration and my goal was a rec pass. I did not know the other students going into the course.

ZG: I know some comments here were that the facility isn't as good as it once was, but it was still a great place for the course. I stayed on site and didn't have a car. Easy to walk to a few restaurants, groceries are bit farther. It was simple, clean and nice to be right there on site with the classroom and equipment room. Classrooms are a little tight, but are set up well. Staff was great and Laurent met me on arrival to make sure everything went well. Coffee shops on site makes it super easy to grab a sandwich to go for lunch or a coffee in the morning. Tank fill area is well organized and makes the process easy, equipment room and drying racks are really nice to keep your gear organized. I think the most interesting thing was to meet and talk to all the people coming through. It was great to meet @johnkendall and @AnnikaPersson and others during the week that come by. It's also close to several cenotes for training so that saves time.

Fundies Course: There are lots of posts on this already, but still I was shocked at how much work it was and how long the days were. Part of this was due to a couple of last minute unavoidable appointments that Laurent needed to go to, but most days were very long and full of information. I'm really glad I read the materials ahead of time, watched the videos, and did the worksheets. Even though I'm US based, I decided to do the course in metric after going through everything in imperial before the course, because I realized quickly that metric was much easier and more versatile and the other students were also doing metric. Academically, I found the course really interesting and in water, I found it really challenging as a person with only about 100 dives. I'm an overthinker by nature and was just trying to focus on way too much. Toward the middle of the course on dives, I was starting to regress and make errors that I wasn't doing at the start because I was just trying to focus on too many things and started getting frustrated. But by the end, things smoothed out and the skills started to feel more intuitive which was really nice. We started with three students, one chose to stop training part way through and we finished with two.

Instructor: I really enjoyed my time with Laurent Dahan. I found him to be very professional, calm, patient, observant, direct with feedback, and helpful during the whole course. He was happy to stay late and work with us to make sure we all got the most out of the course. He would offer a lot of explanations as to why something was taught in the way it was which helped emphasize the importance of the skill or information as it connected to things that would be useful in subsequent training paths. Laurent is a quiet professional. He doesn't have a big social media presence or push his "brand", but he's really focused on providing students what they need for the course and I'd definitely recommend him to others. This was easily the best diving course (and possibly the best course on any topic) I've ever taken, both due to the curriculum and due to the instructor.

After the course I went over to Cozumel for some fun dives and to continue practicing and integrating many of the skills. I realized there how much I learned and was able to practice all the in water skills with currents and while doing the type of diving I do the most (fun dives, drift dives, warm water, on the reef looking at cool things). I also practiced the GUE-EDGE and gas planning in my head on the dives just to help that solidify, even thoughI wasn't diving with other GUE divers.

Overall, I'd absolutely recommend doing Fundies at ZG with Laurent without hesitation, but also acknowledged there are a bunch of incredible instructors down there who might be the right fit for other divers. I got to see Annika working with her students during the week at ZG and Emoke had a pair of students with her one day at one of the centotes where it was the three of us in my class and her with her two students. And everyone I observed was extremely professional and helpful.

Thanks to all on this thread for the advice and especially to @johnkendall for recommending ZG and Laurent.

Pat

 

[Barefoot_Lawyer]

Ok, I've completed the course and had some time to do some fun diving after so I can continue to absorb and practice. During the course GUE released the new standards and courses, so things will be different in the future.

Overall: The Zero Gravity facility was excellent, the training was way beyond my expectations, and Laurent Dahan was incredibly dedicated, knowledgeable, and helpful. It was way harder than I anticipated. But my diving skills and understanding of gas planning, dive planning, etc are all massively improved. It was an incredible experience and I'm really glad I did it. I passed with a rec pass.

To recap, my goal in taking the course was to become a more competent, safer diver. I did the course in single tank, no can light, and wetsuit as I'm most experienced in this configuration and my goal was a rec pass. I did not know the other students going into the course.

ZG: I know some comments here were that the facility isn't as good as it once was, but it was still a great place for the course. I stayed on site and didn't have a car. Easy to walk to a few restaurants, groceries are bit farther. It was simple, clean and nice to be right there on site with the classroom and equipment room. Classrooms are a little tight, but are set up well. Staff was great and Laurent met me on arrival to make sure everything went well. Coffee shops on site makes it super easy to grab a sandwich to go for lunch or a coffee in the morning. Tank fill area is well organized and makes the process easy, equipment room and drying racks are really nice to keep your gear organized. I think the most interesting thing was to meet and talk to all the people coming through. It was great to meet @johnkendall and @AnnikaPersson and others during the week that come by. It's also close to several cenotes for training so that saves time.

Fundies Course: There are lots of posts on this already, but still I was shocked at how much work it was and how long the days were. Part of this was due to a couple of last minute unavoidable appointments that Laurent needed to go to, but most days were very long and full of information. I'm really glad I read the materials ahead of time, watched the videos, and did the worksheets. Even though I'm US based, I decided to do the course in metric after going through everything in imperial before the course, because I realized quickly that metric was much easier and more versatile and the other students were also doing metric. Academically, I found the course really interesting and in water, I found it really challenging as a person with only about 100 dives. I'm an overthinker by nature and was just trying to focus on way too much. Toward the middle of the course on dives, I was starting to regress and make errors that I wasn't doing at the start because I was just trying to focus on too many things and started getting frustrated. But by the end, things smoothed out and the skills started to feel more intuitive which was really nice. We started with three students, one chose to stop training part way through and we finished with two.

Instructor: I really enjoyed my time with Laurent Dahan. I found him to be very professional, calm, patient, observant, direct with feedback, and helpful during the whole course. He was happy to stay late and work with us to make sure we all got the most out of the course. He would offer a lot of explanations as to why something was taught in the way it was which helped emphasize the importance of the skill or information as it connected to things that would be useful in subsequent training paths. Laurent is a quiet professional. He doesn't have a big social media presence or push his "brand", but he's really focused on providing students what they need for the course and I'd definitely recommend him to others. This was easily the best diving course (and possibly the best course on any topic) I've ever taken, both due to the curriculum and due to the instructor.

After the course I went over to Cozumel for some fun dives and to continue practicing and integrating many of the skills. I realized there how much I learned and was able to practice all the in water skills with currents and while doing the type of diving I do the most (fun dives, drift dives, warm water, on the reef looking at cool things). I also practiced the GUE-EDGE and gas planning in my head on the dives just to help that solidify, even thoughI wasn't diving with other GUE divers.

Overall, I'd absolutely recommend doing Fundies at ZG with Laurent without hesitation, but also acknowledged there are a bunch of incredible instructors down there who might be the right fit for other divers. I got to see Annika working with her students during the week at ZG and Emoke had a pair of students with her one day at one of the centotes where it was the three of us in my class and her with her two students. And everyone I observed was extremely professional and helpful.

Thanks to all on this thread for the advice and especially to @johnkendall for recommending ZG and Laurent.

Pat

Nice write up and congrats! There’s nothing wrong with telling your insta-buddy you want to do a pre-dive equipment check and for them to follow along and call out their differences. Changing the culture of safety for recreational divers starts one GUE-EDGE at a time!

 

[Todd Kurth]

Ok, I've completed the course and had some time to do some fun diving after so I can continue to absorb and practice. During the course GUE released the new standards and courses, so things will be different in the future.

Overall: The Zero Gravity facility was excellent, the training was way beyond my expectations, and Laurent Dahan was incredibly dedicated, knowledgeable, and helpful. It was way harder than I anticipated. But my diving skills and understanding of gas planning, dive planning, etc are all massively improved. It was an incredible experience and I'm really glad I did it. I passed with a rec pass.

To recap, my goal in taking the course was to become a more competent, safer diver. I did the course in single tank, no can light, and wetsuit as I'm most experienced in this configuration and my goal was a rec pass. I did not know the other students going into the course.

ZG: I know some comments here were that the facility isn't as good as it once was, but it was still a great place for the course. I stayed on site and didn't have a car. Easy to walk to a few restaurants, groceries are bit farther. It was simple, clean and nice to be right there on site with the classroom and equipment room. Classrooms are a little tight, but are set up well. Staff was great and Laurent met me on arrival to make sure everything went well. Coffee shops on site makes it super easy to grab a sandwich to go for lunch or a coffee in the morning. Tank fill area is well organized and makes the process easy, equipment room and drying racks are really nice to keep your gear organized. I think the most interesting thing was to meet and talk to all the people coming through. It was great to meet @johnkendall and @AnnikaPersson and others during the week that come by. It's also close to several cenotes for training so that saves time.

Fundies Course: There are lots of posts on this already, but still I was shocked at how much work it was and how long the days were. Part of this was due to a couple of last minute unavoidable appointments that Laurent needed to go to, but most days were very long and full of information. I'm really glad I read the materials ahead of time, watched the videos, and did the worksheets. Even though I'm US based, I decided to do the course in metric after going through everything in imperial before the course, because I realized quickly that metric was much easier and more versatile and the other students were also doing metric. Academically, I found the course really interesting and in water, I found it really challenging as a person with only about 100 dives. I'm an overthinker by nature and was just trying to focus on way too much. Toward the middle of the course on dives, I was starting to regress and make errors that I wasn't doing at the start because I was just trying to focus on too many things and started getting frustrated. But by the end, things smoothed out and the skills started to feel more intuitive which was really nice. We started with three students, one chose to stop training part way through and we finished with two.

Instructor: I really enjoyed my time with Laurent Dahan. I found him to be very professional, calm, patient, observant, direct with feedback, and helpful during the whole course. He was happy to stay late and work with us to make sure we all got the most out of the course. He would offer a lot of explanations as to why something was taught in the way it was which helped emphasize the importance of the skill or information as it connected to things that would be useful in subsequent training paths. Laurent is a quiet professional. He doesn't have a big social media presence or push his "brand", but he's really focused on providing students what they need for the course and I'd definitely recommend him to others. This was easily the best diving course (and possibly the best course on any topic) I've ever taken, both due to the curriculum and due to the instructor.

After the course I went over to Cozumel for some fun dives and to continue practicing and integrating many of the skills. I realized there how much I learned and was able to practice all the in water skills with currents and while doing the type of diving I do the most (fun dives, drift dives, warm water, on the reef looking at cool things). I also practiced the GUE-EDGE and gas planning in my head on the dives just to help that solidify, even thoughI wasn't diving with other GUE divers.

Overall, I'd absolutely recommend doing Fundies at ZG with Laurent without hesitation, but also acknowledged there are a bunch of incredible instructors down there who might be the right fit for other divers. I got to see Annika working with her students during the week at ZG and Emoke had a pair of students with her one day at one of the centotes where it was the three of us in my class and her with her two students. And everyone I observed was extremely professional and helpful.

Thanks to all on this thread for the advice and especially to @johnkendall for recommending ZG and Laurent.

Pat

Great write up!. Overthinking , and regression during the course is spot on for me. It’s good to set expectations for people with this information. Perhaps another way to describe it, is that all the skills were super easy when not maintaining trim. But, once I started to worry about trim, and maintaining position in the water, I started messing up drills. Backwards frog kicks are essential and my mine were terrible, mostly because of bad trim! Thus, relearning what good trim feels like is the aspect I wish I would have understood and been able to work on effectively before the course. Post course, many pool sessions have been efficient at helping me progressively improve. Video helps show, despite what one feels, that they are really doing it wrong

 

[drummerc]

Ok, I've completed the course and had some time to do some fun diving after so I can continue to absorb and practice. During the course GUE released the new standards and courses, so things will be different in the future.

Overall: The Zero Gravity facility was excellent, the training was way beyond my expectations, and Laurent Dahan was incredibly dedicated, knowledgeable, and helpful. It was way harder than I anticipated. But my diving skills and understanding of gas planning, dive planning, etc are all massively improved. It was an incredible experience and I'm really glad I did it. I passed with a rec pass.

To recap, my goal in taking the course was to become a more competent, safer diver. I did the course in single tank, no can light, and wetsuit as I'm most experienced in this configuration and my goal was a rec pass. I did not know the other students going into the course.

ZG: I know some comments here were that the facility isn't as good as it once was, but it was still a great place for the course. I stayed on site and didn't have a car. Easy to walk to a few restaurants, groceries are bit farther. It was simple, clean and nice to be right there on site with the classroom and equipment room. Classrooms are a little tight, but are set up well. Staff was great and Laurent met me on arrival to make sure everything went well. Coffee shops on site makes it super easy to grab a sandwich to go for lunch or a coffee in the morning. Tank fill area is well organized and makes the process easy, equipment room and drying racks are really nice to keep your gear organized. I think the most interesting thing was to meet and talk to all the people coming through. It was great to meet @johnkendall and @AnnikaPersson and others during the week that come by. It's also close to several cenotes for training so that saves time.

Fundies Course: There are lots of posts on this already, but still I was shocked at how much work it was and how long the days were. Part of this was due to a couple of last minute unavoidable appointments that Laurent needed to go to, but most days were very long and full of information. I'm really glad I read the materials ahead of time, watched the videos, and did the worksheets. Even though I'm US based, I decided to do the course in metric after going through everything in imperial before the course, because I realized quickly that metric was much easier and more versatile and the other students were also doing metric. Academically, I found the course really interesting and in water, I found it really challenging as a person with only about 100 dives. I'm an overthinker by nature and was just trying to focus on way too much. Toward the middle of the course on dives, I was starting to regress and make errors that I wasn't doing at the start because I was just trying to focus on too many things and started getting frustrated. But by the end, things smoothed out and the skills started to feel more intuitive which was really nice. We started with three students, one chose to stop training part way through and we finished with two.

Instructor: I really enjoyed my time with Laurent Dahan. I found him to be very professional, calm, patient, observant, direct with feedback, and helpful during the whole course. He was happy to stay late and work with us to make sure we all got the most out of the course. He would offer a lot of explanations as to why something was taught in the way it was which helped emphasize the importance of the skill or information as it connected to things that would be useful in subsequent training paths. Laurent is a quiet professional. He doesn't have a big social media presence or push his "brand", but he's really focused on providing students what they need for the course and I'd definitely recommend him to others. This was easily the best diving course (and possibly the best course on any topic) I've ever taken, both due to the curriculum and due to the instructor.

After the course I went over to Cozumel for some fun dives and to continue practicing and integrating many of the skills. I realized there how much I learned and was able to practice all the in water skills with currents and while doing the type of diving I do the most (fun dives, drift dives, warm water, on the reef looking at cool things). I also practiced the GUE-EDGE and gas planning in my head on the dives just to help that solidify, even thoughI wasn't diving with other GUE divers.

Overall, I'd absolutely recommend doing Fundies at ZG with Laurent without hesitation, but also acknowledged there are a bunch of incredible instructors down there who might be the right fit for other divers. I got to see Annika working with her students during the week at ZG and Emoke had a pair of students with her one day at one of the centotes where it was the three of us in my class and her with her two students. And everyone I observed was extremely professional and helpful.

Thanks to all on this thread for the advice and especially to @johnkendall for recommending ZG and Laurent.

Pat

I also just finished fundies in Mexico with Laurent at ZG. I also did a drysuit primer and a doubles primer immediately beforehand and ended up doing fundies in full tech setup. I just missed the tech pass due to inconsistent trim (one day I cramped badly and couldn't relax my legs to save my life), but was fairly happy to end with a strong rec pass and will probably pop back down at some point to upgrade to a tech pass.

I'd definetly echo OP on having a great experience at ZG and with Laurent. It took me a few days to get used to his style (he's French and sometimes can have some sarcastic/dry humor), but he honestly gave great instruction (apart from telling me to relax my mega cramped legs that just wouldn't listen haha). The class was more training and work than I had anticipated, but I learned a lot and had a great time doing it. I would suggest people don't try and be a hero and do 8 days of training in a row like me... in hindsight I would have split it to 2 sessions, but my goal was to take the old style fundamentals while it existed (in tech setup) and time was against me. I personally learn better in a classroom vs e-learning, so was eager to do it the old way. That said, it seems like the new class breakdown makes sure that you aren't going to wear yourself out training and you can learn with bite sized steps.

I also travelled by myself and the other student there had previously done a few days of fundies which was great because he had a solid foundation and made life easier for me and my lack of back kicking skills for the first few days. He ended up getting his tech pass which was well deserved and we had a great time together. It really is team diving and I feel pretty lucky on having a good random partner for it, but if you have someone you dive with regularly it would probably be worth doing the class with them to avoid someone dropping out etc. My buddy for this class previously took fundies with someone that dropped and thus had to come back to finish his pass.

The lodging at ZG was actually quite nice, not like 5* hotel, but had everything you needed and was clean and spacious with good wifi, hot showers, etc. I stayed at an airbnb nearby that was fairly garbage for a few days before they had space at ZG and was very happy when I got to move into my room at ZG. The staff there were all great and the coffee shop was honestly the best around. Fortunately or not, the shop is a Halcyon shop, which means that everything there is pretty pricey... even condom catheters are $5 a pop, so bring your own and buy all the double enders, wetnotes, etc. you might want before heading down. They did have plenty of things available for rent and Laurent let me borrow fins, doubles wing, and a cannister light for the classes so I didn't have to go hog wild buying gear or anything, but still managed to spend a pretty penny on the ability to pee during my ~4hr in the water each day.

Overall would recommend ZG and Laurent. Was money and time well spent.

 

[Pat S]

@drummerc Awesome! I can't believe you did the 2 primers and fundies after. That's a lot!

One of the folks in my class also had a terrible AirB&B experience.

Glad your experience with both Laurent and ZG were also well worth the time an money.

 

[Lorenzoid]

I also just finished fundies in Mexico with Laurent at ZG. I also did a drysuit primer and a doubles primer immediately beforehand and ended up doing fundies in full tech setup. I just missed the tech pass due to inconsistent trim (one day I cramped badly and couldn't relax my legs to save my life), but was fairly happy to end with a strong rec pass and will probably pop back down at some point to upgrade to a tech pass.

Well done! And Laurent is great, though I only hired him as a cave guide, not for any training. If you "just missed" the tech pass, that is impressive. I spent a year and half after drysuit and doubles primer getting closer and closer to tech pass upgrade level, according to some instructors I hired for coaching sessions during that time, and more than once I felt like the tech pass would always be just out of reach for me. I'm sure with a little practice you'll nail it on the next trip down.

 

[drummerc]

Yeah I was pleasantly surprised when he said he was seriously considering giving me the tech pass on the last day if it wasn't for my trim consistency. I was just trying to give my partner the best reference possible for buoyancy so he could earn HIS tech pass haha. In the end, I'm not looking to take tech 1 or cave 1 in the next few months anyway, so I'm very happy to spend a few months diving locally and refining my skills. If I'm honest, I'm more interested in taking Rec 3 (Master Diver now) as a next class anyway, since it seems to be tech-lite and involves trimix and short deco on 32%. I don't have any real need to go deep, but I love the theory and would like next steps to involve some sort of deco and trimix.

 

[Lorenzoid]

Yeah I was pleasantly surprised when he said he was seriously considering giving me the tech pass on the last day if it wasn't for my trim consistency. I was just trying to give my partner the best reference possible for buoyancy so he could earn HIS tech pass haha. In the end, I'm not looking to take tech 1 or cave 1 in the next few months anyway, so I'm very happy to spend a few months diving locally and refining my skills. If I'm honest, I'm more interested in taking Rec 3 (Master Diver now) as a next class anyway, since it seems to be tech-lite and involves trimix and short deco on 32%. I don't have any real need to go deep, but I love the theory and would like next steps to involve some sort of deco and trimix.

Your local diving is great--with a drysuit. I got certified in San Diego when I lived there a long time ago.