GUE Fundamentals (Rec) report (Part I)

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Lorenzoid

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Fundies report: a recreational diving couple’s odyssey

November 2014

There is no guarantee of passing GUE Fundamentals. But my wife and I are proof that nobody is too inept to earn a Rec Pass if they persevere.

Background

Sometime in 2012 my wife and I started thinking about what we could do to become “better” and “safer” divers. We were typical “vacation divers,” taking at most one week-long trip a year plus one or two weekend getaways to the Florida Keys. We discussed what we had read about GUE and DIR on Scubaboard, but we were both skeptical. We owned the kind of gear that has long gone hand in hand with our kind of diving, and found the prospect of buying and getting accustomed to new gear daunting. We had the same sort of concerns others have expressed over the years: Is it really something for recreational divers?‑‑the so-called “Hogarthian” rig sure looks like tech diving gear. Is it a cult?‑‑the people in the photos diving “in trim” and all in black look like Superman ninjas. Is the apparently rigorous training some kind of hazing? They say Fundies class can sometimes go from 7 am to 8 pm. We’re lazy middle-aged “vacation divers,” not Marines in boot camp!

We discussed it a lot over the course of several months. Finally, with some trepidation, we made a New Year's resolution to take Primer in 2013. We registered for an April 2013 Primer class in High Springs with Doug Mudry instructing. Class got rescheduled for July. We got a copy of the Jablonski book Doing it Right: The Fundamentals of Better Diving. The closer we got to the class date and the more we read and discussed it all, the more the apprehension built. I was determined to keep an open mind and tackle this thing, but my wife was not as sure and practically broke down in tears at one point, exclaiming (exact quote) “I’ll never enjoy diving again!” Her concern was that there would be so much “weird” equipment to deal with and such stilted procedures that we would no longer be able to just meander along a coral reef and, as they say, “watch the pretty fishes.”

We got some loaner equipment and a reassuring chat with fellow Atlantan and Scubaboard member katepnatl. I bought a HOG reg set with a 5-ft hose, a low-volume mask, and new fins.

Primer

Some people have said that the first time they dived in a BP/W it felt great, but that sure wasn’t our experience. It just felt weird. We were accustomed to having weight belts or integrated pockets where all the lead was more or less in front of us, acting as a keel, or at least on our flanks. Now, all of the weight was squarely on our backs, and we felt that the slightest bit of water movement tended to roll us over, especially in shallow water with little air in the wing. I had a steel plate with lead in trim pockets on the cambands snugged up against the plate, and my wife had an aluminum plate with a weighted STA, but the configuration didn’t seem to matter so much, as we both had the same problems maintaining stability. When we weren’t rolling, we were pitching forward. Each time it would begin slowly, and by the time we realized we needed to compensate it was too late and we’d find ourselves feet-up vertical, turned turtle, or in some other contortion. We must have looked comical. Dealing with that long hose was interesting, too, to say the least. Learning the frog and flutter kick was frustrating, but seemed like it would be manageable given time to practice. The really hard part was just staying in one place and balancing ourselves. Doug assured us that even with our rigs properly weighted for trim, a lot of it was simply a matter of learning to balance ourselves, like learning to ride a bicycle or like a baby learning to walk.

We came away from Primer with mixed feelings. Okay, we were no longer concerned GUE was a cult, and we even had fun, but it still seemed like tech diving stuff. We still weren’t sure why we needed to adopt DIR principles for our rec diving. It all felt uncomfortable and unnatural. What’s wrong with the good old bicycle kick we were taught in OW? And although we found the argument for maintaining good trim persuasive in theory, is it really that big a deal in practice for the average rec diver? As they say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And we still weren’t sure we wanted to make such radical changes to our gear.

After Primer we took a couple of dive trips, but we used our old familiar gear because we wanted to enjoy our dives without having to wrestle with the gear (or worse yet, pick up bad habits). Ideally, after Primer one should go out and dive dive dive, practicing all that was learned, in preparation for Fundies. But we found that we hadn’t absorbed even enough to let us do that much. In retrospect, I think we could have used a primer for Primer!

Fundies

Another year, another New Year’s resolution: Okay, we’ll take Fundies. We registered for a class beginning April 30, 2014, again with Doug Mudry. We downloaded and started reading the class materials. With an open mind toward the GUE principle that physical fitness is an integral part of the system, we started going to the gym more regularly, swimming laps on Saturdays and cycling on Sundays, and we each lost roughly 20 pounds. I bought my wife and me identical DSS BP/Ws and got her a HOG reg set like mine but with a 7-ft hose. I switched from a 5-ft hose to a 7-ft hose, as I had found the 5-ft hose uncomfortably short, and my wife said the 7-ft hose she had used in Primer had not felt unwieldy. To check out our gear, we took a road trip to Florida, stopping first at Ginnie Springs, and then a few shore dives at Blue Heron Bridge and Lauderdale-By-The-Sea. It was a fiasco. We fumbled with our gear, still had incredibly poor stability, and my wife’s weighting was wrong for reasons we couldn’t figure out. We returned to Atlanta frustrated. I tried to assure my wife that Doug would help her get her weighting sorted out.

Late April arrived‑‑showtime for us in High Springs. We met our classmates: another couple who were similarly seeking only to improve their recreational diving. So we were two couples, all in single tanks and wetsuits‑‑an unusual class composition for Fundies. Our relaxed approach to diving was apparent in the swim test: my wife did the entire thing in breaststroke, and the other woman did it entirely in backstroke‑‑and both with time to spare! Really, the swim test should be the least of anyone’s concerns.

The first day in the water‑‑at Ginnie Spring‑‑we were flopping all over the place as we had in Primer. Our kicks were improving, though. Doug helped my wife with her weighting issues, including suggesting she try out heavier fins, which she felt made a huge improvement. By the third day, could it be that we were getting just a little bit more stable? Maybe, but it was still ugly and uncomfortable. My wife’s frog kick was getting pretty good, and I had a good flutter. By the fourth day‑‑at Blue Grotto­­‑‑we were able to stay more or less in one place, so long as we had no task loading. We could maneuver ourselves into face-to-face position on the platform without bumping masks, but if we had to perform, say, an S-Drill, we would start to roll or pitch or float up and away or bump into each other. Our kicks were getting passable, and I discovered I could do a good helicopter, but a back kick was still out of my grasp. All it took was a misplaced back kick when attempting to avoid getting too close to each other, and it was up and away. By the last day, we knew we were slowly making progress, but we were still moving too far out of place and being too sloppy about it all to satisfy the standards for a Rec Pass. In the classroom portion, my wife struggled with the computations at first but persevered and got through it. In preparation for the written exam, my wife and I worked through some problems the night before, and we did well on the exam. However, in the final debriefing, Doug confirmed that we hadn’t earned a Pass for the course. Rather, we got the lame “Provisional Pass.” But we were in good spirits. We had fun and really felt we had learned something. However, it bothered us that our diving was not up to the standards. We knew we just needed more time.

Needless to say, on the 5-hour drive back to Atlanta we spent a long time talking it over. We were now determined to reach GUE’s threshold to be considered a competent recreational diver. The next day we started calling around to find a pool we could use.

Practice Practice Practice

Five days after Fundies we were in a local dive shop’s pool. (We have since developed a relationship with this shop, thanks to their exceptionally accommodating policy on pool use.) Because the pool was booked up on weekends for classes, my wife and I usually met on our lunch breaks for these pool sessions. The first thing we tried in the pool was an S-Drill. No way, Jose. It was laughable. My wife’s feet rose out from under her until she found herself nearly vertical. It was like some kind of slow-motion Olympic high diving maneuver. I hardly did better. How about a Basic Five then? Eh, easier than an S-Drill but still ugly. Just staying face to face and a proper distance apart to do these skills was a challenge. In our efforts not to bump our masks together, we tended to overcompensate and drift far apart or upwards. We thumbed it, ascended to the surface, and conferred. We set a goal for the day of just hovering in one place at the bottom of the pool for the rest of the session. That was plenty for us.

The second pool session was five days after the first. My wife tried out some HOG Tech-2 fins. This time I had brought a small traffic cone for us to use as a reference point. Because the pool bottom was white and smooth, we had found it difficult to judge our depth and position. Focusing on the top of the cone helped us orient ourselves. (Eventually, we would learn to keep our eyes focused on each other, but for now we would look at the cone.) The goal was to get close to that cone and stay there. We spent the entire dive working on facing each other in trim with the cone between us. The third pool session was more of the same. We were not ready for task loading yet. But we got to the point where we were at least able to hover in one place facing each other. We practiced moving ourselves slightly out of place and then getting back into position as fluidly as possible.

The fourth pool session I brought two clothespins that I clipped to the top of the cone. As a mildest-of-the-mild task loading exercise, I would remove a clothespin and then replace it while maintaining position and trim. Then my wife did the same. We did simply this quite a few times. Within a couple of pool sessions, we were exchanging our clothespins with each other and even switching them from one hand to another behind our backs. All while hanging in trim. Okay, now we were getting somewhere. After the fifth pool session (roughly 2.5 hours of post-Fundies bottom time), we felt we were ready to try some drills again and maybe wean ourselves off the cone.

I know it must be hard for some of you to believe that we were so inept that simply removing and replacing a clothespin from a cone a foot above the bottom of a pool was something we needed to work on, but it’s true. Casting our minds back when we had been diving with our old gear, we recalled no problems staying more or less in one place. In reality, I suspect we were moving more than we realized. It’s easy to remain stable when one has a little forward motion and/or some air in the wing, but staying truly still and stable in shallow water is not as easy as it may seem. It felt like we were learning to dive all over again. Instead of the reasonably experienced divers we thought we were (I had well over 200 dives and my wife about 150), we felt like babies learning to crawl. Well, as they say, you have to learn to crawl before you can learn to walk, and learn to walk before you can learn to run. As vacation divers with a few hundred dives, we had been walking all right, but we had never learned to crawl.

The sixth pool session we attempted Basic Five, Valve Drill (in a single tank, this just means being able to turn the knob) and, at the very end, an S-Drill. We would make mistakes now and then, but overall we did okay. Between the two of us, we were able to remember the correct way to do things and offer reminders to each other. In later pool sessions we added some frog, flutter, helicopter and back kicks to our routines. At some point we also found one of those “rocket” toys on the pool bottom and played catch with it while maintaining trim and position, just for some variety.

In total, we made 10 trips to the pool, each for essentially one dive, averaging 35 minutes bottom time. In the pool we did nothing but these exercises, punctuated by a few practice kicks (mainly to keep us from cramping up from hovering in one place for half an hour). We also practiced descending and ascending in team formation, i.e., in trim and facing each other. We did a proper GUE-EDGE pre-dive check each session. We were definitely improving with each visit to the pool. We decided it was time to leave the nest. We spent a day and a half at Lake Jocassee, SC‑‑a few shallow dives off the boat ramp and two boat dives in deeper water‑‑to see if we could maintain what we had achieved under less than pool-perfect conditions. We found it more difficult than the pool, especially ascending and attempting to hold a stop with no visual reference, but overall we felt we did okay.

At that point we contacted Doug to see if we could join in on a Fundies or Primer class with him and complete what we needed to do. We had to take a 4-week hiatus from our practice sessions in August. We eventually managed to schedule with Doug, and in late August did one more pool session and then another half day at the lake. We found we were able to do S-Drills in the lake a couple of feet above the bottom without stirring up silt. We felt we were ready. Having kept a detailed log of our practice sessions, I see we put in a total of 10 hours and 13 minutes of post-Fundies practice.

Return to High Springs

Just after Labor Day weekend 2014 we were back in High Springs for two days in Doug’s Fundies class that was then in progress. He had two students, both of whom were doing it in doubles and drysuit. We found it informative and encouraging to team up with them. They were pretty good divers, but they were struggling with task loading just as we had. They had to deal with real valve drills, a drysuit, and managing a light cord, and it was clearly not easy for them. We appreciated that we had it easy, doing it in single tanks, wetsuits, no lights, etc. But it was instructive for us to watch people who otherwise seemed much like us work with tech gear, with the goal of becoming cave divers. It was very encouraging for us as rec divers. We feel we benefited from the mixed class composition.

Those two days were a lot of fun, a bit of work, and much more than merely a “check-out” session. We learned a lot, and it pushed us to where we needed to be. We did things that we had run out of time to do in our original Fundies class (or, more likely, Doug knew we were not ready to attempt) like air-sharing ascents, ascents punctuated with stops, and working with an SMB/spool. We worked as a team, ascending and descending in team formation (eh, more or less). We were really starting to feel like confident, safety-conscious divers. The gear felt right. Stability, control and drills were being built into muscle memory. We could do competent back kicks. My wife’s frog kick was near demonstration quality. I wish I had video to post.

At the end of our final dive, Doug sprung some extra (i.e., not required for Rec Pass) task loading on my wife and me. Apparently this is similar to exercises in more advanced training except that Doug didn’t pile on the simulated failures to that extent. It was at this moment that we really felt we “got” the point of achieving a stable platform: It serves as a base from which to do whatever it is that one needs to do at the moment, whether that’s completing a stop, sharing air, deploying an SMB, or just taking pictures. You can’t do anything very well‑‑including helping a teammate‑‑if you have to divert some of your attention to maintaining stability and control; it has to be in muscle memory, on autopilot. And you sure can’t handle multiple tasks at once. It was a fun climax to the course and hammered home the point of it all. This stuff really is in fact applicable to rec diving. We exited the water feeling good about ourselves.

In the final debriefing, Doug was practically beaming telling us how far we had come. Man, we must really have sucked! :)

[CONTINUED IN "PART II"]
 
[PART II]

Now, Let’s Go Diving


I held off on writing this Fundies report until we had done a good bit of post-Fundies ocean diving just for fun‑‑the kind of diving we have long done, but now GUE style. A year ago, we would never have believed it would be so, but we really do find our dives less stressful and more enjoyable now that there are some planning and gear issues that are more or less preordained and skills that are more or less on autopilot. We're more comfortable and relaxed. We can position ourselves anywhere in the water we want, and we can get right up to the small critters that we really enjoy observing, take out a magnifying glass, and have an even closer look if we want. We can't imagine not having the back kick in our box of tools. Deeper dives no longer give rise to the anxiety we used to feel about the possibility of an out-of-gas situation. We "didn't know what we didn't know" about gas management, but I feel we now have a grip on it. I know my wife is carrying my spare gas and exactly how she will respond if I signal that I need it. Everything is choreographed. Things are just generally more predictable. Oh, I will never let myself become complacent, but at least there’s no uneasy feeling in the back of my mind that something might come at me out of left field. If I do feel uneasy, I think I can at least identify the source, which is comforting in itself.

Today, we both laugh at our preconceived notions and my wife's protestation that "I'll never enjoy diving again!" We can’t imagine going back to diving the way we used to. That would be more stressful, not less stressful. Our gear and everything else feels perfectly natural now. What long hose? Is it long?‑‑it’s just a normal hose. I hardly even notice myself unclipping my SPG and clipping it off again, it’s so ingrained in muscle memory; it feels so automatic that I could almost convince myself it’s on some kind of invisible retractor or console in front of me!

Our plans for the future? Well, perhaps the most important lesson we learned is not to begin with biases and prejudices about what will or will not enhance our diving experience. We’re also going to continue to not look TOO far ahead. Setting goals is fine, but taking small steps seems to work best for us. The next thing that we feel might enhance our diving would be drysuits. I was certified in Southern California back when I lived there but rarely dived there because I didn’t like being chilled and dealing with a Michelin Man neoprene suit. A few years ago on a trip to Catalina with my wife who had never dived in water below 80F or so, she voiced the same displeasure. I still have family in California, and I think we’ll be back to dive in a more comfortable manner, and then maybe other temperate-water destinations. We would love to meet up with divers in the GUE community. But that’s not going to be tomorrow. In the meantime, we’re just gonna do some diving.
 
What a WONDERFUL story! (And you guys should feel proud of yourselves -- it took me six months of regular local diving to convert my Rec provisional!)

The single biggest reason I have promoted this style of diving for the last nine years is that it makes things more FUN. Make it easy; make it streamlined, predictable, and relaxed. Did I say, make it easy? Yes, it takes an investment of time and money to get there. But once you do, you wonder why you ever did things any other way.
 
That was an awesome report. The reflection on how you both felt in the start to the post class dives tells volumes about the training. It is as much a psychological journey as it is an educational (and physical). Even for people who have no ambitions to go into caves or do doubles I still think it is the best dive training around. For the amount of hours of instruction and diving wisdom it cannot be beat.

Please mark your calendar and give an update a year from now. We would love to hear more.

PS if you come out to Monterey shoot me a PM would love to dive with you guys.... (promise i won't throw you any S-drills... unless you want to) lol
 
I love this report! Having been there from the beginning of your journey with GUE, I have to say, I'm just so glad you guys persevered!!! It's NOT the easiest thing in the world to do when you live somewhere like Atlanta where "local" diving is at best two-three hours away (lake jocassee) and the springs are five-six hours hours away. Plus, years of ingrained experience doing things differently can be hard to overcome. It really sounds like in the end, it was all worth it for you!

Thank you for posting your experience. IMO class reports like yours are important bc you clearly illustrate why it's worth sticking with it... I'm afraid that some people who encounter challenges early on just walk away.
 
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Awesome report guys. I just finished Fundies a couple of weeks ago - basically because I wasn't comfortable with my core buoyancy and propulsion skills, and what you said about the additional planning and thinking things through and the confidence that comes with that as the main thing really resonated with me.

Congratulations on your perseverance too, must have been an amazing feeling knowing that you'd got there!
 
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