DIR- GUE GUE Fundamentals report, August 2022 on Catalina with Steve Millington

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edoralive

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Heading home from a week in the LA area for GUE Fundamentals with Steve Millington. I always appreciate reading write-ups, especially regarding things that are such an investment of time, money, and ego death. Here's my writeup of the course; may it help someone who's looking into it.

The Instructor:

Steve Millington is on this forum, and is an outstanding instructor. From what I understand, he’s been teaching as a GUE instructor full-time for a dozen years, but has been teaching diving (and drumming!) a lot longer than that. It shows in his presentation, comfort with the material, and ability to present things efficiently. He provided fair, direct, and compassionate feedback. He was able to identify not only what elements of my diving continue to be underwater dumpster fires (most of them), but which I’m actually not bad at (learning communications, awareness). He is also just very chill, despite our every effort to rile him up with our shifting quality of teamwork and diving skills.

The location:

We spent day one at Steven’s home in the northern reaches of LA, then crossed LA to the San Pedro port of the Catalina Express for a departure to Catalina Island early on day 2. We spent the next two nights on the island at the Seaport Inn, which was pretty cozy. Not the ritz, but a solid spot to stay for a few days, with super friendly staff and a much needed shuttle service.

We dove in the Casino Point park, although we spent the vast majority of our time in the gravely area away from the kelp. We did venture into the kelp a few times, and then it became clear why the park is so cherished.

The team:

We had a student team of three, a dude from up a bit in CA somewhere (300+ dives over three years), a gent from Switzerland (150+ dives over a long time), and me in from Minnesota (80 dives over 1.5 years). We all had slightly different paths to GUE, but were there to get better and safer as divers.

The course:

True to form, Fundamentals is very challenging. I have 85 dives, and thought I was pretty good at the sport. And maybe I am, but I am definitely not good at GUE diving, not yet. The seven dives, of which six are required, all ran about 50 minutes or so and were well briefed beforehand. We often would spend time on land drills before venturing back in to dive, then debriefed on the surface and back at the gear before beginning again.

One of the hallmarks of the GUE course is the underwater video recordings. They’re not as profound as I thought they would be - it was instructive, for sure, but in general I knew I was diving like an out-of-standard basket of potatoes, so the videos really just confirmed what I could feel was going wrong. They were SUPER helpful in helping me see how floppy my Cressi Frogs are. Like shockingly so.

It was often hard to figure out what to do to correct something. Like, often my trim was head high, and the solution is to simply flatten out, but I could never really figure out how to do that reliably, and it eludes me still.

The dives were always challenging, and when we felt we had something pinned down, Steve would add a wrinkle and our team was cast back to the struggle bus once again. Progression was logical, and everything seemed to build on the thing before it, culminating in an evaluation dive for our final trip below.

Other than the dive position - the techy flat trim GUE is known so well for, the thing that stuck out to me the most was the emphasis on teamwork. You plan as a team, you GUE EDGE as a team, you dive as a team, you debrief as a team. That’s a far cry from anything I’ve experienced at PADI, and on my subsequent dives without GUE divers is something I miss already. The course was never fun, but the team aspect itself was really meaningful and something novel in my diving experience. It was also remarkable at how our own individual diving skill, or lack thereof, contributed to the challenge of diving as a team. When we would triangle up as a team, we were constantly swimming toward one another, or in a circle around one another, ascending and descending at different rates, holding target depth with differing levels of success, etc. - it all made it way more challenging!

In the end, I passed the course, but it felt like a generous pass to the world of GUE. Lots of room to grow.

Also the back fin is hard asf no matter what anyone says.

Personal notes:

I pulled the wrist seal out of my drysuit after the third dive, which was a real bummer. I couldn’t figure out how to quick change the seal (which is my own fault), and spent the rest of the class in a 7mm wetsuit different weighting and with jetfins instead of the frog plusses I’d come in with. That was a real mindscrew. I have a lot of work to do on the basics, but I wonder how much was me trying to adapt on the fly to different equipment.

I also live in MN, where there is a very, very small GUE diving community. Like maybe four divers spread across the state. That’s sort of a bummer in terms of future growth.

If I were to do it again:

I would, totally. I wanted to quit the course on at least four of the seven dives. I’m glad I didn’t. I feel more capable, thought way more about equipment with a professional than I have in all of my PADI training to this point, and am thinking more about standardization, safety, and team diving than I ever had before.

My only critique is the location, which I was aware of and signed up for. We spent one day on the north side of LA working at a home, and then the second day we departed early from San Pedro to Catalina, where we dropped our gear at the hotel then went to the park for our first dives.

Catalina is a lovely diving spot, and a lovely town to wander around. The travel added a lot of stress to the week for me, and made for some truly long days (day 2 we rose at 5:30 or so, caught the boat, and then were working to 5-6 at night. Things sometimes felt crunched as we worked around the dive shop’s hours or the hours of the boat. It might feel less crunched to do the whole course on the island and skip the travel for day 2.

Again, I knew the details of the course when I signed up, but it did ultimately feel like it added a level of difficulty to the course that wasn’t necessary.
 
Congratulations! GUE Fundamentals cert. will change the way you dive in a positive way for the rest of your diving career. I believe the added stress on top of the rigid diving program only helps to make you a more confident diver. It is not easy and it is a certification that requires a lot of hard work to accomplish, something to be proud of.
 
It was often hard to figure out what to do to correct something. Like, often my trim was head high, and the solution is to simply flatten out, but I could never really figure out how to do that reliably, and it eludes me still.
I'd really check to see if you're not head heavy, when you're head heavy you drop your legs to regain your balance and there is no just "flattening out" to fix it you need to lower your back plate.
 
Heading home from a week in the LA area for GUE Fundamentals with Steve Millington. I always appreciate reading write-ups, especially regarding things that are such an investment of time, money, and ego death. Here's my writeup of the course; may it help someone who's looking into it.

The Instructor:

Steve Millington is on this forum, and is an outstanding instructor. From what I understand, he’s been teaching as a GUE instructor full-time for a dozen years, but has been teaching diving (and drumming!) a lot longer than that. It shows in his presentation, comfort with the material, and ability to present things efficiently. He provided fair, direct, and compassionate feedback. He was able to identify not only what elements of my diving continue to be underwater dumpster fires (most of them), but which I’m actually not bad at (learning communications, awareness). He is also just very chill, despite our every effort to rile him up with our shifting quality of teamwork and diving skills.

The location:

We spent day one at Steven’s home in the northern reaches of LA, then crossed LA to the San Pedro port of the Catalina Express for a departure to Catalina Island early on day 2. We spent the next two nights on the island at the Seaport Inn, which was pretty cozy. Not the ritz, but a solid spot to stay for a few days, with super friendly staff and a much needed shuttle service.

We dove in the Casino Point park, although we spent the vast majority of our time in the gravely area away from the kelp. We did venture into the kelp a few times, and then it became clear why the park is so cherished.

The team:

We had a student team of three, a dude from up a bit in CA somewhere (300+ dives over three years), a gent from Switzerland (150+ dives over a long time), and me in from Minnesota (80 dives over 1.5 years). We all had slightly different paths to GUE, but were there to get better and safer as divers.

The course:

True to form, Fundamentals is very challenging. I have 85 dives, and thought I was pretty good at the sport. And maybe I am, but I am definitely not good at GUE diving, not yet. The seven dives, of which six are required, all ran about 50 minutes or so and were well briefed beforehand. We often would spend time on land drills before venturing back in to dive, then debriefed on the surface and back at the gear before beginning again.

One of the hallmarks of the GUE course is the underwater video recordings. They’re not as profound as I thought they would be - it was instructive, for sure, but in general I knew I was diving like an out-of-standard basket of potatoes, so the videos really just confirmed what I could feel was going wrong. They were SUPER helpful in helping me see how floppy my Cressi Frogs are. Like shockingly so.

It was often hard to figure out what to do to correct something. Like, often my trim was head high, and the solution is to simply flatten out, but I could never really figure out how to do that reliably, and it eludes me still.

The dives were always challenging, and when we felt we had something pinned down, Steve would add a wrinkle and our team was cast back to the struggle bus once again. Progression was logical, and everything seemed to build on the thing before it, culminating in an evaluation dive for our final trip below.

Other than the dive position - the techy flat trim GUE is known so well for, the thing that stuck out to me the most was the emphasis on teamwork. You plan as a team, you GUE EDGE as a team, you dive as a team, you debrief as a team. That’s a far cry from anything I’ve experienced at PADI, and on my subsequent dives without GUE divers is something I miss already. The course was never fun, but the team aspect itself was really meaningful and something novel in my diving experience. It was also remarkable at how our own individual diving skill, or lack thereof, contributed to the challenge of diving as a team. When we would triangle up as a team, we were constantly swimming toward one another, or in a circle around one another, ascending and descending at different rates, holding target depth with differing levels of success, etc. - it all made it way more challenging!

In the end, I passed the course, but it felt like a generous pass to the world of GUE. Lots of room to grow.

Also the back fin is hard asf no matter what anyone says.

Personal notes:

I pulled the wrist seal out of my drysuit after the third dive, which was a real bummer. I couldn’t figure out how to quick change the seal (which is my own fault), and spent the rest of the class in a 7mm wetsuit different weighting and with jetfins instead of the frog plusses I’d come in with. That was a real mindscrew. I have a lot of work to do on the basics, but I wonder how much was me trying to adapt on the fly to different equipment.

I also live in MN, where there is a very, very small GUE diving community. Like maybe four divers spread across the state. That’s sort of a bummer in terms of future growth.

If I were to do it again:

I would, totally. I wanted to quit the course on at least four of the seven dives. I’m glad I didn’t. I feel more capable, thought way more about equipment with a professional than I have in all of my PADI training to this point, and am thinking more about standardization, safety, and team diving than I ever had before.

My only critique is the location, which I was aware of and signed up for. We spent one day on the north side of LA working at a home, and then the second day we departed early from San Pedro to Catalina, where we dropped our gear at the hotel then went to the park for our first dives.

Catalina is a lovely diving spot, and a lovely town to wander around. The travel added a lot of stress to the week for me, and made for some truly long days (day 2 we rose at 5:30 or so, caught the boat, and then were working to 5-6 at night. Things sometimes felt crunched as we worked around the dive shop’s hours or the hours of the boat. It might feel less crunched to do the whole course on the island and skip the travel for day 2.

Again, I knew the details of the course when I signed up, but it did ultimately feel like it added a level of difficulty to the course that wasn’t necessary.
There are at least three GUE divers is Rochester, MN. They mostly dive at Lake Wazee because it is closer to Rochester.
 
Some people enjoy spending money learning techniques that come naturally to others. Trim being one.
This literally applies to everything and for every skill. A bit difficult to see your point...

Most dive professionals I have seen lack basic trim/hovering skills, so maybe we should promote more spending money to learn fundamental techniques that doesn't come naturally to most, including them.
 
Nothing like seeing an instructor with hundreds of dives having to use his hands to position himself in the water. It's been a fairly common thing on trips I've been on.
 
Nothing like seeing an instructor with hundreds of dives having to use his hands to position himself in the water. It's been a fairly common thing on trips I've been on.
You noticed the problem because you enjoy spending money learning techniques. Since you wouldn't notice otherwise, maybe that's the problem after all. :p
 
You noticed the problem because you enjoy spending money learning techniques. Since you wouldn't notice otherwise, maybe that's the problem after all. :p
It wasn't a problem until he noticed you enjoyed spending money learning techniques that weren't actually techniques.
 
It wasn't a problem until he noticed you enjoyed spending money learning techniques that weren't actually techniques.
Indeed hovering without moving might not be a technique due to lack of effort and activity. The problem is the fact that there are not enough windows underwater to practice the wax-on wax-off hovering techniques that are displayed by most naturally gifted DMs and Is.
 
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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