GUE gear config

[Lorenzoid]

I’m sold on the backplate and wing, already placed an order from the instructor. I’m still not sold on the long hose- and I think that’s ok. It wasn’t too hard to manage but it is more work than my current setup, and I like my current Atomic reg and SS1. I will take away some of the teachings from the course - and had definitely had a ton of help in getting the right adjustments to the new bc which made a big difference in trim. But other small things like you always have to wear your dive watch on the right (cuz a light/cord that I don’t have needs to go on the left), always have to unclip spg to check even tho I can see it fine without unclipping etc. felt awkward. I’m sure if I started with GUE from the get go all of this would be fine, but 250 dives in I’m used to a certain setup and if it doesn’t make my diving easier NOW I don’t really want to make adjustments NOW for things that I could/maybe/possibly want to expand to in the future.

I was once in your shoes: going into Fundies after 200 dives using a jacket BC and traditional OW hose lengths. I found it very difficult in the new gear to get back to the level of performance I had achieved with my old familiar gear, and of course GUE only made it more difficult by showing me how I needed to learn to do it all while task loaded.

So how did it turn out? I left Fundies full of Kool Aid. Er, I mean I bought into the benefits of the GUE gear configuration for OW diving. With post-Fundies practice, it not only became easier but soon became second nature. That was 8 years ago. And yet ... today I'm still not 100% "sold" on the configuration for OW. I have made several attempts over the past few years to learn to use the so-called "streamlined OW" configuration--with a 40-inch primary hose on an elbow fitting--and every time I have reverted to my 7-foot primary. As you know, once something is deeply ingrained in muscle memory, it's hard to change. I really do believe that for some specific types of diving--the one I have in mind is diving from a RIB crowded with other divers--I would prefer a primary hose that's easier for the boat crew to handle. Someday (soon!) I will get myself "trained" on the streamlined OW configuration.

 

[Angelo Farina]

That is kinda like going to -- and paying for -- a fancy Chinese restaurant because you like soy sauce,

Maybe you should look for an instructor who will teach you different kicks.

@jjmochi, I do not know if this is common in your country. I am a finned swimming instructor. Which means that many years ago I did teach courses only about kicking properly, with various kinds of fins, including the most efficient ones (monofins or long carbonfiber fins) and very short ones (for underwater hockey, for example).
Cave divers (GUE-style or others) focus on precision movements with low efficiency, short and hard fins (like the bad copy of the Jetfins made by Scubapro), and avoiding raising silt from the bottom. That's the way inside a wreck or a cave.
This way of kicking (and these short and rigid fins) are not suited to other environments.
When working at Maldives, for example, I often had to catch and recover these guys, equipped with short fins, insisting on frog kicking in strong currents, and unable to speed as required.
We were sponsored by Cressi, so we had plenty of Rondine Gara fins available, After those recovery actions, we always gave our customers a pair of our Rondine Gara followed by a short finned-swimming lesson on how to use them properly in strong currents..
Having standardised equipment and propulsion can appear to be a good idea. but when this is done at extreme levels, for an extreme and specific environment, you should not expect that the same equipment and body actions are optimal in entirely different environments. So, if your goal is just to learn many different kicking styles, and using different types of fins (each suited to a specific different environment) you should follow a course as the ones I was teaching years ago, if available.
If not available, get the best you can from the GUE fundamentals, but feel free, after it, to follow other courses and to learn different methods, using different equipment. The larger portfolio you have of skills and the wider range of equipment you can employ, the most adaptable you will be to different situations.
A good course I always recommend is a freediving course: even if you are strictly a scuba diver, mastering a two-minutes long breatholding dive down to 20 or 25 meters will make you confident of your capability to survive in case your scuba system fails. And usually free diving instructors are good at teaching different equalization techniques (such as Frenzel and BTV) and different kicking styles (including dolphin kick with the monofin, the most efficient one).
They are also great about being streamlined and hydrodynamic.
Just compare in the following photos how streamlined is a cave diver (frog kicking in GUE style) and then a freediver performing a decent high efficiency flutter kick:

 

[Nemrod]

Frog kicking as the end all and be all and only kick has been greatly oversold. The frog kick is also probably the most under utilized and all around useful kick for cruising along efficiently.

James

 

[Blackcrusader]

Frog kicking as the end all and be all and only kick has been greatly oversold. The frog kick is also probably the most under utilized and all around useful kick for cruising along efficiently. James

I use it for going really slowly really. Then again as I am looking for things to take photos of I want to go slow. I think the OP will improve with his courses. I also believe once he stops using his support stick and then has both hands free for the camera platform then getting that being able to be motionless in the water or having your hand's motionless while your body moves in the current will come from more diving.

 

[mariosx]

@jjmochi, I do not know if this is common in your country. I am a finned swimming instructor. Which means that many years ago I did teach courses only about kicking properly, with various kinds of fins, including the most efficient ones (monofins or long carbonfiber fins) and very short ones (for underwater hockey, for example).
Cave divers (GUE-style or others) focus on precision movements with low efficiency, short and hard fins (like the bad copy of the Jetfins made by Scubapro), and avoiding raising silt from the bottom. That's the way inside a wreck or a cave.

Could you define/explain what you mean by "efficiency"?

This way of kicking (and these short and rigid fins) are not suited to other environments.
When working at Maldives, for example, I often had to catch and recover these guys, equipped with short fins, insisting on frog kicking in strong currents, and unable to speed as required.

GUE teaches also flutter kicking, but indeed the focus is not on diving with strong currents and potentially different procedures and tools might be needed (for example DPVs).
To my limited experience, in all drift dives I have done and with currents high enough to force the captain execute maneuvers to catch some of the divers I found no issue with my jetfins, but for sure they might not be enough for the currents you are describing. All in all, GUE-F, as stated in the class description trains people on basic skill refinement from OW and AOW level, and optionally (drysuit, doubles, canister light). Nothing more, nothing less. I would like to argue that potentially diving in high currents necessitate skills and tools beyond that skope, as also ice diving, etc.

Some GUE instructors are also free diving instructors themselves, thus I am confident that I good chunk of them already knows the pros and cons of different fins and they could potentially give their takes on the appropriate fins in different situations, which ofc is beyond the scope of GUE training.

Having standardised equipment and propulsion can appear to be a good idea. but when this is done at extreme levels, for an extreme and specific environment, you should not expect that the same equipment and body actions are optimal in entirely different environments. So, if your goal is just to learn many different kicking styles, and using different types of fins (each suited to a specific different environment) you should follow a course as the ones I was teaching years ago, if available.

I am not sure how standardized procedures and propulsion is disproved as a universal concept by this argument. Standards could (and do) necessitate different procedures and tools for different type of dives within GUE or other organizations/agencies with similar emphasis on standards. To the best of my limited knowledge, GUE doesn't have procedures (yet at least) for diving in rivers, or high currents, etc, because it's not the target environment of the agency for conservation or exploration. On the other hand they have procedures (I assume) for cave diving against currents, which objectively have no trouble executing safely using jetfins, or other equivalent fins.

They are also great about being streamlined and hydrodynamic.
Just compare in the following photos how streamlined is a cave diver (frog kicking in GUE style) and then a freediver performing a decent high efficiency flutter kick:

Could you also define what you mean by efficiency here?
Both look very streamlined for the amount of gear they need to carry. I am not sure about the value of such comparison. It seems to me that the 2 people in the picture have COMPLETELY DIFFERENT objectives and definitions of efficiency, which results into completely different equipment, procedures, and mentality.
In your opinion, where is the commonality providing a common frame that would validate such comparison?

 

[ginti]

deleted

 

[rddvet]

That is kinda like going to -- and paying for -- a fancy Chinese restaurant because you like soy sauce,

Maybe you should look for an instructor who will teach you different kicks.

You have any gue training? Kicks are taught in depth in every single fundamentals class to the same level in each instructors class. I wish the same could be said about non gue instructors but it’s much harder. There are awesome instructors who thoroughly teach kicks. Then there’s the majority that don’t teach it anywhere nearly as in depth as in a fundies class. So it’s a crapshoot figuring out if you’re taking the class with an instructor who will really work on mastery of the basic kicks. Gue takes that out of the equation by requiring the same high level of instruction by each instructor

 

[ginti]

You have any gue training? Kicks are taught in depth in every single fundamentals class to the same level in each instructors class. I wish the same could be said about non gue instructors but it’s much harder. There are awesome instructors who thoroughly teach kicks. Then there’s the majority that don’t teach it anywhere nearly as in depth as in a fundies class. So it’s a crapshoot figuring out if you’re taking the class with an instructor who will really work on mastery of the basic kicks. Gue takes that out of the equation by requiring the same high level of instruction by each instructor

His point wasn't: "with GUE you won't learn kicks". It was: "with GUE you'll learn kicks, and also many more stuff. If your point is only learning kicks (and not the other "many more stuff"), it makes sense to go for something cheaper".

 

[rddvet]

His point wasn't: "with GUE you won't learn kicks". It was: "with GUE you'll learn kicks, and also many more stuff. If your point is only learning kicks (and not the other "many more stuff"), it makes sense to go for something cheaper".

It didn't read that way to me. It read as "you can find another instructor for kicks". My point is that the selection process for finding a good instructor to learn the basics is not that easy. I've looked back on many of my previous classes with the realization that the instructor was much worse than I expected. With GUE due to the required standards held for the instructors it is much easier to just pick any old gue instructor and likely be guaranteed to get a similar in-depth lesson on basics such as finning to any of the other GUE instructors. If I went to 10 different IANTD or TDI instructors I can guarantee you there is extremely varying quality on the instruction of fundamentals such as kicks.
So in my opinion saying you can just find an instructor to teach you kicks isn't necessarily an easy process for most people, especially new divers. But if you recommend a GUE fundies class, pretty much any instructor will do a thorough job on cleaning up fundamental skills. I have taken way more tech classes than my wallet likes to admit. There's a reason after almost 12 years of cave diving at various levels I went back and took fundies. I learned more than I imagined, much of which was stuff never discussed by many other tech instructors.

 

[Lorenzoid]

If all a diver wants to learn is "kicks" (propulsion techniques), I would suggest not taking GUE Fundies but rather seeking out either a mentor (an experienced tech diver) or one of those tech/cave instructors who teaches for GUE as well as another agency and hiring the instructor for a private session or two. There are independent tech instructors out there who will offer this kind of thing, perhaps at an hourly rate. Some have called it by a name such as "scuba makeover." For the heck of it, I just Googled "scuba makeover," and lo and behold, UTD appears to offer just such a course: Extreme Scuba Makeover | UTD Scuba Diving.

I had to chuckle at @tursiops' humorous analogy, making the point that GUE Fundies teaches a wholistic system of diving, where there are a number of individual components that make up the system as a whole, and while Fundies spends a LOT of time on propulsion techniques, the point of the course is to teach the SYSTEM. Many of us go into Fundies wanting to learn something specific--and often, that is the propulsion techniques--but as I have encouraged in my earlier posts in this thread, we would do well to just keep an open mind about the system as a whole and remember that's what we're there to be taught. Nevertheless, if we finish the course and THEN decide we don't care for the "system," we still have the kicks and more!

On the topic of propulsion techniques for high current/flow, to continue with what @mariosx and @Angelo Farina were saying ...

GUE teaches also flutter kicking, but indeed the focus is not on diving with strong currents and potentially different procedures and tools might be needed (for example DPVs).

On the other hand they have procedures (I assume) for cave diving against currents, which objectively have no trouble executing safely using jetfins, or other equivalent fins.

I recall hearing through the gravepvine a few years ago that GUE had started reminding their instructors to put due emphasis on the flutter kick, because (if I understood correctly) there was a perception that too many students were over-using the frog kick and neglecting the flutter in situations where the flutter might be more appropriate. The flutter is a more powerful kick than the frog. GUE teaches employing the right kick for the situation at hand, and in many high current or cave flow situations, that will be the flutter kick. It's my understanding that in cave courses instructors would like to see students switch their kick among (full) frog, small frog, (full) flutter, and small flutter to correspond to what may be optimal based on changes in the flow and shape of the cave passage. So, there is more to it than just learning the kicks independently of each other; GUE also tries to teach you when to employ which kick.