How many dives does it take for one to be competent?

[johndiver999]

So the prevailing wisdom is a 100 or more? How many does it take to be a dive instructor?

 

[Divin'Papaw]

You need an option in your poll for "It Depends". I've seen divers who are very competent at 50 dives and I've seen divers with 200+ dives that I refuse to ever dive with again. Competence is not just skill and experience but it's also mindset. That is hard to teach and some people never learn it.

 

[alex_can_dive]

You need an option in your poll for "It Depends". I've seen divers who are very competent at 50 dives and I've seen divers with 200+ dives that I refuse to ever dive with again. Competence is not just skill and experience but it's also mindset. That is hard to teach and some people never learn it.

How would one avoid being *that* diver no-one wants to dive with?

 

[Jcp2]

Thanks, all. It does look like a long road.
I was hoping to get out of this “noob” title soon, having invested time in doing at least 1 or 2 dives/week.but it doesn’t seem progress is fast

I think it depends on why you are diving. If you have a goal that is caving, or wreck penetration, or high quality video or photography, then it’ll take a while to get that right. My goal is to go see pretty fishes and one day dive with seals in California, so I hope that’s easier to do well.

 

[SlugLife]

I disagree that it takes 1000 cave dives to be competent as a cave diver.

What is the number? There is no number of dives to quantify competency as a diver OR a cave diver.

It appears there was a miscommunication.

1000 non-cave dives does not make a competent cave-diver.

My point was that some skills require specific training or experience, and general diving experience won't help.

 

[TMHeimer]

I thought this was an old resurrected thread. Think the title is almost identical. Has anyone mentioned yet how competent and comfortable in water a person is PRIOR to OW course?

 

[SlugLife]

My advice is to alternate or rotate doing a lot of diving just for fun, doing some additional training (getting mentoring would count), and doing some dives where you focus on practicing skills. Each of these three things helps reinforce the others. Synergy. Or something like that.

I also distinguish my fun-dives from training-dives.

• On fun-dives, I at most I might focus on one skill, but otherwise be there to have fun. If the practice goes bad, I'll abandon it and just have fun. If scuba was work, I probably wouldn't do it.
• Training/Practice/Skill dives I'll typically do shore-dives, in a boring location, at 10 to 30ft. I'm a solo diver, and will solo-practice "safe" skills.

By separating out training-dives, there are a lot of benefits. Air lasts much longer. Skills can be practiced over-and-over. My fun-dives are typically on a clock (and I don't want to waste them), whereas my practice-dives I have as much time as I want or need. I can surface frequent and safely, without a safety-stop. It's easier to start over.

For example, with deploying a DSMB, you might be able to practice that once per dive, maybe twice if you carried two. However, on a training-dive, you could easily keep surfacing, and diving, and deploy 25 or more times on a single tank, fixing whatever you did wrong. Similarly, neutral buoyancy is more challenging at shallow depths, and perhaps better practiced there. If practicing kicks, you might want to review camera footage on the surface, and the shallow-depth offsets any increased air-consumption. For navigation, you can more easily "reset" your route, and repeat. For equipment configuration, you may need to exit the water to make adjustments.

How would one avoid being *that* diver no-one wants to dive with?

There might be 1000+ ways to be annoying. That question might deserve it's own thread.

Oh, but the most reliable way to avoid being that diver is to become a solo-diver. What's the saying? "If a solo-diver $hits in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?"

 

[Lorenzoid]

I also distinguish my fun-dives from training-dives.

• On fun-dives, I at most I might focus on one skill, but otherwise be there to have fun. If the practice goes bad, I'll abandon it and just have fun. If scuba was work, I probably wouldn't do it.
• Training/Practice/Skill dives I'll typically do shore-dives, in a boring location, at 10 to 30ft. I'm a solo diver, and will solo-practice "safe" skills.

By separating out training-dives, there are a lot of benefits. Air lasts much longer. Skills can be practiced over-and-over. My fun-dives are typically on a clock (and I don't want to waste them), whereas my practice-dives I have as much time as I want or need. I can surface frequent and safely, without a safety-stop. It's easier to start over.

I'll just add that I believe the fun-dives really do help improve our diving, and form just as important a component as continuing education and practice/training dives. Even when we're not thinking about the skills we learned and/or practiced last weekend, on this weekend's fun-dive our brains will still be processing it in the background. Maybe it's like when you're studying for an exam and you take a real break and go do something else to get your mind off it for a while.

 

[SlugLife]

I'll just add that I believe the fun-dives really do help improve our diving, and form just as important a component as continuing education and practice/training dives. Even when we're not thinking about the skills we learned and/or practiced last weekend, on this weekend's fun-dive our brains will still be processing it in the background. Maybe it's like when you're studying for an exam and you take a real break and go do something else to get your mind off it for a while.

Agreed.

That reminds me: Practice skills that have a purpose or value to you personally. For example, you might practice navigation if you're planning on doing some vacation dives that involve navigation. Or DSMB, because there are a lot of crazy-boaters where you dive. Or finning, because your current bad-technique causes cramps. If the extra "work" has a payoff, it helps a lot with motivation, and making it seem less tedious, because you're getting something out of it.

 

[scubadada]

I have a couple hundred dives between 1970 and 1980 in California. I have a few over 2000 dives in a wide variety of locations since 1997.. I think I learn something on nearly every dive that makes me a better diver. Often it is something small, nearly imperceptible, sometimes it is something much more substantive. I spend much of my time diving solo, I have a lot of time to think about how I am diving, and I have a lot of time to enjoy what I'm doing. I'm going to Malpelo in a couple of weeks, we'll see how I do.

I couldn't vote in the poll, I could not place a line when I am still becoming a more skilled, competent, diver