How many dives to be a PADI scuba instructor?

[drbill]

I've had a good laugh or two when a PADI instructor who was born when I'd already been diving for 25 years doesn't have a clue what my certification agency meant. I had to tell them PADI didn't exist when I first used SCUBA.

However, I generally don't bash the agency too much... I've received advanced PADI certs from instructors who really knew their stuff. Funny thing is that my original OW cert included what is in the current PADI AOW and Rescue and took three weeks to earn. To me, it is the instructor that I evaluate, not necessarily the agency.

With that said, I do think 100 dives is not enough experience to become an instructor. I have thousands and I'm not ready to take that step! Tee hee.

 

[dallaskincaid]

Just to be clear, this wasn't a post to bash agencies. I'm sure there are just as many crappy NAUI instructors as there are PADI instructors. You either have the gift of instruction, or you don't. For an example. I own an IT company. I tend to find the employees that I hire that have tons of certifications tend to look great on paper and really suck in real-world compared to the people that have 20 years of experience and little or no certifications. Maybe it is easy to notice a panicked student when its in a controlled environment such as a rescue class but how would that person react in a real-world situation? How can they even begin to explain what its like to dive in a strong current if they have never even experienced it? How can they be expected to be a truly good teacher if they have very little experience themselves? I personally think the standards should be a bit tougher to be an instructor. It shouldn't be a title I can gain in a summer.

 

[RJP]

I've had a good laugh or two when a PADI instructor who was born when I'd already been diving for 25 years doesn't have a clue what my certification agency meant. I had to tell them PADI didn't exist when I first used SCUBA.

I'm guessing you'd have the same situation with a NAUI, SSI, SDI, SEI instructor of the same age. (Or any other agency that didn't exist way back then.)

 

[Doc]

Just to be clear, this wasn't a post to bash agencies. I'm sure there are just as many crappy NAUI instructors as there are PADI instructors.

By percentage of the whole, likely the same.

Here's a new survey for RJP to craft:

To those holding Instructor level ratings-
Develop an actual representative cost:income analysis

It might make any number of redundant related threads irrelevant in the future.

Nah, never mind.

 

[RJP]

Maybe it is easy to notice a panicked student when its in a controlled environment such as a rescue class but how would that person react in a real-world situation?

The vast majority of divers - and therefore instructors - could go a lifetime and never actually see a truly panicked diver or need to do a rescue so there's no way of knowing how any of them would handle those things in a real world situation.

I was working with an extremely qualified instructor once (Course Director, Full Cave, thousands of dives, etc) and we had an absolutely panic-stricken OW student spit the reg and bolt during a mask skill. He handled it perfectly, but told me afterward he was completely freaked out because that was the first time he'd ever seen it happen for real.

Again, I do believe - ceteris paribus - that more experience is better than less. But don't let numbers of dives or years delude you into thinking someone with lots of dives has "been there, done that" for every scenario. I'd suggest that an instructor with 200 dives, all in Thailand probably has more genuine diving experience than an instructor with 500 dives most of which were in the same quarry.

A low dive count may tell you something, but a high dive count may tell you nothing.

 

[vincent54]

There was a fellow named Gladwell, that suggested to be good at something, you had to do it for 10,000 times( or something silly like that.) The infamous 10,000 rule. If that applied to diving, you would have to have 10,000 dives to be good at it. Therefore 99.9% of divers are no good and shouldn't be teaching.

I'm not sure there is a number that will make you good. Some people are born leaders and others, regardless of training hours, will never be. Cheers

 

[Akimbo]

Unfortunately, instructor certifications imply that the person is competent to teach just as an OW certification implies that the diver is competent to dive. Let the buyer beware.

 

[decompression]

I think where the instructor has taught or learned plays a big part. Big difference between Grand Cayman IDC and Pacific NorthWest IDC.


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[boulderjohn]

Back in October the shop asked me to do a few AOW dives for a guy who had just that weekend completed the OW class. What's the rush? Well, this guy really wanted to fast track through the system. I advised against it, but he completed the AOW requirements and started on the Rescue Diver requirements. He was fascinated by the tech stuff I was doing and wanted to work toward that. We did the Dry Suit and Deep Dive specialties soon after that. He got in about 10 dry suit dives on his own and then started the TecReational Diver class with me. I spent much of today in the pool with him in our dry suits, and he is now surprisingly good with his frog kick, modified frog kick, modified flutter kick, back kick, and helicopter turn. By the end of this morning's pool session, he was swimming squares backwards around the deep end of the pool, making each turn with a helicopter turn. Next weekend we will do the open water dives for the TecReational Diver specialty.

At the end of that weekend, it will be not quite 4 months since he first got in the pool for his OW class. He will not quite have enough OW dives to begin working on the DM course. He is a competent and confident dry suit user. He knows his SAC rate and can make solid dive plans, including gas management decisions, for dives to 130 feet. He can hover in horizontal trim. As part of the TecReational Diver class we will go into advanced decompression theory and more advanced dive planning. I have seen more than a few divers with more than 100 dives who are not nearly as skilled and knowledgeable as he is.

The number of total dives one has can be very misleading.

 

[crosshairs]

While I am not one for "taking sides" on an issue, I would agree with RJP's thought in asking how many dies is enough. The definition of a "dive" is typically 20 minutes in the water from everything I have understood to this point. So what prevents individuals from hanging on a line for 20 minutes at a time or diving for an hour and calling it three dives?

Ive seen it done......20 minutes in the water, out for a few and right back in.....you could easily get 4 dives out of a single tank....and they did