How Rigorous Should Training Be?

[MXGratefulDiver]

Besides new tech/deco/cave divers need to learn to read between the lines regarding which instructor is diving what and how.

How would anyone know what they're diving? Most of the people I know that are diving on a regular basis don't bother posting about their dives. I usually only post updates on FB after classes. I hardly ever comment on my personal dives. I know a few other instructors that do the same.

I don't see that as a good indicator for tech instruction in any case. I know some instructors who are doing local "big" dives like the Governor and the Sampson who I wouldn't choose to take tech classes with. I know others who haven't done those dives who would be a much better choice for me.

I chose my initial tech instructor based on personal recommendation and the fact that he's been a fixture in our local tech community for decades. And while I wasn't unhappy with the instruction, I did decide that he wasn't the best choice I could have made because his diving style wasn't a good match for my personal choice in that respect. I went with a much less experienced instructor who proved to be a much better match for both my goals and my learning style.

Personal experience is important, but it's less important than what you teach, how you teach it, and how well you teach it ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[LiteHedded]

I'd be a lot more likely to take a class if I felt I would learn much from it...some of these classes, seeing how students who have the card dive, I'm just not so sure I'd learn anything, atleast nothing I can't learn from a book.

It's the same way I felt as when I was full cave but lacked an AOW card, and had AOW divers trying to lecture me on the proper ways to dive. I'm not an expert, but I'm also not stupid. I know my personal limits, and I don't push them, but I work constantly work to grow them, so that after every dive, I'm a better diver.

I still have rough dives at routine places...recently I went to Madison, and for the first 20 minutes, just felt out of the zone, uncomfortable in my gear...usually, nothing is more peaceful for me than putting on a drysuit and tanks and slipping underwater, but on this dive, it all felt awkward. After a little bit though, things started clicking into place again, and I spent a good portion of the dive concentrating on improving my frog kick, where I know I have a tendency to point my toes down where I think I can get them pointed a little further up, to minimize silting. I didn't need an instructor to teach me to frog kick, and I've never had an instructor criticize my frog kick, but over the course of several dives, with several constructive criticisms offered by dive buddies, and with the help of a photographer friend who managed to catch a few shots showing when in the kick I tended to start angling my toes, I'm improving my kick.

However, some divers just can't teach themselves or learn like that. Some divers can't handle the basic math involved in diving. Some divers can't know their personal limits. Some divers don't belong in caves.

And there are a whole ton of divers in between. I'm sure I'm not on the far end of the spectrum when it comes to self instruction, I'm probably just slightly above average. I think the divers that make you sit back and go "holy crap, that is one polished looking diver! I've never seen anyone dive that well!" probably are very good at self instruction, and/or dive with people who are very good at offering constructive criticism, and that their skill level did not necessarily come solely from instructors giving them cards.

However, the problem is, because not everyone can do that, is we do need certification cards to distinguish the good divers from the bad divers. And the problem with that is, not only is the certification seen as overly expensive and unnecessary by many divers who are good at becoming better divers on their own, but many instructors will give a card to someone who does not have a very polished skill level.

Does anyone know if you can roll AN/DP, Trimix, and DPV into one class, and do all of your dives at fun caves like Eagles Nest? Because I don't see the point in paying thousands of dollars for a class that's going to take a student down a slope until they hit the minimum dive time required, and at the full cave level I believe a diver most likely has most of the skills involved in those classes under basic control. Stages, gas switches, MOD math, gas math, towing a diver while sharing air, all pieces of cake. The only difficult thing is the dive before the class to calculate your SAC rate under normal, deco, and extremely stressful situations, so that you can perform accurate gas math planning. Seems like the perfect opportunity to do some awesome guided dives and have a lot of gear fail on exit, at an incredibly expensive rate.

perhaps it would have helped you get your fin tips up a little quicker?

 

[boulderjohn]

Personal experience is important, but it's less important than what you teach, how you teach it, and how well you teach it ...

This idea has been bugging me for a while regarding this thread as well. I fully agree.

Interestingly enough, when you look at most sports, few of the great coaches were themselves great players. They just have the ability to communicate concepts effectively to people in early stages of their playing careers.

Years ago when I was coaching a high school girls' basketball team I went to a clinic featuring two of the most successful coaches in history, Jody Conrad and Pat Head Summit. They demonstrated a number of concepts using a bunch of local players who had never met them before and who were in fact not even part of a regular team together. It was a revelation. Those two coaches each had a truly remarkable ability to communicate to those players and to us in the audience. In a lifetime of coaching I have never seen anything like it.

I doubt if either one of the coaches could do anything they were teaching at the level they were demanding of the players, but I also bet those players learned more in that one session than any other day in their playing lives.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

perhaps it would have helped you get your fin tips up a little quicker?

My point being that either I was doing better in class and learned bad habits later, showing that we can constantly change our diving style even if we are unaware of it, but also that just because it's good enough to be pronounced a competent cave diver doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement

I doubt that the GUE heroes are satisfied with their diving, and also constantly strive to pick up on things they can improve.

I've also never had an instructor comment on my method of clipping off 2nd stages in SM, or my SPG arrangement in SM, and both have gone through changes over time as I've tried out various things, searching for the best way to do something, and to go from being "good" to "great." My frogkick, like my original SM SPG arrangement, was good. Soon, I hope to have both be "great," and then I'll keep looking for ways to take them to even better levels. I doubt you'll tell me that your frogkick is the perfect frogkick, or that you've never noticed a way you can change your kicking style to better suit the type of diving you are doing, even though you and I both know you are an excellent diver.


[edit] A lot of my diving has been refined through my diving in more and more challenging cave. In class, I never had to negotiate through no mount restrictions in low viz, for example. It's in that type of diving that tiny changes in the way you do things can make a noticeable difference, when in a cave class, your finning technique is perfectly appropriate. Same thing for my SPG placement, I've been trying it like a lot of people prefer them, but I find it works poorly for small cave as the SPG's tend to find a way to dig into the floor and catch lines than the way I had them before. Something that is perfect technique in large cave is not for smaller cave, and hence my need to improve my technique.

 

[LiteHedded]

oh i got ya. my fins go down but then do a weird thing where they come back up and still direct the water backwards. not sure how it works, but it gets the job done

 

[JahJahwarrior]

Fins, like women, are a huge mystery!


It's a sport of continuous refinement. 15 years ago, the flutter kick was still being taught, and there are members of the cave community who still rely on it frequently, who are out doing some exploration dives that a lot of people now won't do because it's just too much work. Sheck Exley invented staging without using boltsnaps...they would just carry the tanks by the handle... We used to use bleach bottles for bouyancy, and use twisted line in caves. Heck, some of the most respected and well known professionals in the industry still nearly die and write an essay on lessons they learned. We can all keep learning and improving, and it doesn't take an instructor to help you do that, if you have the right mentality, which not all do.

Then there are those that even instructors can't help...people who don't put boltsnaps on backup lights and hold them on with thin slices of inner tube, ignoring multiple people's advice to put boltsnaps on, then lose one... people who can't find dive buddies because everyone is scared to dive with them... thankfully, I don't think I'm on anyone's "absolutely positively won't dive with this person!" list

 

[Dive-aholic]

When I've invited an instructor out diving (on my personal boat) planning to go to several of the most dove wrecks in the PNW and they respond that: they have never done any of them and just take their many deco classes up and down a slope for the minimum required DSAT bottom time instead (20mins according to them)...

I call BS on that.



When instructors post video footage of themselves kneeling on the bottom doing valve drills - on their business website offering technical diving instruction...

I call BS on that.

In both cases their prior students seem to love them, at least from testimonials I've overheard or seen. Everyone's instructor was "the best".

edit: While this is in the T2T cave section, I'm mostly talking about deco instructors locally. Not some rumor 3000miles away in NFL.

Okay, well that's a little different. I completely agree with you on this.

Does anyone know if you can roll AN/DP, Trimix, and DPV into one class, and do all of your dives at fun caves like Eagles Nest? Because I don't see the point in paying thousands of dollars for a class that's going to take a student down a slope until they hit the minimum dive time required, and at the full cave level I believe a diver most likely has most of the skills involved in those classes under basic control.

You can't roll all of those into one class, but there is a way to credit some dives in there. Are you already full cave, but not AN/DP? I know it's not required by agency standards, but it's a good class to have before doing full cave. When I teach full cave we end up with mandatory deco on 6 or 7 or the 8 dives. If I had to teach decompression theory on top of the cave stuff, it would make for some really long days.

I've also never had an instructor comment on my method of clipping off 2nd stages in SM, or my SPG arrangement in SM, and both have gone through changes over time as I've tried out various things, searching for the best way to do something, and to go from being "good" to "great."

Have any of your instructors had a lot of experience in sidemount? That may be why you haven't had any comments. It doesn't matter what class I'm teaching, I always make comments on buoyancy, trim, finning, and gear. Those 4 things are important no matter what type of diving you're doing and should be an integral part of every class.

 

[JahJahwarrior]

Rob,

I wasn't diving SM in class, I switched after the class mostly for increased safety for solo diving along with the need/desire to dive stuff where BM won't fit.

My instructor harped on all of those things and more in class, and I am sure he would say that I had pretty darn good bouyancy, trim, finning and gear choices. However, I have been able to become an even better diver than I was when I left the class, and pick up on some things that, like I said, might have deteriorated in quality after my class. I don't have video of my finning technique every dive to compare, all I know is, I didn't need an instructor to tell me that I could improve my finning technique from what it is now. The fact that I found something I can improve does not mean that I was not a good diver coming out of class, am a good diver now, or that my instructor did a poor job of training me. While I'm not a perfect diver, I think those who dive with me will attest to the fact that I earned my cave card, and didn't just buy it, and I don't feel the fact that I'm willing to point out where I can improve should detract from that fact.

Infact, in Apprentice, we did some smaller tunnels that aren't tight, but provide opportunity to see if a diver's kick is terrible, such as the Mud Tunnels at Ginnie and the Waterhole tunnel at Peacock. In both tunnels, we did stir up atleast a tiny bit up silt at some point, I'm sure, as no diver can always avoid stirring up silt. But, our instructor told us we'd both done a fine job. At the Intro level, he also commented that he was very glad to see us coming into the class with such good fundamentals, that he usually had to work with people a lot more on frog and helicopter kicking, and I believe reel skills, but that we had a pretty good grasp on them, which made the class more fun for him, and allowed him to focus more on finesse than basics.

^Those things make me think that maybe my problem of pointing my toes down just a few degrees developed after class. I suppose I just got lazy. Either way, a few degrees downward pointing toes shows up a lot more in seldom dived passage than in most touristy caves, and as soon as I became aware of it, I started consciously improving.

 

[rjack321]

This idea has been bugging me for a while regarding this thread as well. I fully agree.

Interestingly enough, when you look at most sports, few of the great coaches were themselves great players. They just have the ability to communicate concepts effectively to people in early stages of their playing careers.

Years ago when I was coaching a high school girls' basketball team I went to a clinic featuring two of the most successful coaches in history, Jody Conrad and Pat Head Summit. They demonstrated a number of concepts using a bunch of local players who had never met them before and who were in fact not even part of a regular team together. It was a revelation. Those two coaches each had a truly remarkable ability to communicate to those players and to us in the audience. In a lifetime of coaching I have never seen anything like it.

I doubt if either one of the coaches could do anything they were teaching at the level they were demanding of the players, but I also bet those players learned more in that one session than any other day in their playing lives.

I'm sure there are some great ideas in diving made by those who aren't/can't or haven't "done the dives". E.g. to my knowledge Bill Hamilton wasn't a big trimix diver yet developed some recreational deco tables which advanced the sport by light years.

But in general people who aren't actually diving for fun beyond what you want to learn are not high on my list of people to recommend as instructors. Otherwise (at the extreme) you've got the "great coach" who's only a cavern diver telling people how to cave dive.

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

I don't see that as a good indicator for tech instruction in any case. I know some instructors who are doing local "big" dives like the Governor and the Sampson who I wouldn't choose to take tech classes with. I know others who haven't done those dives who would be a much better choice for me.

I chose my initial tech instructor based on personal recommendation and the fact that he's been a fixture in our local tech community for decades. And while I wasn't unhappy with the instruction, I did decide that he wasn't the best choice I could have made because his diving style wasn't a good match for my personal choice in that respect. I went with a much less experienced instructor who proved to be a much better match for both my goals and my learning style.

Personal experience is important, but it's less important than what you teach, how you teach it, and how well you teach it ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Personal experience isn't important?? If that's the case then anyone on the net could teach this stuff. Without the experience one would only know how to save themself by a book, not learn what went wrong and how they fixed the issue. That might work where you dive where you have direct path to the surface but I don't know any cave diver who thinks personal experience isn't necessary.