How to choose a Cave Instructor - My opinion

[Germie]

Most times I do a dive with a student before starting a course. I know the diver and he or she knows me. But if you teach every week, this is impossible. Also it is not possible if you have students from far away. I never met my cave instructor before doing a course with him. We had a lot of contact over social media. But meeting him was not possible because of the distance between us. Same with the full trimix course.

But @306dive306 , do you mean that instructors who have a normal job are not the best ones? Why? I teach for hobby, because I have a normal fulltime job. I don't live near deep lakes or caves, but I teach trimix, ccr and cave diving. Only not every week. But the required 20 dives on every highest level as fundives I do, and I see a lot not doing that. I also look at others, to see how others do things, or teach things. For me teaching is not business to earn money. But I try to do it as good as possible. I am sure my real experience is enough to teach, also I still do a lot of fundiving on highest levels.
I have seen instructors who teach and own a diveshop. But their own fundives are 0, because they only dive if they have to teach. That is also wrong in my eyes.

Last weekend I have done again some fundives in old slate mines. Not teaching, just fundiving and taking pictures. But not to sell or something, just really fun.

 

[306dive306]

Most times I do a dive with a student before starting a course. I know the diver and he or she knows me. But if you teach every week, this is impossible. Also it is not possible if you have students from far away. I never met my cave instructor before doing a course with him. We had a lot of contact over social media. But meeting him was not possible because of the distance between us. Same with the full trimix course.

But @306dive306 , do you mean that instructors who have a normal job are not the best ones? Why? I teach for hobby, because I have a normal fulltime job. I don't live near deep lakes or caves, but I teach trimix, ccr and cave diving. Only not every week. But the required 20 dives on every highest level as fundives I do, and I see a lot not doing that. I also look at others, to see how others do things, or teach things. For me teaching is not business to earn money. But I try to do it as good as possible. I am sure my real experience is enough to teach, also I still do a lot of fundiving on highest levels.
I have seen instructors who teach and own a diveshop. But their own fundives are 0, because they only dive if they have to teach. That is also wrong in my eyes.

Last weekend I have done again some fundives in old slate mines. Not teaching, just fundiving and taking pictures. But not to sell or something, just really fun.M

My experience attempting to get trained by non-full-time instructors has been a waste of my time. Because teaching is not their primary source of income, I dealt with people who never committed to dates, who did not want to talk to me on the phone or Zoom to set up a training schedule, and with "statements of impossibility" such as "this week I can't... next week the water will be not clear... we won't have time for breaks, just so you know..." and others. When people keep creating barriers, it means (to me) they are not actually interested.

When it comes to CAVE DIVING, I would never, in a million years, select an instructor who is not an avid cave diver, meaning someone who lives near caves and who dives them more than once per week, because caves are "a beast of their own" in my opinion.

To each, their own.

I was trained, and cave dive, in Mexico. My instructor/guide is an avid cave explorer whose work is shown in National Geographic documentaries. He teaches and explores new caves on a full-time basis. This is what works for me.

Also, thank you for initiating dialog with me. I really appreciate conversations.

 

[Germie]

I am an avid cavediver, but I don't live near caves. But as much time as I can spent on cave diving, I will be in mines or caves. Last weekend I did diving in slate mines. I plan courses around the days I can take off. But no, I can't teach every week. But people know that. I had the same experience with divecentes that are near wrecks or caves, it must still fit in their scheme. So you also can get there a no.

I have been now in caves and mines all over the world and hope I can still do that also in future. Have planned now a trip to Mexico again. And will also do some more minedives this year. I did my ccr cave instructor course with Tom Mount in Florida. My own cave course (as user, oc) I did in Thailand. CCR cave in France. My instructor courses are done in Germany/France and Florida. The students normally come a day before the course to me (a few weeks till a few months before the planned dates in the caves), we do some basic skills and then I know them and they know me (if they don't already know me). On of my instructor trainers also did teaching as hobby and had a normal job. I did the same, I went to him to learn to know each other. I think over 90% over the cave instructors in my region have a normal job and teach for fun. And happely this is also possible. Statistics don't show that these divers or instructors have a higher accidentrate.

But I can say no to a student. Sometimes instructors need to teach because they need the money. And then the accept divers that are not good enough, or don't fit the personality.

So it is all possible. But a lot depends on the enthusiasm of the instructor. You also see people who just want to have that plastic card and then only teach once a year, never do dives for fun. No, that is not the way I want to do it. Doing explorations is hard for people who don't live near caves, but I have been in a private cenote in Mexico where the owner only let in 2 people before us. So it was a virgin cenote. And there is also a cave in France where we have to remap it. But you need to be on private property, and it is only divable a few weeks a year, so this is also hard. But some smaller projects are also possible for avid cavedivers with no caves directly around them.

And if you will ever visit my house, it looks like a diving center, haha. Over 300 books about diving, from wrecks to caves to recreational sites all over the world. Too many cylinders, ccr's in my living room. So outside the 40 hour job, I do diving as much as possible. Drysuits in my shower. And then we can visit some slatemines. Or do some wreckdiving on the Northsea. I prefer caves, but are also in for other kind of diving, wrecks, icediving, underwaterphotography, etc.

 

[RedSeaDiver2]

Some good discussion here. While not a cave diver I am a CCR diver, and for me there are a couple of things that I also look for -
- How patient is the instructor? I am a person who naturally proceeds at a slower cautious pace (which is possibly why I was selected for Explosive Ordinance Disposal Tech training). If a course is normally a five day course then I will want to do it over ten days - learn less per dive but get things perfect rather than passing, and halve the increase in depth between dives - I'm just a very thorough person.
- How good are the training materials? This is something that really shits me - if an outfit is going to call themselves a training agency then their training materials should be excellent quality - no spelling mistakes, what is said in the materials should meet their agency standards, etc etc. Unfortunately many training materials from tech agencies fail even a basic proof-read let along a thorough one.

 

[mr_v]

Some good discussion here. While not a cave diver I am a CCR diver, and for me there are a couple of things that I also look for -
- How patient is the instructor? I am a person who naturally proceeds at a slower cautious pace (which is possibly why I was selected for Explosive Ordinance Disposal Tech training). If a course is normally a five day course then I will want to do it over ten days - learn less per dive but get things perfect rather than passing, and halve the increase in depth between dives - I'm just a very thorough person.
- How good are the training materials? This is something that really shits me - if an outfit is going to call themselves a training agency then their training materials should be excellent quality - no spelling mistakes, what is said in the materials should meet their agency standards, etc etc. Unfortunately many training materials from tech agencies fail even a basic proof-read let along a thorough one.

It is a trend. Publishers with limited budgets skip proofreading and editing. Then readers deal with odd sentence structure and spelling errors. I've been dealing with that stuff for several years. If I see "self-published," I expect things not to make sense at least once per chapter.

 

[The Chairman]

He explained everything to me

He did not.

Trying to learn how to dive caves without taking a dedicated class for it is kinda idiotic. In fact, it's one of the topics we don't allow here on ScubaBoard. Rethink your position and please don't post about caving without the proper training, the proper gear, and the proper mindset. Thanks.

 

[berndo]

I misunderstood what you were saying.

I see how. I edited the post.

 

[lostsheep]

Aint no one cussin' son,

Flippancy out of the way, assuming your post was for real and you're not a bot...

Do the compulsory search around here and you'll understand the apprehension to your post