ISO Clearer Definitions on "Training" and "Certification"

[Efka76]

As someone already mentioned, AOW is a formal gate keeper course, e.g without it you can not dive in certain sites, can not take more advanced PADI courses. If I am not mistaken, you need to be AOW cerified to take Deep specialty.

In substance, PADI specialty courses are designed to make money from you but do not add many additional skills. I already took Deep, Night, Wreck, UW Naturalist, Drift, Search and recovery, Nitrox specialties. My view on them:

Nitrox - is a must if you want to dive with Nitrox. Nobody will give you Nitrox without certification.

Deep - it is worth as you can try yourself in deeper depth and see hoe you body reacta to gas narcosis. Also, officoaly opens sites up to 40 m depth. E.g. on liveaboard some sites were 32-34 m depth and LOB ooerator requires to have Deep specialty or equivalent to be allowed to dive there.

Search and recovery - fun course, got few additional skills, definitely worth try.

Other specialties - mainly waste of money

 

[2airishuman]

Greetings, all!

I'm having a frustration when it comes to scheduling my next level of training and I thought that a part of my frustration could be due to a misunderstanding of the definitions of what a training agency does and what a certification means.

Some history. I am a new Open Water diver. Certified on May 23rd of this year, my wife (and buddy) have been diving on our own in lakes around our region as well as diving with our LDS on several Fun Dives. We've put in about fifteen dives so far and have worked diligently to improve our buoyancy control and trim as the first step to becoming better divers.

We know that, eventually, we're going to want to take an Advanced Open Water class. If our schedule holds, that won't be until the winter of 2020 and after we've logged around fifty dives.

From lurking around here, I get the sense that having a good instructor is part and parcel to actually improving ...

What am I missing here?

The first thing you're missing is that in greater metropolitan Park Rapids you do not have much luxury of choice regarding instructors or locations for AOW unless you're willing to spend more on travel than you do on the training. I took AOW with MSD in Brainerd, and they're OK. They teach the curriculum, they care about diving, they run a safe class. It's all shore diving and it's inexpensive and close. That's your best bet. I guess there's a guy in Detroit Lakes who mostly does commercial diving but also teaches. I don't know anything about him.

Or you can drive to Duluth or Minneapolis for instruction that is more expensive but not materially different.

Or you can fly to Florida or the Caribbean and have more choice, and you'll learn skills that are more warn water boat diving oriented than cold water shore diving oriented. In general the Caribbean is a much less demanding environment -- you'll learn more about underwater problem solving putting your fins on in 60 degree water six times than in a skills drill in the ocean.

The second thing you're missing is that AOW by itself isn't enough dives to give you really solid skills. The skill progression is different for different people, but it takes 25 or 50 or 100 dives depending on the person before everything is second nature and the psychomotor associations ("muscle memory") are all in place.

 

[Addicted2H2O]

I think the bottom line is don't expect to get a lot out of the typical AOW course. You don't really learn any additional skills as compared to your OW class. You will be exposed to a few different types of dives, but you don't really go into great detail and training on each one without taking the specialty course for each of them. It's basically designed gently expose you to those different dives to pique your interest and push toward further training. And I use that term very loosely as in my experience the best "training" is to just dive. I've never had a peak buoyancy class. My buoyancy isn't perfect but I'm pretty solid in the water and can hold at any certain depth without much issue. And I learned by diving. Not because I took a class no how to get better at it. Not because I did research (here on SB or anywhere else), not because an instructor mentored me, but simply because I dive. As often as possible. Yes, there are some specialties where you need the class, like Nitrox. You need to know about partial pressures and how to figure out MOD for a certain blend of gases. We (and I say we as I'm a DM at my LDS) actually add that on the end of our OW class and give students the option of getting that certification for about half the price of taking the class separately as an incentive because for recreational depths Nitrox (EAN) is really a safer gas. But I digress. Most of the material/dives you cover in the typical AOW class are just there to expand your horizon and get you further interested in diving. It's possible you could learn something new, but as far as skills, more than anything else you'll only be working on refining the ones you've already learned.

If I was to recommend classes to you, yes I would recommend the AOW simply because it makes additional dives available to you. After that I would HIGHLY recommend you and your wife taking a Rescue class. Not so much because it teaches you how to rescue other divers but because it teaches more about situational awareness and how to recognize stress, etc. in other divers and prevent incidents before they occur or keep incidents from becoming accidents. And yes how to perform rescues, too. Not that you absolutely have to continue any education past AOW, but it'll make you a better dive buddy and help build your confidence as a diver. And while you're doing the water work for these classes, you're making dives and refining skills in the process.

So long story short....yes take the AOW class. No it's not really training in the sense you're learning something new, but rather just refining skills you've already learned. The best training is to just get wet and keep blowing bubbles.

Edit: And as someone mentioned above, take classes from several different instructors. Each has his/her own style of teaching and you'll be exposed to several different methods (all within the curriculum of course) and may find one you really like. That's one of the things I actually really like about being a DM and helping with classes. I get to see first hand how each instructor takes the required material and makes it his/her own in teaching it.

 

[michael-fisch]

It's particularly ironic that I post this from my recliner as I recuperate from a broken leg I sustained while diving in Fiji. I hate sitting and that's all I can do right now!

And I thought that hottubbing was much more dangerous than diving in Fiji
It's been a while since your breaks, have you been underwater yet on baby dives with buddies carrying all the gear? Peacock should be ideal!

Michael

 

[tursiops]

As someone already mentioned, AOW is a formal gate keeper course, e.g without it you can not dive in certain sites, can not take more advanced PADI courses. If I am not mistaken, you need to be AOW cerified to take Deep specialty.

In substance, PADI specialty courses are designed to make money from you but do not add many additional skills. I already took Deep, Night, Wreck, UW Naturalist, Drift, Search and recovery, Nitrox specialties. My view on them:

Nitrox - is a must if you want to dive with Nitrox. Nobody will give you Nitrox without certification.

Deep - it is worth as you can try yourself in deeper depth and see hoe you body reacta to gas narcosis. Also, officoaly opens sites up to 40 m depth. E.g. on liveaboard some sites were 32-34 m depth and LOB ooerator requires to have Deep specialty or equivalent to be allowed to dive there.

Search and recovery - fun course, got few additional skills, definitely worth try.

Other specialties - mainly waste of money

I'm so sorry this is your experience and opinion. You must have had crappy instructors. The courses are fine, but the instructors apparently were not.
By the way AOW is not required for Deep. It suffices as a prereq, but only Adventure Diver is needed.

 

[tursiops]

for recreational depths Nitrox (EAN) is really a safer gas.

If you are really a DM you should know better than to say this. I think what you probably mean is that if you dive air profile but use Nitrox, then you are ongassing less nitrogen than having used air for the dive. If you dive Nitrox to its NDL, it is identical in nitrogen uptake as diving air to its NDL. Plus the additional danger with Nitrox of exceeding your MOD.

 

[The Chairman]

And I thought that hottubbing

It was on a dive trip, not on a dive. It will be 6 weeks this Friday and the doctor wants 8. I haven't even gone for a swim yet, but diving will be right after that starts.

 

[tursiops]

So long story short....yes take the AOW class. No it's not really training in the sense you're learning something new, but rather just refining skills you've already learned.

Nonsense. For example, Search and Recovery is brand new (and difficult) material for almost everyone. Navigation is new for many if not most folks. Etc.

 

[The Chairman]

If you are really a DM you should know better than to say this.

I would disagree with you. On air, NDLs are usually the limit that end the dive. On EAN, gas is often the limiting factor. I hear what you're saying and any blanket statement one or the other probably has holes in it.

 

[tursiops]

I would disagree with you. On air, NDLs are usually the limit that end the dive. On EAN, gas is often the limiting factor. I hear what you're saying and any blanket statement one or the other probably has holes in it.

The point is not fundamentally that Nitrox is safer. The fundamental point is that staying far away from your NDLs is safer. Nitrox, in some situations, makes this easier. Then there is MODs....