Long classes or split up, with or without LDS home base?

[Jasonmh]

Having taken UTD Tech1 broken up, I really felt like I LEARNED and retained more with the repetition over time. For a course like Cave1, is it more important to prove your stamina, or to learn what the course has to teach? I probably wouldn't turn down a course that was 5-6 days straight through, but if I had a choice I would prefer a course that was broken up.
I have to wonder how much is learned and retained in the last day or 2 of a contiguous course. Many report feeling "out of it" and being on "autopilot" by the end.
Plus, for me, I never dive that way. After cave1, I wouldn't plan all my diving in 10-14+ hours a day for 5-6 days straight.
I think that less than 1% of people taking these courses plan to participate in anything approching WKPP level dives.

 

[rjack321]

We're talking about days that start at 7 am and go until 11, day after day, involving not only a lot of physical work but a ton of mental stress.

I've started at 7am and ended at 11pm but on different days.

When I took GUE Cave1 (5 days straight) Marinna (sp?) was calling Chris home for dinner at 6pm every night. The earliest we started was 7 (one day cause we drove to Carwash) and the latest we stayed was 8pm on the last day to finish the test. Tech1 and Cave2 weren't all that different, a few later nights and one or two early mornings but not a continuous 5x 16hr days.

I agree with Lamont a day or 2 mid-course is nice to reset your mental clock. Limeyx had a similar Cave2 as mine and I know it worked well for them. But 2+ weeks off where you go back to your day job is not productive "refresher" or "practice the skills you learned in part1" time.

Its a combination of being "in the groove" alternating with a semi-fatiguing environment which accentuates mistakes which become teaching moments which I agree with.

As far as the "home base" shop factor goes, 5 day classes just can't happen without a supportive shop willing to stay late, fix stuff, stock spare parts for the regs lights etc. I think this is why the MX classes get cranked through so much. The 24hr fill station, shop, and dive locations are all conducive to maximum throughput.

 

[amascuba]

I agree with Lamont a day or 2 mid-course is nice to reset your mental clock. Limeyx had a similar Cave2 as mine and I know it worked well for them. But 2+ weeks off where you go back to your day job is not productive "refresher" or "practice the skills you learned in part1" time.

For me personally, having the break allows me to do a self-analyzation (is that even a word...?) of what went right and what went wrong. I can play back the dives in my head to determine where I screwed up and why. From there I can gather a game plan in my head on how to remedy the problem. You're right though, I go back to life and don't get to spend a whole lot of time practice the skills other than running through them in my mind. For me though, it's mostly mental and not so much a physical process that I need to work on.

 

[lamont]

When I took GUE Cave1 (5 days straight) Marinna (sp?) was calling Chris home for dinner at 6pm every night. The earliest we started was 7 (one day cause we drove to Carwash) and the latest we stayed was 8pm on the last day to finish the test. Tech1 and Cave2 weren't all that different, a few later nights and one or two early mornings but not a continuous 5x 16hr days.

Yeah, C1 for me was fairly mellow. I remember having time to get back, eat, surf the web, do a little programming. That was probably 7am->6pm.

C2 might have been longer because we had both Fred and Danny, so there was a bit of Danny instructing Fred? It was definitely a lot of long days. Day #3 was particularly long because I had a reg try to kill me for real on descent, which led to almost an extra hour late. In retrospect, I'm not sure where all the time went.

 

[lamont]

For me personally, having the break allows me to do a self-analyzation (is that even a word...?) of what went right and what went wrong. I can play back the dives in my head to determine where I screwed up and why. From there I can gather a game plan in my head on how to remedy the problem. You're right though, I go back to life and don't get to spend a whole lot of time practice the skills other than running through them in my mind. For me though, it's mostly mental and not so much a physical process that I need to work on.

Actually by day #6 in C1 I kind of started screwing up because I "figured out" the course so I knew that the valve failure wasn't the "point" of the last dive, and we were going to wind up sharing gas on the exit anyway, so we made a total mess of the valve failure on our last dive.

C2 was complex enough that I didn't have an opportunity to try to out-think myself, which may actually be a benefit of doing it all back-to-back-to-back. You slip into just reacting to stimuli rather than thinking about the course....

 

[rjack321]

Actually by day #6 in C1 I kind of started screwing up because I "figured out" the course so I knew that the valve failure wasn't the "point" of the last dive, and we were going to wind up sharing gas on the exit anyway, so we made a total mess of the valve failure on our last dive.

C2 was complex enough that I didn't have an opportunity to try to out-think myself, which may actually be a benefit of doing it all back-to-back-to-back. You slip into just reacting to stimuli rather than thinking about the course....

This just reinforces to me that:
DIRF = personal skills (with a taste of team)
T1/C1 = team skills focusing on protocols (with a taste of thinking)
C2 = increasingly complex thinking

I am not sure where T2 fits in, I haven't taken it.

 

[TSandM]

Our C2 class schedule was brutal. No day began later than 7:30, and Wednesday began at 5:30 and went until 11 pm. We spent some of it in the truck, driving to the Mill Pond, but that was lecture time. Even Friday, we finished the debrief about 8 and then went to dinner. Those were five long, grueling days, compounded by the fact that the small time we did have to sleep, I had insomnia because I was so upset about how poorly we were doing.

Maybe David's right; maybe it's a young man's sport.

 

[Scott L]

Our C2 class schedule was brutal. No day began later than 7:30, and Wednesday began at 5:30 and went until 11 pm. We spent some of it in the truck, driving to the Mill Pond, but that was lecture time. Even Friday, we finished the debrief about 8 and then went to dinner. Those were five long, grueling days, compounded by the fact that the small time we did have to sleep, I had insomnia because I was so upset about how poorly we were doing.

Maybe David's right; maybe it's a young man's sport.

If the class were to be extended 1 additional day it would relieve the schedule a good bit. Once again, IMO it's all about $$$. That schedule is insane for a leisure activity...

 

[limeyx]

If the class were to be extended 1 additional day it would relieve the schedule a good bit. Once again, IMO it's all about $$$. That schedule is insane for a leisure activity...

We added a day to our class, since Danny had had good experiences with that in the past and it was a very nice thing to do.

What we did was to move the stage handling a day early, and then take a day in the middle to go do our survey, and have a 1/2 day and evening off to repair gear, dry stuff that was perpetually damp and have a couple of beers.

We could have slogged the whole thing in five days, but this made things considerably more pleasant given that we were up until 11pm+ surveying Freds truck in the parking lot on the eve of day 3


I did tech1,cave1, cave 2 as 5-6 day classes and then trimix training as two 3-day classes and i can see benefits to both methods.

 

[Scott L]

We added a day to our class, since Danny had had good experiences with that in the past and it was a very nice thing to do.

What we did was to move the stage handling a day early, and then take a day in the middle to go do our survey, and have a 1/2 day and evening off to repair gear, dry stuff that was perpetually damp and have a couple of beers.

We could have slogged the whole thing in five days, but this made things considerably more pleasant given that we were up until 11pm+ surveying Freds truck in the parking lot on the eve of day 3


I did tech1,cave1, cave 2 as 5-6 day classes and then trimix training as two 3-day classes and i can see benefits to both methods.

That appears to be a very thoughtfully excecuted class schedule. Just enough time off to unwind and recharge...