Thanks that is a really helpful comment. How proficient should i be before starting intro to tech? Are there any common specialty classes i should take? Will i just learn those specialty skills when learning tech anyway?
Well, the answer is pretty much, "it depends."
Most technical agencies will have those types of programs that are specifically geared to taking recreational divers and teaching them the skills they will need to have in order to progress onto actual technical training. GUE Fundies, PSAI calls theirs ABC's I think, TDI, IANTD, UTD Essentials, etc. all have similar courses.
Most will have fairly limited prerequisites because they're specifically designed to get recreational divers to a place where they can take those tech skills and master them, so really, you could go into any of them right away. They're not going to teach you mask clearing or regulator recovery or anything like that, they are all geared to perfecting buoyancy, trim, and propulsion, and introducing students to gear configurations that they will utilize as they progress along their technical diving path. If you can go into the course already knowing how to do the basics, your instructor will be able to spend less time on the dumb skills and more time on sorting out the specific skills that you will utilize. If you go in and you can't recover a regulator, chances are they won't even let you continue in the course. They're not there to teach you how to be an open water diver, the whole goal is raising your level of proficiency of the basic skills to what you'll need to do actual advanced diving.
Taking specialties beforehand really isn't something that will pay off. You don't really have "specialties" in the technical diving world, at least not in the same vein as the recreational world. I guess GUE's documentation diver is sort of a "specialty," but it's at a whole other level. But yeah, fish ID isn't going to help..... I can't tell you how many divers I run into that have a binder full of specialties that are terrible divers.
You're better off being truly comfortable in the water (not your perceived level of comfort when you're flailing around like you just found a spider crawling up your arm) going into the course, and that means diving, being competent at the level that you're at. They're going to make you a whole lot better, but if you start at a higher level, the better you will do. Pool time is a fantastic way to prep. Hell, I do pool time even when I can't go real diving, and especially before I'm going to take a course or do some serious diving like cave or deco. A little rec vacation on shallow reefs I may only spend an hour in the pool making sure everything fits right and is configured correctly, a rebreather cave dive I may spend 4 or 5 hours in the pool burning through a scrubber just working on skills. So hop in the shallow end and practice neutral buoyancy. Then hop in and practice doing it in horizontal trim. Or do it the other way around, it really doesn't matter, the end goal is the same.
Think about it this way, your brain has 100% of it's cognitive ability to dedicate to a full set of tasks. Let's say that now, you spend 85% of your cognitive ability trying to keep yourself from cratering into the bottom or keeping your head below water (honestly that's probably pretty accurate for most recreational divers). That only leaves 15% of your ability to dedicate to other tasks or deal with any issues. Now let's say you relax, practice your breathing, and all of a sudden you realize you're counting pool tiles while only using 50% of your cognitive ability to stay neutral, that's great, now you've got 50% to dedicate to other stuff as well. The more you can automate those tasks from your conscious cognitive function, the better shape you will be in to take the lessons from a course and apply them and master them.
What we're really talking about is the spectrum from unconscious incompetence (you don't even know you suck) to unconscious competence (you don't even realize you're perfectly neutral and in trim, it's just what you do). The more your diving, even at your currently limited level, can shift to the unconscious competence side of the spectrum, the more you will get out of the class. So work on making your basic skills an unconscious action. Then, when you take whatever class is your entry into the technical diving world, your adjustment to the new skills will be much easier, and you will accomplish much more. You will get thrown back into the beginning of the spectrum on any of those courses. That's the idea, you become fully aware of your deficiencies and you know how to correct them, then you correct them, then you forget that you're even doing them with mastery, and you don't realize that you're correcting something. However, the learning curve getting back to unconsciously doing things correctly will be much easier if you can do them well at your current level, so relax, get comfortable, and practice the stuff you already know how to do.
Don't worry about taking a stack of cards to your instructor. You're paying them to sort out the basics to a very high level. Very little of what you've done before will matter, but the skills you have beforehand will make a world of difference.
