My journey towards the three stars (3*)

[Germie]

I am not negative about cmas, but only tell people it is normally slow and it did not fit my needs when I was doing recreational courses. Just a personal thing. I have done my instructor ratings first with another agency and was able to do a cross over of 1 day to cmas and I decided to do this because I was already helping with children teaching for another club.
But yes, I agree that a lot of instructors need to practice their own skills as they are not good enough. But this is not only in cmas.
Backkicks are not in the nob/cmas courses. Maybe it is in the 'cavediving techniques in open water'? I don't know. I do real cave diving, haha.

The reason why there are quite a lot of instructors is easy: It is done voluntary. So if you have to do with 1 instructor the 5 pool sessions and the 5 dives, this means 10 times 1 person needed. If you can split this because you have 3 instructors, that makes it easier. In my club 1 out of 7 divers is instructor I guess, but only a few are really active.

 

[Storker]

Backkicks are not in the nob/cmas courses.

We're expected to master backkicks in our 3*. They're pretty useful if you're demonstrating drills in a current, or if you're trying to hold a stop while staying in contact with your buddies in a current.

And they should be mastered so well that they're second nature. Staying at the same place using backkicks shouldn't task load us more than leaving enough mental bandwidth to keep our buoyancy control while being able to demonstrate basic skills decently.

 

[Germie]

Would be a good idea to learn people here also the frogkick and backkick. I always promote that. Not hard, but a nice tool to make diving more comfortable.

 

[admikar]

We're expected to master backkicks in our 3*. They're pretty useful if you're demonstrating drills in a current, or if you're trying to hold a stop while staying in contact with your buddies in a current.

And they should be mastered so well that they're second nature. Staying at the same place using backkicks shouldn't task load us more than leaving enough mental bandwidth to keep our buoyancy control while being able to demonstrate basic skills decently.

Yeah, I forgot to tell that. Also helicopter turns, modified frog and flutter. To be honest, most of us is encouraged to get hang of it before even starting training. Positive side of being in a mentoring environment. In no way does this mean that CMAS is somehow superior to other agencies.

 

[Storker]

Pool session #1

After reading the syllabus, I was a mite concerned. Particularly about that thing about holding a 3m stop without a line and without visual reference to the bottom. I know from bitter experience that that isn't my strongest suit, and I was drier behind my ears that I should be. I have other hobbies, so there's normally very little diving done during hunting season. My last dive was several months ago. And after such a dry spell, I usually need a couple of shakedown dives to regain my buoyancy and water feeling.

Good thing for me, the 3* course was a part of a series of classes where our Diving Association helped the college student club both to qualify their members and to develop their own instructors. So I was offered to participate in the pool session for the ongoing 2* course. No charge. Diving dry in 25+C water is an interesting experience. Particularly when you do the mistake of donning your summer neoprene suit instead of using your trilam with just a wicking layer underneath. I was a bit on the warm side, to put it mildly. My underwear was soaked even without a smidgen of a leak anywhere. In any case, the session went well. Took part in the exercises the 2* class was going through (gas share, transport of unconscious buddy horizontally underwater, airshare while swimming, no-mask swimming, dSMB deployment etc., etc., etc.) and had a pretty good time. In fact, my buoyancy control was far from as bad as I feared.

But it was an interesting experience to have to wring my underwear dry even without having any leaks at all...

 

[Diving Dubai]

I think it's great you're doing this and you will learn a lot. It's also good to be challenged and find some elements difficult. If were all a "breeze" what would be the point.

I took my BSAC DL first, and then chose PADI DM because it wa complimentary, in that each course while havign some overlaps also had some different elements which together made me a more rounded diver.

After reading the syllabus, I was a mite concerned. Particularly about that thing about holding a 3m stop without a line and without visual reference to the bottom. I know from bitter experience that that isn't my strongest suit, and I was drier behind my ears that I should be. I have other hobbies, so there's normally very little diving done during hunting season. My last dive was several months ago. And after such a dry spell, I usually need a couple of shakedown dives to regain my buoyancy and water feeling.

This can be a by product of learning the 24 skills to demonstration quality on the DM course. BEfore I started the course I could hold a blue water stop to a high degree of accuracy just using my computer. Thus I became highly frustrated with myself when at first demonstrating the skills in a 2.5m pool while remaining was a bit of a circus. But after practise I was able to concentrate on the skill remembering all teh small details, keeping my lung volume constant without thought (and not ending up on the surface nor teh bottom of the pool.

For me the greatest satisfaction was developing the No mask swim, to an extent where I could complete the swim with eyes closed (lots of chlorine in the water) being able to sense my position in the water column with no references.

We're expected to master backkicks in our 3*. They're pretty useful if you're demonstrating drills in a current, or if you're trying to hold a stop while staying in contact with your buddies in a current.

They're great for control and positioning too. I found them hard to master. I was okay if I didn't think about them, but as soon as my brain decided to analysis or I had to knowingly do them (to demonstrate them) what I was doing it all went to pot. I would generally go backwards and upwards at a 45 degree angle. A great deal of practice went into them and a great deal of me mentally shouting at myself before I got them to an acceptable standard

 

[Wingy]

Pool session #1

After reading the syllabus, I was a mite concerned. Particularly about that thing about holding a 3m stop without a line and without visual reference to the bottom. I know from bitter experience that that isn't my strongest suit...

This ^^ - my sessions have all been in the ocean. A very practical exercise (as stated before, I have 1:1) when I was diving without a computer, asked to find 10m with no visual POR as in reef/topography and stay there for 3 minutes - and I admit holding safety stops is not my strong point.

When my computer was handed back I discovered how crap I am...16m.

I'd spent a couple of seconds over 2 minutes. I was not even close to 10m and 3 minutes.

I learnt a lot that dive. Until then I thought I had an idea of depth...some people learn best from books, I learned better there even though I pride myself on my research skills...obviously just not when it comes to diving.

The slower process suits me too, it's been over a decade between stars, cost has nothing to do with it as I have to fly and stay internationally so more than adequate dive numbers clocked up between visits.

That surface swim totally sucks.

 

[Storker]

That surface swim totally sucks.

IME the 1000m in full gear is more boring than hard. Lie back, find a nice, steady pace and just keep paddling. And it becomes a lot less boring if you have a buddy to shoot some crap with while we're paddling away.

 

[admikar]

IME the 1000m in full gear is more boring than hard. Lie back, find a nice, steady pace and just keep paddling. And it becomes a lot less boring if you have a buddy to shoot some crap with while we're paddling away.

Oh, the memories. Fights we had during surface swim are starting to morph into legend. New club policy states that myself and a couple of other members are never again to be allowed to get together and on our own during those exercises.

 

[Imla]

Just for shits and giggles... If it is the class I think it is... You also have the benefit of having two CMAS instructors co-incidentally being GUE T2C2 certed... So I would expect bith some really decent 2* divers, and also the possibility of some really good mentoring with regards to "basic" diving skills.