My Venture into GUE - Another view

[EastTNDiver]

That's a common misperception. The fact is that there are quite a lot more diving environments than caves and tropical reefs ... and the relevence of a DIR style of diving varies with each.

Perhaps the reason why the west coast folks seem to like it so much is that it suits our environment quite well ... deep, cold, current intensive, low-vis ... and no dive guides to do your thinking for you. The foundations of DIR ... the things they teach that you don't generally get from standard recreational agencies ... can be directly applied to even typical recreational dives here. Those would be team cohesion, gas management, buoyancy and trim, non-silting propulsion ... and a general mental expectation that you should THINK about what you're doing and why you're doing it before jumping in the water. These are all things that are generally taught in typical recreational classes as things you SHOULD do ... but there's little to no attempt to train you HOW to do them. GUE training fills that void nicely for the diving environment in which we typically dive.

I suspect that others who dive in environments different than mine could also come up with some direct relevence with respect to what they learned in GUE classes that have helped them deal with their local diving conditions in a better way.

Oh ... and for the record ... I don't consider myself a DIR diver at all. Among other things, I like to solo dive from time to time. And after I get my side-mount training in two months, I expect I'll be selling all my doubles equipment and diving that way almost exclusively (except for teaching classes). But the things I've learned through my GUE training, and exposure to other DIR-trained divers, will still have a huge impact on the way I dive, the way I think about diving, and the way I train my students to dive.

So yeah ... I'd call it relevent ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Bob...I've read many of your posts, and admire both your approach to these kinds of topics...and, to training. I've been diving since '84, but took OW again two years ago when my son became interested in diving...partly to experience it with my son, partly to re-acclimate myself after an absence from the sport, but mostly to audit the instructor with whom I was entrusting my son's well being in the water. The instructor for that class was a GUE/DIR diver, and he expressed the same attitude towards training that I've seen from you in this forum. I feel both me and my son are better off because of the things he shared with his students that touched on the tenants of GUE training. As it turns out, our LDS is chocked full of GUE/DIR divers, and we have both benefitted greatly from additional mentoring from these individuals over the last couple years. Just wanted to express my gratitude to you for your approach/attitude, as it is that exact quality in our local mentors that has improved mine and my son's diving skills and safety...and, has increased our enjoyment of the sport.

 

[HenrikBP]

I think that more and more, those that don't need the skills, don't intend going into dangerous places on scuba, are now wanting to join the DIR group, as another notch on the belt, specialty course or whatever, and when knocked back resent the fact.

Just to the specific quote above:

- while divers aren't dropping like flies, any dive no matter how shallow, sunlit and benign is still a hostile environment. And it's when people forget that fact that bad things happen.

- what skills taught in Fundies do not apply to diving in general? Buoyancy, trim, non-silting or environment-protecting propulsion, buddy/team awareness all seem to me like good tools for any diver to possess. Being able to utilize those tools when things go sideways seem even better.

- GUE-F was not a notch for me. I took the class because I didn't find sufficient quality training anywhere else (that's both a locale and personal preference thing, so you can put down the flame throwers )

Henrik

 

[TSandM]

A few observations: 1. People who don't meet their own expectations in a class tend to be unhappy at the end of it, and it's extremely easy to convert that into criticism of the class. I've had to work my butt off not to do that to my C2 class, where the vast majority of my problems were my fault.

2. There was something wrong with this class. There was not enough in-water time. Ocean conditions proved inhospitable for a number of students on the first scheduled boat diving day, and people don't learn well when they are sick. Exposure protection didn't match the water available in which to dive, and that's also a recipe for having a bad time.

3. This was going to be a difficult class to teach in the best of circumstances, because as far as I could tell, nobody in the class had had much of an opportunity even to try diving as a team before they got there. Several people had changed equipment. Some had low total dive counts. It was going to take a very concentrated and careful effort to make the class the best possible experience for all involved.

4. It's my perception that the fact that the senior instructor was teaching an instructor intern reduced the value of having two instructors involved in the class, thus making it more of a 1:6 ratio, which if people need individual help, is quite difficult.

5. Where there WAS in-water experience available, seasickness or cold kept some folks from being able to take advantage of it.

6. Although Bob enjoys a stellar reputation as the king of gear-balancing and trim (and I can speak from personal experience that he is very good at this) for whatever reason, he was unable or unwilling to bring those skills to play in this class. Some of it may be related to some very strongly held opinions about what he considers suboptimal gear. (And I think there are people who feel differently, even within the organization, but one listens to the instructor one has.)

7. One student was actually ill during the class, which I can't imagine. These classes really require that you be able to step up and give your best.

8. Of the students who were most unhappy with the class, only two, I believe, actually did any of the fun diving over the weekend, where a different vision of the usefulness of skills and the attitudes of GUE-trained divers might have been perceived. Of the two, I know one said that he had the best dive of his life during that weekend, precisely because of the things he had been shown.

So -- it was a suboptimal class from the instructor standpoint, from the conditions standpoint, and to some extent from the standpoint of where the students were coming into it. Since the next set of classes is not being held in the same place (and I have heard rumors that it will be held to 3 students) I think the instructors learned something very useful from the experience -- unfortunately, that doesn't fix things for the students who were involved.

We had a similar thing with Peter's Essentials class. The instructor scheduled a day of diving at a local site where the currents, given the tides of that day, made it simply impossible to do the planned diving. The instructor, not being local, had not realized that. The class lost out on some of the diving they were supposed to do. This happens. I've been in a class that lost the day of experience dives due to water and weather conditions, and I've seen classes conducted in visibility so poor that I don't think the instructor could see the students half the time. You do what you can, especially if people aren't local and therefore can't easily reschedule for next weekend.

The discussion around this class really reminds me very strongly of the discussion around my Cave 2 class. It also had issues, some of which were my fault and some of which were beyond my control. The discussion had staunch defenders of the class and instructor, and people who were happy to take a swipe at both. The truth is that GUE and GUE instructors aren't perfect. They're good, sometimes very good, but both the organization and the people who make it real are fallible. The best teacher can have an off day, or be presented with a student or students who are difficult for them to teach. Students can, either through lack of preparation or just lack of understanding of what's required, show up at a level where it's just not reasonable to expect an instructor to bring them to standards in the time available.

This class was not the best example of what GUE Fundamentals can be and has been. I hope the students came away with something, and I hope they are not soured on GUE training or GUE diving. I know that, after I had time to get some distance on my C2 class, that it is an enormous source of sadness to me that I really cannot justify the use of our joint resources to challenge the class again.

And Jax, why wouldn't you descend together? Descent is one of the times when things go wrong and people need help. I find descent and ascent are the times when I'm most motivated to maintain the close formation that GUE teaches.

 

[mike_s]

wow... ... I mean Wow...



All this thread needs now is Wormil....

 

[Lobzilla]

A few observations: 1. People who don't meet their own expectations in a class tend to be unhappy at the end of it, and it's extremely easy to convert that into criticism of the class. I've had to work my butt off not to do that to my C2 class, where the vast majority of my problems were my fault.

2. There was something wrong with this class. There was not enough in-water time. Ocean conditions proved inhospitable for a number of students on the first scheduled boat diving day, and people don't learn well when they are sick. Exposure protection didn't match the water available in which to dive, and that's also a recipe for having a bad time.

3. This was going to be a difficult class to teach in the best of circumstances, because as far as I could tell, nobody in the class had had much of an opportunity even to try diving as a team before they got there. Several people had changed equipment. Some had low total dive counts. It was going to take a very concentrated and careful effort to make the class the best possible experience for all involved.

4. It's my perception that the fact that the senior instructor was teaching an instructor intern reduced the value of having two instructors involved in the class, thus making it more of a 1:6 ratio, which if people need individual help, is quite difficult.

5. Where there WAS in-water experience available, seasickness or cold kept some folks from being able to take advantage of it.

6. Although Bob enjoys a stellar reputation as the king of gear-balancing and trim (and I can speak from personal experience that he is very good at this) for whatever reason, he was unable or unwilling to bring those skills to play in this class. Some of it may be related to some very strongly held opinions about what he considers suboptimal gear. (And I think there are people who feel differently, even within the organization, but one listens to the instructor one has.)

7. One student was actually ill during the class, which I can't imagine. These classes really require that you be able to step up and give your best.

8. Of the students who were most unhappy with the class, only two, I believe, actually did any of the fun diving over the weekend, where a different vision of the usefulness of skills and the attitudes of GUE-trained divers might have been perceived. Of the two, I know one said that he had the best dive of his life during that weekend, precisely because of the things he had been shown.

So -- it was a suboptimal class from the instructor standpoint, from the conditions standpoint, and to some extent from the standpoint of where the students were coming into it. Since the next set of classes is not being held in the same place (and I have heard rumors that it will be held to 3 students) I think the instructors learned something very useful from the experience -- unfortunately, that doesn't fix things for the students who were involved.

We had a similar thing with Peter's Essentials class. The instructor scheduled a day of diving at a local site where the currents, given the tides of that day, made it simply impossible to do the planned diving. The instructor, not being local, had not realized that. The class lost out on some of the diving they were supposed to do. This happens. I've been in a class that lost the day of experience dives due to water and weather conditions, and I've seen classes conducted in visibility so poor that I don't think the instructor could see the students half the time. You do what you can, especially if people aren't local and therefore can't easily reschedule for next weekend.

The discussion around this class really reminds me very strongly of the discussion around my Cave 2 class. It also had issues, some of which were my fault and some of which were beyond my control. The discussion had staunch defenders of the class and instructor, and people who were happy to take a swipe at both. The truth is that GUE and GUE instructors aren't perfect. They're good, sometimes very good, but both the organization and the people who make it real are fallible. The best teacher can have an off day, or be presented with a student or students who are difficult for them to teach. Students can, either through lack of preparation or just lack of understanding of what's required, show up at a level where it's just not reasonable to expect an instructor to bring them to standards in the time available.

This class was not the best example of what GUE Fundamentals can be and has been. I hope the students came away with something, and I hope they are not soured on GUE training or GUE diving. I know that, after I had time to get some distance on my C2 class, that it is an enormous source of sadness to me that I really cannot justify the use of our joint resources to challenge the class again.

And Jax, why wouldn't you descend together? Descent is one of the times when things go wrong and people need help. I find descent and ascent are the times when I'm most motivated to maintain the close formation that GUE teaches.

Amen!

I am going to leave it at that and go diving.

 

[kanonfodr]

#1 - I can never "join the elite" (continue in GUE training) . . . that point keeps getting lost for some reason . . . GUE does not allow sidemount. Period. For reasons that are good for them. I understand and respect that. However, I will not wear backmounted doubles. Period. For reasons that are good for me.

http://www.gosidemount.com/download/GUE_WhySideMount.pdf

I don't think it's that GUE "doesn't allow" sidemount (I've heard that the ZG guys in Mexico are using sidemount to explore some cave sections) as much as they don't have a curriculum supporting it. GI3 even wrote an article on how they do it once, with some reasons why. This is a copy. Mixing SM/BM teams could lead to confusion in moments of duress, and there is no system that IMO meets the needs of GUE even though there are several excellent systems out there and a lot of experienced divers using those systems.

Also, I don't feel like sidemount works everywhere. I know for certain that it makes beach entries with surf more difficult than with backmounted tanks because of the way the tanks hang: while you are walking as they impede movement and that can mean the difference between staying upright and potentially caving your face in on some very sharp and unforgiving rocks. Sidemount is a tool, just like backmounted doubles, rebreathers, stage bottles, blase blase blase. In some instances it works exceptionally well (there is no way in hell I will ever go past HP100/LP85/AL80-sized doubles, but I could probably manage bigger tanks in a sidemount configuration for diving in caves, lakes, and rivers).

#2 - A lot of people advocated fundies as THE class to tweak, tighten up, and perfect your skills. That is why I took the class. I expected to learn how to 'fix myself', much like a golfer returns to a pro from time to time, to tweak his game.

You're correct, because it did fix a lot of our issues. But I can understand that even the best instructors can have bad classes, Bob just highlighted one. Some times they recognize it, some times they dont: but I won't apologize for anyone else. What I would suggest is that, having found instructors that you have found you can learn well from: continue learning from those instructors. Not everyone's cut out for GUE, for various reasons. But very few people have the talent and will to be a knowingly crap-tastic diver and dive buddy, and those that do pursue that will not be buddies of mine but the rest...we can negotiate .

Peace,
Greg

 

[gypsyjim]

Some very good reading, and feed back above. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and observations.

There must be as many goals for taking a Fundies class as there are people taking the training. I was impressed with the level of control and precision in the water column that I witnessed in local divers that I saw. Hi Henrik.

I really am not terribly interested in diving caves, or any other extreme environments, but am interested in serious control in the water, control I had not seen even diving with course Directors, and it was something I wanted a piece of too.

Was my class perfect? No, of course not. Did I earn my "Pass",? Again, no, but that was not unexpected because of my bad leg.

I did develop a better idea of real team awareness, acquired a great deal more skill in the water column, learned several new skills that I had never considered before, and had a lot of fun and made new friends, even tho I felt less than 2" tall at times, I did so badly at some points.

Am I a better person than somebody else, because I took a GUE class. Of course not.

Am I a failure, because I did not earn my Fundies Pass? Also, of course not.

Am I glad I took the Fundies class with Bob Sherwood. CERTAINLY! It has made me a better diver, and that was my only goal.

 

[lamont]

So what is DIR? To me it seems like a system developed more than 20 years ago to improve the survival rate in that small group of cave explorers. My big question is what is the relevance to the majority of divers, who dive warm water tropical environements for fun on vacation? I suspect if you are not going into the environement that DIR was designed for, it's of little relevance to you.

No, most of the fundamental skills are almost straight out of the open water PADI manual.

Do you think that OW vacation divers would be well suited by having:

- good buoyancy control
- good trim
- good propulsion and kicks
- a back kick
- ability to share gas
- ability to manipulate their own valves
- a comprehensive gear check and pre-dive check
- ability to do a blue-water ascent and stops
- ability to stick together as a buddy team
[...etc...]

In the modern world you cannot fail a course, if at University, the lecturers have to bend over backwards and spoon feed untalented students in order for them to pass. Standards have been lowered, it's never an individuals fault, it is a fault with the system, someone else is to blame. Lets sue someone for discrimination.

Yes, and GUE is typically very good about holding students to an actual standard and they don't pass if they don't measure up, without lowering standards.

 

[lamont]

And Jax, why wouldn't you descend together? Descent is one of the times when things go wrong and people need help. I find descent and ascent are the times when I'm most motivated to maintain the close formation that GUE teaches.

And actually a lot of accident reports start with separation on the descent. Someone's ears don't work well, or someone just bombs to the bottom, then one of them winds up in trouble and you wind up reading about in the DAN fatalities report -- or it just winds up being a bad dive posted on the A&I forum here. And its easy to start breaking the accident chain right at that link with a little bit of practice.

 

[Jax]

a few observations: 1. People who don't meet their own expectations in a class tend to be unhappy at the end of it, and it's extremely easy to convert that into criticism of the class. I've had to work my butt off not to do that to my c2 class, where the vast majority of my problems were my fault.

2. There was something wrong with this class. There was not enough in-water time. Ocean conditions proved inhospitable for a number of students on the first scheduled boat diving day, and people don't learn well when they are sick. Exposure protection didn't match the water available in which to dive, and that's also a recipe for having a bad time.

3. This was going to be a difficult class to teach in the best of circumstances, because as far as i could tell, nobody in the class had had much of an opportunity even to try diving as a team before they got there. Several people had changed equipment. Some had low total dive counts. It was going to take a very concentrated and careful effort to make the class the best possible experience for all involved.

4. It's my perception that the fact that the senior instructor was teaching an instructor intern reduced the value of having two instructors involved in the class, thus making it more of a 1:6 ratio, which if people need individual help, is quite difficult.

5. Where there was in-water experience available, seasickness or cold kept some folks from being able to take advantage of it.

6. Although bob enjoys a stellar reputation as the king of gear-balancing and trim (and i can speak from personal experience that he is very good at this) for whatever reason, he was unable or unwilling to bring those skills to play in this class. Some of it may be related to some very strongly held opinions about what he considers suboptimal gear. (and i think there are people who feel differently, even within the organization, but one listens to the instructor one has.)

7. One student was actually ill during the class, which i can't imagine. These classes really require that you be able to step up and give your best.

8. Of the students who were most unhappy with the class, only two, i believe, actually did any of the fun diving over the weekend, where a different vision of the usefulness of skills and the attitudes of gue-trained divers might have been perceived. Of the two, i know one said that he had the best dive of his life during that weekend, precisely because of the things he had been shown.

So -- it was a suboptimal class from the instructor standpoint, from the conditions standpoint, and to some extent from the standpoint of where the students were coming into it. Since the next set of classes is not being held in the same place (and i have heard rumors that it will be held to 3 students) i think the instructors learned something very useful from the experience -- unfortunately, that doesn't fix things for the students who were involved.

We had a similar thing with peter's essentials class. The instructor scheduled a day of diving at a local site where the currents, given the tides of that day, made it simply impossible to do the planned diving. The instructor, not being local, had not realized that. The class lost out on some of the diving they were supposed to do. This happens. I've been in a class that lost the day of experience dives due to water and weather conditions, and i've seen classes conducted in visibility so poor that i don't think the instructor could see the students half the time. You do what you can, especially if people aren't local and therefore can't easily reschedule for next weekend.

The discussion around this class really reminds me very strongly of the discussion around my cave 2 class. It also had issues, some of which were my fault and some of which were beyond my control. The discussion had staunch defenders of the class and instructor, and people who were happy to take a swipe at both. The truth is that gue and gue instructors aren't perfect. They're good, sometimes very good, but both the organization and the people who make it real are fallible. The best teacher can have an off day, or be presented with a student or students who are difficult for them to teach. Students can, either through lack of preparation or just lack of understanding of what's required, show up at a level where it's just not reasonable to expect an instructor to bring them to standards in the time available.

This class was not the best example of what gue fundamentals can be and has been. I hope the students came away with something, and i hope they are not soured on gue training or gue diving. I know that, after i had time to get some distance on my c2 class, that it is an enormous source of sadness to me that i really cannot justify the use of our joint resources to challenge the class again.

And jax, why wouldn't you descend together? Descent is one of the times when things go wrong and people need help. I find descent and ascent are the times when i'm most motivated to maintain the close formation that gue teaches.

amen!

I am going to leave it at that and go diving.

+1 ! ! !

And TSandM and Bob and the folks like them that have reached out to me are the reason I am able to put this anomaly in its rightful place.