Should there be a minimum experience requirement between courses?

[JRK44]

Should there be a minimum experience requirement between finishing one course and going onto the next?

I have less than 50 dives. I took over a decade out of diving and have only completed c. 10 dives since returning.
Basically I'm starting from scratch again in terms of currency, though obviously basic skills are not an issue.
So I'm a diver with less than 50 logged dives and yet I'm open water, advanced open water, rescue, drysuit and nitrox, and was recently invited to become a divemaster.

On reflection, this approach may help PADI sell courses but, to be frank, does it actually produce good divers?

I propose that there should be a minimum experience requirement between courses.
What do you think?

 

[johndiver999]

Hey John....

My only point was that the "troll" that Wookie mentioned had posted a previous thread stating that ONLY course directors with a minimum of 10 years experience should be allowed to take students to OW.

To the topic..... I just personally believe that a freshly certified OW with only 4 OW dives under their belt would most likely benefit from some additional experience at that OW level prior to taking an ADV course. Basically, I guess I am saying that when it comes to any aspect of diving that "experience" is really the best teacher. Just my opinion.......

I've seen some incredibly bad PADI dive instructors, I remember one in particular was so scared before a dive he was shaking on the boat and I knew he was never going to descend. I was right of course, or I wouldn't remember the incident - LOL. And that was just one example. I have seen tech diver students, just about kill themselves in training. I could go on and on, but my point is that I am under no delusion that formal training necessarily makes good divers.

I also agree that there is no substitute for experience. On the private boats I normally dive, nobody ever asks about certification agency or level. It just doesn't really matter, even on dives past the recreational limits. I can think of several people I dove with many dozens of times and I honestly don't know their certification level and a few might not actually be certified. After 500 or 1000 dives the card doesn't mean much.

However, I think the training in many cases is so "weak" that the more the people get, the better off they will be. If the OW class was 12 weeks long, they would not need an AOW or probably a rescue and certainly not a peak performance training, but since so much of the training seems so "accelerated" and brief, I have to assume, more is better (than none).

So I have seen people who were very weak coming out of an OW class, and to be honest, I would not really want them diving with each other. I think it would be hugely beneficial for these exact people to get several more dives under their belt with an instructor ASAP. It is safer for them and increases the chance that they will stay with the sport. Heaven knows nobody but PADI would call them "advanced" but they are at least less likely to kill themselves than they were the week before.

Maybe I am wrong and my perspective is skewed, but I was curious as to how/why some people seem so sure that extra dives between certifications is necessarily so beneficial, all things being equal, of course.

 

[Cthippo]

Can you say exactly why? Can you define the benefits - I'm curious.


I would like to make a hypothetical comparison of two divers -

One does all the certs as fast as possible and then does another 80 dives or something and reaches some arbitrary expereince level of 100 dives.

The other diver would presumably do many (a dozen?) dives between each certification and also ends up with 100 dives total as well.

It is not obvious to me anyway, that one method is hugely better than the other, all other things being equal.

I don't really see a problem with someone fast tracking through the recreational classes and then doing another 60 or 80 dives where they get to practice or implement those skills. Also, I think there is a benefit to doing dives under an instructor's guidance with respect to safety at least when they are new.

I don't know about quantifying the benefits, but I think there are some.

In many cases the experience gives students of follow-on classes the context to understand what they are learning in a way that inexperienced students lack. Their foundational skills will be better and so they will be better able to focus on the new skills because they are able to do the basics automatically. An experienced student will have a better grasp of what things are important and which things are of lower importance.

That said, this is not a hill I am interested in dying on and so while I think there is benefit of gaining experience between classes, I don't think I would make it mandatory.

 

[JRK44]

All it does is sell courses, and depending on instructor creates bad divers.

I would say it depends on the course. It should also depend on the diver. Some learn faster than others plus if your instructor is really good you will be better than someone with more dives and higher certs.

Agency's will set minimum for some classes as a means of setting some kind of standard rather than leaving to the instructor to say ready or not.

Thank you for your reply.

I have made the decision to stay on this forum, but to refrain from posting.
Some member's sense of humour hasn't developed beyond infancy, I'm afraid (not those in the pub though!).

 

[84CJ7]

I could get four friends together and have a thousand varied and realistic but totally fake dives logged, potentially even without anyone even being certified. The system of verification is seriously lacking so numbers are useless. Demonstration of skills is all that matters.

Also after being trained in Wisconsin and visiting the Caymans I can tell you that anyone certified down there needs to be totally retrained up here.
It was so comically easy to dive down there after fighting up here through no visibility in cold water while loaded down with gear and wetsuits so thick that buoyancy is a nightmare that it truly was vacation diving.
So even legit logged dives can be fairly useless as a judge of necessary skills.

I took my AOW back to back after my OW class because it was just a key to a door for me, its up to me to be sensible about when I'm ready to walk through that door. It really is just the second half of the OW class anyways.
Without naming them I can say the organization that issued the cert is happy to exchange your credit card for their certification card with only a minimum of skills displayed. It's up to you to know your limits and not get yourself killed, not your dive babysitter.
It really needs to be made clear to new divers that by accepting that card they are saying that they feel they are qualified to dive with just their buddy and no DM's to watch over them. That was actually made clear at the beginning of the AOW class when he reminded us that he was teaching us new skills and refining things, but we were all trained divers already and so he wasn't going to babysit us closely like in the OW class. If we needed that we didn't belong there.

I learned so much more just practicing after the certs than I ever did in class. I can't actually remember a single thing we did or was said in the classes though I have all the skills it seems. By myself I had all the time in the world to experiment and really get the hang of things. It wasn't a lot of dives either, so numbers of dives still wouldn't help and I didn't even bother to log anything after training. The really good dives for experience were all dives where I was going from shore and had no schedule or other people in a rush to get somewhere (dive buddy just wanted to look at the fish). So quality of the dives as a chance to learn is so much more important than quantity.
One ride on a horse with total freedom gives you more experience than 100 trail rides in a line will. So pack mule dives behind a DM don't count as real dives in my opinion.

The single most important thing I did to improve my diving wasn't training or practice, it was gear changes.
In the end I threw away the entire overpriced recreational crap pile the shop pushed me into and personally picked out and assembled what is essentially mostly tech gear for specific reasons, not just because tech divers use the stuff. Just the fins alone magically made me totally stable in the water and made it possible to do all kinds of crazy maneuvers including swimming backwards. A single layer but thick hyperstretch wetsuit (not tech I suppose) instead of the farmer john wetsuit the shop put me in, with thinner gloves and hood of the same stretchy type fixed my buoyancy issues and made it super easy to move freely and access/operate my gear.
If you feel like diving is difficult, check your gear before you waste time trying to learn to dive with a technical handicap.

I think the only place where there needs to be a much more serious official skills review is certs where others are relying on your competence for more than just a dive buddy so potentially rescue and definitely everything after that.

As far as dive buddies relying on you, I believe in the group solo mentality. I'll rescue you after you demonstrate that you're not rescuing yourself or ask me for assistance. Otherwise you should be your own first line of backup plan. I have a 19cf pony though I don't actually solo dive.

 

[Barnaby'sDad]

While dive count can be an indicator of experience, it doesn’t necessarily mean much. I.e. I’ve seen people that claim 75+ logged dives that are absolutely clueless at setting up their equipment, absolutely erratic in the water…buoyancy wise, and have zero situational awareness, because they’re fully task loaded just being in the water.

Is someone that has 100+ vacation dives in 75’+ visibility water with a babysitter/guide and crew setting up their gear going to be as competent as someone with half as many dives that has a range of experience, sets up their own gear, etc.? Maybe.

That’s not even getting into how people choose to dive and log dives. I.e. I’ve got a few dozen dives that I opted to do 45+ minutes in duration. If I wanted to…I could have broken that time up with a surface interval and logged two dives. Plenty of people do that to (essentially) pad their dive count.

 

[Rick Brant]

Your question actually suggests that there should be a maximum time between courses rather than a minimum.

 

[Bigbella]

Should there be a minimum experience requirement between finishing one course and going onto the next?

I propose that there should be a minimum experience requirement between courses.
What do you think?

You do realize that all of this crap is just a f**king club without any real-world regulations, aside from federal law governing the commercial transport of compressed gas cylinders; that all of these pompous titles and vanity patches hold about as much weight (aside from PADI's "Dive Against Debris" trash collection specialty, heh, heh) as Poo-Bah from The Mikado?

When I first began, decades ago, there were only a couple of courses available at the YMCA, basically the equivalent of open-water one and two; and the only reason why I even pursued further instruction, had been inexpensive access to boats; employment in a dive shop freebie; and some throwaway college credit.

I spent most every day, that first Summer, in the water.

Just continue diving; there's your most valuable experience.

Why there now exists a subset of divers who wish to turn what was once just a very cool, ragtag activity of water-loving outliers hitting a beach, into what now looks like a neoprene-clad HOA, currently obsessed with the length of their hoses, is beyond me . . .

 

[boulderjohn]

Why there now exists a subset of divers who wish to turn what was once just a cool, ragtag activity of water-loving outliers, into what looks like a neoprene-clad HOA, now obsessed with the length of hoses, is beyond me . . .

Evidently.

Since it is beyond you, there is no point in trying to explain it.