DaleC
Contributor
I've been thinking about this for a bit.
There's two ways to look at it. From the POV of someone who wants to drop the people and style they are currently diving and is eager to adopt GUE as their defacto form of diving; or someone who likes what they are currently doing but also wants to improve generally as a diver. The second would be me.
Money can also be thought of in two ways. For some, the money for the course comes out of a big disposable income pot and not that big a hardship in a real sense. For others it is a serious consideration. I have to see some sort of tangible value to sell it to my wife as I have a lot of competing priorities as a blue collar father of three.
That being said:
I think the course was very valuable partly in what it provided in the moment, but even more importantly in how it could set the tone for future diving. In a sense you take a course but you also have the opportunity to enter into a culture where skills development is a continuing process practiced by supportive people. The value of that would I think, partly depend on how close you live to an active GUE community but I am reasonably close to three communities so, if I wanted to, I would have plenty of opportunities to expand the skill set introduced during the course and to develop those friendships. That's a biggy that probably could be emphasized differently.
Before the course I shied away from GUE because I had the sense that it was a "take it or leave it" proposition that conflicted with my current friendships (non GUE) and the way I sometimes like to dive (vintage/solo). During the course I realized there was a very valid middle road approach. I could still keep my old friends, dive my own style, and concurrently develop a new style with new friends. Instead of one taking away from the other in an adversarial fashion, GUE involvement could be seen as complimenting my diving. That was a big aha moment that made me more receptive. How you get that message across is a good question, probably one way is by having people like me write about it.
If I look at the information presented, some I would use all the time, some I probably wouldn't but appreciate understanding anyway. One example would be standard gas. I still like air for many of my dives and my friends are all over he map but at the same time I came to really appreciate the underlying principles behind using standard gas mixes like EAN32. I certainly saw the benefits of it over best mix, which I would have previously adhered to. But that also goes to many of the concepts underlying the team approach that GUE follows.
One of my prior main objections to taking fundies was that, because my friends didn't dive that way, most of what I learned about a holistic dive regime would not be applicable to my diving experience. The course showed me something different. Though there are many specific things that I can't do with those friends, I am more aware of what could be done and can attempt to, perhaps in a smaller way, educate some of them. I don't see this as "turning them" GUE so much as just being good diving sense. I also can develop those skills with my GUE friends in the mean time.
From a skills perspective the course was very valuable. Again, not just from what was learned there, but from being shown what I needed to work on and being given the means to do so. I suppose you could get the same sort of thing from simply mentoring within the local community but I suspect there would be blank spaces in the whole picture that would get filled in via the course. And, the methodology of graduated task loading with immediate instructor feedback (plus video) was superb.
I intentionally did not practice the skills portion of the course ahead of time (probably should have) and did not even really look to see what they were and also dove a single tank. I did this so I would have the experience described by some on the board who are directed to take GUE training ie. "I am a newer diver who would like to be a better diver and am looking for what course to take next etc..." to see what the value would be. I think that put me behind the curve a bit in terms of not being better prepared and if I were going to direct someone to fundies I think I would try to connect them with a mentoring group first to work on the basics of trim/buoyancy/propulsion or have them take a GUE primer. If you struggle too much with those things I think it takes away from some of the other points you could be focusing on. I could see a whole course/workshop just on stability in the water being very beneficial to any avenue of diver.
So... is the course worth it? I think so. It isn't so much about the specifics as it is a gateway course to looking at diving in a different light. You don't have to drink the koolaid, most of what you learn will benefit you either directly or by way of increasing your knowledge base, and you will have what is most missing in all other forms of traditional dive education: The follow up framework for practicing and refining the skills you are introduced to.
Boy, after writing all that I went back and reread the previous post. I think I answered a different question.
If you are asking: After the course, did I/we feel like turning around and paying Guy for it? No, and I don't think Guy expected it. First, my wife would probably dump my body in a ditch. Second, I had/have the feeling that this was a well thought out, intentional experience that played itself out exactly as it was intended.
There's two ways to look at it. From the POV of someone who wants to drop the people and style they are currently diving and is eager to adopt GUE as their defacto form of diving; or someone who likes what they are currently doing but also wants to improve generally as a diver. The second would be me.
Money can also be thought of in two ways. For some, the money for the course comes out of a big disposable income pot and not that big a hardship in a real sense. For others it is a serious consideration. I have to see some sort of tangible value to sell it to my wife as I have a lot of competing priorities as a blue collar father of three.
That being said:
I think the course was very valuable partly in what it provided in the moment, but even more importantly in how it could set the tone for future diving. In a sense you take a course but you also have the opportunity to enter into a culture where skills development is a continuing process practiced by supportive people. The value of that would I think, partly depend on how close you live to an active GUE community but I am reasonably close to three communities so, if I wanted to, I would have plenty of opportunities to expand the skill set introduced during the course and to develop those friendships. That's a biggy that probably could be emphasized differently.
Before the course I shied away from GUE because I had the sense that it was a "take it or leave it" proposition that conflicted with my current friendships (non GUE) and the way I sometimes like to dive (vintage/solo). During the course I realized there was a very valid middle road approach. I could still keep my old friends, dive my own style, and concurrently develop a new style with new friends. Instead of one taking away from the other in an adversarial fashion, GUE involvement could be seen as complimenting my diving. That was a big aha moment that made me more receptive. How you get that message across is a good question, probably one way is by having people like me write about it.
If I look at the information presented, some I would use all the time, some I probably wouldn't but appreciate understanding anyway. One example would be standard gas. I still like air for many of my dives and my friends are all over he map but at the same time I came to really appreciate the underlying principles behind using standard gas mixes like EAN32. I certainly saw the benefits of it over best mix, which I would have previously adhered to. But that also goes to many of the concepts underlying the team approach that GUE follows.
One of my prior main objections to taking fundies was that, because my friends didn't dive that way, most of what I learned about a holistic dive regime would not be applicable to my diving experience. The course showed me something different. Though there are many specific things that I can't do with those friends, I am more aware of what could be done and can attempt to, perhaps in a smaller way, educate some of them. I don't see this as "turning them" GUE so much as just being good diving sense. I also can develop those skills with my GUE friends in the mean time.
From a skills perspective the course was very valuable. Again, not just from what was learned there, but from being shown what I needed to work on and being given the means to do so. I suppose you could get the same sort of thing from simply mentoring within the local community but I suspect there would be blank spaces in the whole picture that would get filled in via the course. And, the methodology of graduated task loading with immediate instructor feedback (plus video) was superb.
I intentionally did not practice the skills portion of the course ahead of time (probably should have) and did not even really look to see what they were and also dove a single tank. I did this so I would have the experience described by some on the board who are directed to take GUE training ie. "I am a newer diver who would like to be a better diver and am looking for what course to take next etc..." to see what the value would be. I think that put me behind the curve a bit in terms of not being better prepared and if I were going to direct someone to fundies I think I would try to connect them with a mentoring group first to work on the basics of trim/buoyancy/propulsion or have them take a GUE primer. If you struggle too much with those things I think it takes away from some of the other points you could be focusing on. I could see a whole course/workshop just on stability in the water being very beneficial to any avenue of diver.
So... is the course worth it? I think so. It isn't so much about the specifics as it is a gateway course to looking at diving in a different light. You don't have to drink the koolaid, most of what you learn will benefit you either directly or by way of increasing your knowledge base, and you will have what is most missing in all other forms of traditional dive education: The follow up framework for practicing and refining the skills you are introduced to.
Boy, after writing all that I went back and reread the previous post. I think I answered a different question.
If you are asking: After the course, did I/we feel like turning around and paying Guy for it? No, and I don't think Guy expected it. First, my wife would probably dump my body in a ditch. Second, I had/have the feeling that this was a well thought out, intentional experience that played itself out exactly as it was intended.
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