Streamlining Training

[DaleC]

No Dale, the fact that you can afford to dive, have internet, etc shows you are affluent. Nobody on this board is poor. If you have disposable income you are affluent.

My powers of intuition are not as great as yours so I can't speak for the whole board but I believe you are not thinking of affluence as most others would. Affluent compared to someone in Somalia, perhaps, but not compared to North American/ Western European standards.
There are lots of places I'd like to go (I've never been to a tropical destination), lots of gear I'd like to own and some classes I'd like to take but every dollar spent diving is a dollar taken away from my wife and kids. It doesn't come out of the extra bag o cash I have stuffed under the bed. In fact, I just put myself $20000 in debt to return to school, have cut my workload in half to attend classes and face a 500 hour unpaid practicum soon.
Not that I'm complaining, I'm a happy/lucky man. I think neccesity is the mother of invention and not being able to buy ones way through diving forces a person to think about what they need and don't need and pushes them to explore techniques/ideas that existed before the equipment era took over. I am far more reliant on diving skills than diving equipment as a result and a lot of things learned in classes can be learned without if one seeks out mentors/asks questions and does a lot of self study.

 

[seaducer]

Not to hijack this thread with the above response, but I for one am an advocate of a "diver's permit" cert only good in benign conditions and with a qualified DM/Instructor and only in small groups (6 or less). That approach doesn't really inconvenience the vacation diver since that's mostly what they do anyhow but then not fully trained divers would not be out there on their own.

I am with you, but at the same time I think we should take a deep breath because, what we consider "not fully trained divers" are out there all the time and are not being hurt. I make my comments and have my feelings in the light that I would prefer things this way, but I have to acknowledge that there is no real evidence that the current mass market system is really broken.

I also think the idea of professional dive mentoring (as Trace is offering and Lynne described) is also a great idea that could be expanded on. There are many skills I would like to learn personally that might not be offered as part of a course (or a small part of one) and a private mentor would be a good way to do that. The reverse frog kick being one that still confounds me.

Finding someone to teach you a back kick is probably the best way to go. If you cannot however, search for it on youtube, there are some excellent videos on there, and that is how I learned to do it. I would certainly fail a cave class since I tend to kick back and up, so I need some pro help to polish it off, but I can move backwards never-the-less. And for an OW photog, that is all I really need.

 

[TSandM]

Drew, a lot of us went through the "shrimp dance" phase with our back kicks (up and back). It's a phenomenon related to two things -- having your fin tips up, and not quite being in flat trim. If you really concentrate on keeping your ankles a little bit dorsiflexed, it helps a lot, and making sure you don't start out a bit head-down helps, too.

 

[Diver0001]

Drew, a lot of us went through the "shrimp dance" phase with our back kicks (up and back). It's a phenomenon related to two things -- having your fin tips up, and not quite being in flat trim. If you really concentrate on keeping your ankles a little bit dorsiflexed, it helps a lot, and making sure you don't start out a bit head-down helps, too.

OK....

When we're starting to use words like "dorsiflexed" then the geek factor is reaching critical mass.

3
2
1

SPLAT. We all just landed in the muck of what happens to divers who don't know how to "dorsiflex'. LOL

R..

 

[fire_diver]

Was that a question or an insult?

 

[seaducer]

SPLAT. We all just landed in the muck of what happens to divers who don't know how to "dorsiflex'. LOL

R..

It sounds close enough to "dorsal fin", I like it...

I am also shocked to say I knew what it meant...dorsiflexion, pronation, I think I need a life...

 

[tkdgodess]

dorsiflex means to point your toes up towards your shins, plantarflexion means to point your toes away from your shins Dorsiflexion is what you do when you do calf cramp relief.

 

[Diver0001]

Was that a question or an insult?

Neither. It was me poking fun at a friend for being geeky.

R..

 

[Peter Guy]

Rob -- I let her talk like that and then I demand a translation into English!

 

[TSandM]

I looked at that post for a while after I wrote it, and thought about rewriting it, and then figured if anybody asked the definition of dorsiflex (rather than Googling it) I'd explain.