Thank heavens for PADI

[Walter]

"In a PADI course you only have so much latitude in when you introduce skills."

True, and they are not really in logical order. I spend 4 hours in the pool (2 two hour sessions) working on skin diving skills and introduce SCUBA at the begining of the 5th hour. If I were a PADI instructor, I'd be in violation of standards.

The 1st thing my students learn is to breathe with just a snorkel and they don't even realize they've also learned no mask breathing. Then they learn to breathe through a flooded snorkel, then to blast clear the snorkel, finally they recove the snorkel from the pool bottom.

Next we set the snorkel aside and learn to use a mask. Partial flooding and clearing progressing to full flooding and clearing. Remove, replace and clear, then recover the mask from the pool bottom. Next they clear the mask as many times on 1 breath as they are able. They all get to at least 3 times. Finally put the snorkel on the mask and recover the combination from the pool bottom.

Next we put on fins and learn 5 kicks - flutter, scissor, frog, dolphin and sculling. I don't teach swimming backwards in the OW class either, although I do demonstrate it. This usually finishes the 1st session. The second session we spend on using the techniques learned and adding in surface dives, entries and exits and displacement method of clearing the snorkel with lots of practice. At this point, they are weighted for skin diving.

On the third session I introduce SCUBA. I am not concerned about a leaking mask causing panic for two reasons. They can breathe with a flooded mask and they can already clear the mask.

I start with regulator clearing (3 methods) and regulator recovery (2 methods). so they are prepared for when things do wrong right from the start. We next work on achieving neutral buoyancy before we start to swim around.

My point is if you organize a class logically, each skill learned makes the next skill easier to master. Teaching the right way actually makes it easier on students. As Mike mentioned, PADI's course is not logically organized. Luckily (actually by design), I don't have to deal with those ridiculous restrictions.

Jason,

I don't actually ignore smilie faces, it's just that I rarely notice them. Now that I've looked again at you post, I see you didn't use a smilie face. You used a crying face.

 

[Jonathan]

these days seem to be about 3 foot deep because of fear of getting sued if people drown then you kind of have to sit or kneel on the bottom during most of confined water skills....

In a perfect world we would all be BSAC (and not BSAC Japan) divers before they started lowering their standards to compete with PADI, SSI, NAUI etc - I don't think we have your esteemed YMCA in the UK as a diving agency, any chance of that was probably killed off by Village People....

o/w whatever the agency is just an L Plate - a license to start learning. It should be fun as well as educational no matter what the agency or people will stop coming to learn...

One of the main problems as I see it is American TV. How? Most kids today only have a 10 minute attention span due to the advertising slots - which are probably there so they don't realise how dull it is!

Dribble I know but it's about as sane and coherant as 90% of these posts...

Jonathan

 

[PhotoTJ]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...
I'll admit that tailoring training to maximize participation and equipment sales has done wonders for the manufacturers, resorts and other portions of the econemy.

I guess a valid question here is what are our goals. Speaking for myself, the kind of training encouraged by the agencies and especially the manufacturers holds no interest for me and in fact many concerns.

Every diver has different goals...

I will say this though. Telling students the whole story will eliminate much of the equipment being manufactured from concideration.

...and gear preferances. Some may love the very items you wish to eliminate. And remember, 'the whole story'? The vast majority of what we debate here is a matter of opinion. That's why we debate it! (Plus, we are both stubborn cusses, I'll wager.)

There is profit in keeping the student diver ignorant.

If an instructor dives one way, knows it, and loves it, odds are he'll teach that way, and allow his students to find out other on their own.

 

[Whirling Girl]

fins wake once bubbled...
... but I'll make an exception for a lady diver, mainly because her points underline the weakness of her side's arguments. The point being that the anti-PADI people really don't understand recrational diving ... at all! Simple answer, and Margaret answers it herself: Four months? In an ideal world, all newbie divers would do a four-month course, which of course would include finning backwards, breathing from the longhose, doing advanced decompression planning and what have you.

Hee hee, I'm a lady now. Thanks, fins!

OK, you make some good points but I wanted to correct one mistake. I didn't take a four month course, as I'm sure you realize. DIRF is only one weekend and I learned more skills and information in that weekend than I learned in a three week PADI openwater course. The key aspect of DIRF, and all GUE courses, though, is that you don't take them to get a card. You take them to find out how much you don't know, and where the bar really is, and how hard you will have to work beyond the class to get to that bar. It makes you want to keep learning, not sit on your fins and believe you're a good diver. Take DIRF, I don't care who you are or how experienced, and let Andrew G or one of the other GUE instructors mess with your reality for a while, and then you'll know how much more you could know about diving.

My complaint about backward kicking wasn't that I wasn't taught it in my openwater course. It was that it wasn't even suggested as an option or demonstrated as a skill that I might aspire to learn. And yet it should be SO basic!

jepuskar said:
I catch my instructor's students holding themselves in the same manner my instructor holds himself.

you know....left hand right wrist or right hand left wrist.

<ohh, and for those of you who thought something else....very cool>

Yes, I thought of something else, lol. But you make a very good point. Students want to emulate their instructors. An instructor like Mike Ferarra, who I would assume is probably rock solid in the water with perfect horizontal trim and absolute control over his buoyancy, is the best way for students to visualize where they want to be as experienced divers. It gives them a goal. Walter said he demonstrates backward kicking; that's all you need to do, I think, to let students know it's possible, and encourage them to continue to learn beyond the class.

jepuskar said:
..and the only time the viz is screwed up at Haigh is when my LDS is there with all of their students...

did i just say that?

Um, yeah. Yeah, you did.

Margaret

 

[PhotoTJ]

Whirling Girl once bubbled...
My complaint about backward kicking wasn't that I wasn't taught it in my openwater course. It was that it wasn't even suggested as an option or demonstrated as a skill that I might aspire to learn. And yet it should be SO basic!

Margaret

IF it's SO basic, why did it take four months to learn?

 

[Knavey]

newdiverAZ once bubbled...


I dive in a lake with 4' of viz every week. I know people who have no desire to do this at all.

Me for ONE! Dove a couple of times in bad viz...Venice is as bad as I can take it. Give me warm water, good vis and a LOT of colorful fish!

Then when I am done with my dive, let me eat like a king, take a nap and make another dive later in the day in the same beautiful Carribean waters.

 

[Whirling Girl]

PhotoTJ once bubbled...

IF it's SO basic, why did it take four months to learn?

Well, basic doesn't necessarily mean easy. Neutral buoyancy isn't easy either, but it's basic too. At least in my opinion.

In fact, good diving skills are hard, man.

But really I think the answer to that question is that I'm just, well, retarded. I know alot of people who learned it alot faster than I did. My buddy flooded his mask several times watching me try to do this skill. It must have been hilarious. I was not amused. But at least I stuck with it.

TJ, I hope you don't mind me asking this, but can you kick backwards? No hands, horizontal trim, no cheating? How long did it take you to learn?

Margaret

 

[PhotoTJ]

Whirling Girl once bubbled...

TJ, I hope you don't mind me asking this, but can you kick backwards? No hands, horizontal trim, no cheating? How long did it take you to learn?

Margaret

I don't mind at all. The answer is, I don't know. I've never tried it.

Thus far, a situation has not come up that would require it.

I am not trying to say I'm anything that I'm not, nor am I trying to insult anyone. (Well, maybe one or two, not you, though.) I just have a low tolerance for whining, and all the 'PADI is the Anti-christ' horse-pucky. The fact is, ten million people have learned to dive with PADI, and without that driving force, diving as we know it would not exist. I'm by no means saying that there is not room for improvement, there is. But it seems very few people want to acknowledge what PADI has done for diving. Hey, I think that 95% of people driving have no business being near a car, (you should have to pass both Bob Bondurant's stunt driving school, and Buck Baker's racing school, before you can drive a car), but my crying about it on the internet will do nothing to change it.

It just bugs me that the same five or six people beat the same dead horse, week in and week out, thread after thread.

 

[concollective]

So let me ask you NAUI-elites (frankly, the tone is revolting) a question: did you become aware of PADI's alleged inadequacies because you actually underwent PADI training, or did you, in one of your more self-congratulatory moments after you got NAUI training, tell yourself that the training you got just had to be the best as an a priori matter?

I suspect it's the latter.

If you've read this far, let me go on to ask: I've just gotten OW from PADI and, so far I think, have not killed myself. Or come close. I'm very interested in AOW and am looking for the best org to train with. Is there a NAUI proponent out there who can, without all the bull, rhetoric, and arrogance, articulate to me why I should choose NAUI rather than PADI to continue my training? A nice, dispassionate, articulate response would be great; the haughty tenor of most of you NAUI guys really makes you far less credible. And unlikable.

 

[jepuskar]

Check the post you originally responded to me about....with the Fool saying.

the post where I said..come on Walter, I know you wanna say it..Come on...come on. That is the post I am talking about.

Geez, the internet sucks for this type of explanation.