Training Philosophy Part 1 (background)

[MikeFerrara]

In the "Thank Heaven For PADI" thread I posted some of the things that I see as deficiencies in the training standards and a few of the things that we do differently. I was asked to post more details so I thought I'd do it in another thread.

i'm sure there are many ways to do this stuff that works and I in no way claim to have invented any of it. In fact I freely admit to blatantly steeling from the best instructors that I know. Oh, and they know it too.

Fist some background on how and why I started to think differently than how I was taught.

The first thing is that as soon as I started diving I noticed that when other divers were around the vis was blown in short order. I was lucky enough to be diving every week with a pretty good bunch of more experienced divers so they made me learn to dive clean. I was still new though and didn't give the whole thing much thought.

As a DM candidate (apprenticing) I was involved as a primary rescuer in two incedents with students. The first was a girl who had finished her class earler the same day and was on her first post cert dive. There was her, me, a real DM and an instructor. The DM was leading, I was with the girl and the instructor was above us having trouble equalizing.

The instructor that didn't go on the dive had tied a cammera off to the girls HP hose which wasn't secured. She started drifting a little deep per our dive plan so I signalled her to watch her depth. She stopped to look for her gauge (which was floating above her head) and when she stopped kicking she sunk like a rock because she was negative. When you're trimmed head up you must be negative to swim ahead without going up also. When you stop kicking...you sink. Anyway she sunk and by the time I caught her she was in full blown panic. The instructor couldn't get down to help and the divemaster who was leading hadn't yet noticed what was going on. The look on her face as she spit out her reg at 60 ft so she could scream better is something that I remember well.

The second was a student who had finished his OW class the day before and was knocking off a couple of 75 ft dive in the Gulf. My wife and I were buddied up, the two students from the day before and the same instructor from the other situation.

Anyway I seen he was having trouble but I didn't really know what was going on at first.. As it turned out he became too buoyant and became exhausted trying to swim back down. I was diving with my wife and didn't really realize there was a problem untill it had developed pretty far.

There was a little current so he had started to drift away from the bridge span. I went after him and the instructoe and I were able to slow him, dump some air from his bc and get him back to the line.

The problem was that in the process my wife had gotten left down on the bridge alone and she had only been diving a short time and the other student had followed us out into OW and was having trouble getting back against the current. He was almost back though and I helped him the rest of the way.

By this time we're up to 30 or 40 ft. I'm down to 5 or 7 hundred psi in an AL 80. I'm breathing heavy and I feel compelled to descend again to 75 ft or so and look for my wife. Luckily she was already headed back to the line so I had only gone a short distance on the bridge before I saw her comming. She was only a little scared about being left alone as a new diver in the Gulf of Mexico.

A little while later I'm an instructor. There's lots more but the thing here is that I did things exactly as I was taught but I couldn't help noticing the OW dives with student were pure hell especially the first dive. Boy could I tell a bunch of stories. Of course it was just like all the other classes that I'd seen but it was way too much work and I was sure that eventually some one would get hurt. In fact the instructor that my wife had for OW lost a student on a AOW night dive about this time. He got seperated from the group and they found him dead. The only thing that I ever really heard was that the med examiner didn't find any evidence of a medical condition and it was ruled a drowning.

But the point is that I kept progressing in my own diving, teaching, seeing more things and I started to play with ways to make training safer, more effective and more fun.

I'll pick this up later this evening with part 2 which will be about what we do in the classroom.

 

[MikeFerrara]

There's just a couple of things I want to add here.

When I was first getting certified I found out that a guy I worked with was a NAUI certified diver. He didn't do much diving after being certified and he hadn't dived in about 3 years but a couple of weeks after my OW class we went through a AOW class together.

We did our deep dive in the bottom of the foundation at White Star quarry in Ohio. The class descended into the foundation and I stoped before laning on the bottom. I was [retty proud that I could do that since I was the only one in my OW class who could do it and it didn't seem that any of the other students in the AOW class could do it either. You can imagine my disapointment when the instructor made me get on the bottom. We opened a combination lock for time, compared depth gauges and that was the end of the dive.

We did out Nav dive at France Park in Indiana. What a cluster. We became seperated several times. I swam into the bottom trying to watch my compas and I don't think we ever came close to navigating a square. If we did it sure wasn't pretty but we finally wore the instructor down and we were issued AOW cards.

He usually had to work on the weekends but we started doing night dives together at France Park often. In the limited vis it would often take several attempts at descending before we finally managed to get to the bottom in such a way that we could find each other.By this time I was a rescue diver and had a dry suit so the fact that we couldn't keep track of each other was kind of frustrating.

My wife started diving the following summer. I was working on my DM training and we dived the same quarry often. One night we were hovering along one of the walls and I was feeling super slick because I hade this buoyancy control thing mastered. I could do one of those Buda hovers for ever. Then it happened! It was terrible! My nose...started to itch...BAD. I thought of settling to the bottom but it was silty. I thought of going to the surface but I didn't want to have to do another one of those descents. I figured that I should be able to stick a finger in my mas, scratch my nose and clear the mask without too much trouble...so I did it.

The cold water flooded in and I couldn't see. I had done this many times on the bottom of a pool or a training platform but this was different. I didn't know if I was going up or down. I don't know if I ever actually scratched my nose but I did know that I had to get the water out of that mask. I took a deep breath and felt a sharp pain in my chest. I blew out hard from the mouth and dumped air from my bc. My mask was still flooded when I crashed into the bottom so I sat there until I got it cleared. I've been told that you don't feel that kind of pain with a lung overexpansion injury but this HURT!

Well I finally got the mask cleared, climbed up out of the silt cloud and RATS! Lost another buddy! My wife tried to follow me as I shot up but just as fast I switched directions and lost her. She though I was having some kind of fit or something.

After that we decided that it was important to be able to clear or even remove and replace a mask midwater. We hadn't ever seen it done or even heard of it but it seemed dangerous not to be able to do it. We spent several dives teaching ourselves to do it in the shallow water by the beach. We would take turns. One of us would practice while the other watched for safety sake.

 

[MikeFerrara]

By the following summer I was an instructor. My first student was my son. I'm glad nothing went wrong because I couldn't have found my own fanny with both hands those days.

My second class was a class of 6 that I taught for the shop where I had done all my training except for my IDC. The owner were master instructors but they weren't course directors so I went up to Elkhart.

Any way I had six students in the pool and no divemaster. The pool had been redone and the chemicals were off and the vis wasn't 5 ft.

The thing that sticks in my mind the most about the class is the owner of the shop giving me a dard time because it took me over 6 hours to finish up the 5 confined water modules.

That was the last class that I taught for them other than helping them with a couple make-ups or when they were short handed or something. But...I started advertising my own classes.

 

[getwet2]

My wife and I were buddied up, the two students from the day before and the same instructor from the other situation.

There was a little current so he had started to drift away from the bridge span. I went after him and the instructoe and I were able to slow him, dump some air from his bc and get him back to the line.

The problem was that in the process my wife had gotten left down on the bridge alone and she had only been diving a short time and the other student had followed us out into OW and was having trouble getting back against the current. He was almost back though and I helped him the rest of the way.

By this time we're up to 30 or 40 ft. I'm down to 5 or 7 hundred psi in an AL 80. I'm breathing heavy and I feel compelled to descend again to 75 ft or so and look for my wife. Luckily she was already headed back to the line so I had only gone a short distance on the bridge before I saw her comming. She was only a little scared about being left alone as a new diver in the Gulf of Mexico.

First of all, thanks for taking the time to write all this out and post it.

I do have a question though and I know hind sight is 20/20. So here it is, looking back on what you did, if you had to do it again would you do anything differently? Would you leave your buddy, be it your wife or someone else, who is not so experienced at diving and go after another diver how has a buddy. I realize you didn't leave her all by herself but the person that stayed behind was also inexperienced and didn't stay with her either. The diver you went after was buddied up with the other instructor so is he not his responsibility? What if something happened back at the bridge while you were trying to help someone elses buddy?

I'm not an expert and I've never been in a situation like that so I hope you don't take this the wrong way, I'm just curious, you know learn from others and all. :06:

 

[MikeFerrara]

First of all, thanks for taking the time to write all this out and post it.

I do have a question though and I know hind sight is 20/20. So here it is, looking back on what you did, if you had to do it again would you do anything differently? Would you leave your buddy, be it your wife or someone else, who is not so experienced at diving and go after another diver how has a buddy. I realize you didn't leave her all by herself but the person that stayed behind was also inexperienced and didn't stay with her either. The diver you went after was buddied up with the other instructor so is he not his responsibility? What if something happened back at the bridge while you were trying to help someone elses buddy?

I'm not an expert and I've never been in a situation like that so I hope you don't take this the wrong way, I'm just curious, you know learn from others and all. :06:

First of all this will be a little series trying to describe my thinking on dive training. This thread really describe lessons learned or at least a few of the things that caused the learning.

To answer your question I would have done almost everything differntly. I was only a DM in training at the time and I admit to not having a clue about much of anything at the time and I thought my instructor knew her stuff.

What would I do different? Those divers wouldn't have been there for one thing. They were certified the day before in a 20 ft deep spring basin and they sucked in the water. The whole thing was an accident waiting to happen.

At the time I wasn't very good and my wife was real new. I would still act if it was needed but I'd get my buddies attention first and not leave her.

Also, I barely had enough gas to deal with what happened. If I would have had to look for my wife or do much of anything more there wouldn't have been enough. There wasn't really a gas plan that I recall.

Another point here is that I didn't know the dive site. One of the divers was doing a AOW training dive, the other student from the day before was just diving and I was doing apprentice stuff. You shouldn't really conduct training in an environment strange to you.

 

[s7595]

nice post mike
as for the mask clearing ,I have a mustache and most times my mask leakes and I have to clear just to keep water out of eyes
sad to say have gotten pretty good at that skill ,clear while finning

 

[GoBlue!]

Mike,

Thanks for the post, and I look forward to the rest. I haven't tackled the "Thank Heaven for PADI" thread yet, but perhaps I should give it a read.

By no means do I feel that there is only one correct way to teach students, but I must say that I'm so glad that I had the opportunity to take my basic OW in the days of academic University courses. About 30 hours of lecture and about 30 hours of pool time from someone I consider one of the diving greats. Certification weekend was held in a low-vis quarry with 300 minutes of bottom time.

I grew up swimming...started getting dunked at 6 months of age. So, I was always comfortable in the water. But, I must say that I greatly appreciate the lengths that my instructors took with us to have us prove to ourselves how much we could handle. Granted that controlled exercises in a pool are not the same as the adrenaline of an unexpected problem at depth, but I remember exercises such as swimming circles with my buddy in the pool & having an instructor come by & motion for us start buddy breathing. We'd continue swimming while sharing air. He'd then come up & motion to take off our masks.... We'd then be swimming, sharing air, with no masks. He then once came up & "snagged a fin." So there I am, no mask, swimming with one fin, sharing air with my buddy, and rather comfortable.

Yep, that exercise isn't in the list of "Must Do's" from any agency, but it was progression to things like that that instilled confidence (not cockiness). I haven't yet had the experience of panicking underwater, and I hope I never do, but I hope that when I face unexpected situations at depth I'll be able to stop, breathe, think, breathe, and realize that the solution to the problem isn't SO far off from something I've done & practiced many times before.

I wish that more dive courses currently allowed the instructors the freedom to work with students over & over & over until basic skills become entirely second nature. I also wish that more students would demand this of their instructors, as we would then have far few divers that are turning our reefs into junk heaps & our quarries into low-vis pits by 10am Sat morning.

Jim

 

[getwet2]

After that we decided that it was important to be able to clear or even remove and replace a mask midwater. We hadn't ever seen it done or even heard of it but it seemed dangerous not to be able to do it. We spent several dives teaching ourselves to do it in the shallow water by the beach. We would take turns. One of us would practice while the other watched for safety sake.

Reading this reminds me of my own experiences during my OW training and I thought it might be relevent to this topic, or maybe not, about how people teach differently. People can teach based on their experience and skill level or they can teach just what is actually required of them by the agency they work for.

When I took my OW course I did it at a resort in Venezuela over a period of 4 days. There were two instructors that taught the course and they both worked for the same company, IDEA. The difference between the two was that one was from Germany and the other was from the Florida.(VIA Puerto Rico) I and the other guy doing the course with me had the instructor from the Florida.

They both taught the course differently, which is to say, their own way. The instructor we had taught us things that the other instructor wouldn't teach his students. At times they would argue about it between themselves, although it would be in Spanish and I didn't understand it very well but the other student did so he would translate for me.

One of the things our instructor did was put our gear in the water on the other side of the pool while our backs were turned, it was a pretty large pool, he then had us go under the water, turn around and swim across the pool and put all our equipment on before we were to come up. Our equipment was also different colors so we had to make sure we each had the correct equipment. This might not seem like a huge deal but it did put a different twist on things and it was also a lot harder than just sitting on the pool bottom, flooding your mask and then clearing it like the other instructor did with his students.

The other big disagreement they had was about an emergency swimming ascent from 45' and an ascent with a buddy while sharing air. The other instructor took the stand that this was too dangerous to be teaching and he didn't agree with it. Our instructor took the stand that if taught correctly it was safe and that it is something that should be taught to divers. If your not taught how to do it, how are you ever going to learn it?

I don't know if they ever got it settled between them or not and I don't know who is technically correct. It all comes back to that question about agencies and instructors, in my case it came down to instructors and one might have been more experienced than the other or it might have been that one was following only what the agency required to be taught. I do know that I felt lucky and still do, to have had the instructor that I did.

I think if given the choice I would take the instructor that teaches with knowledge and experience over the instructor that teaches only what is required. The only problem with this is, they don't tell you up front which one is which.

 

[Groundhog246]

Thanks for sharing Mike. I have looked forward to meeting you one of these years and this thread confirms it. My wife and I were lucky enough to train in a shop that does emphasize some of the skills that some (PADI?) shops don't. I did NOT enjoy my first trip round the pool maskless and buddy breathing, but it did make us better divers. I certified in 2001, about a year before my wife did , and our 15 year old certified early last summer. Last summer, we did a dive on the Conestogo near Brockville. We dove as a threesome. It was about dive 32 for her and about dive 10 for our son. About 10 minutes in, 30 feet deep and drifting in a stiff current, I suddenly see my wife with her mask in her hands (learned after, she had an air buble in her hood and when she pushed down on the top of her hood her mask popped off). As I watched, she held her depth, about 3 feet off the bottom, calmly put it back on and cleared it, then returned my OK, signal with her own. Afterward she claimed she was anything but calm, but she certainly showed no signs of panic at the time.
Now I've had quite a few buddies, some trained by the LDS we trained with and smoe from other shops and I've discovered quality varies. Among other issues, someone who has done ALL their certifying dives in a 65F and up quarry with a max depth of 25 feet, has no business at 55 feet in 40F water, card or no card, without additional guidance (ie shouldn't be there with another inexperienced OW diver). I've learned the hard way to ask the questions and even ask to look at an unknown, potentioal dive buddies log book as I pass him/her mine.

I look forward to reading more of what you have to say.

 

[Brian Gilpin]

Its interesting you persisted thru a very alarming diver training environment. I ran into a similar scene last summer doing my DM training. My reaction was to run like hell. Still think it was the right decision for me. Interested to hear the rest of the series.