Value of the DIR approach

[Adobo]

Interesting. I've certainly had many a great dive with people I've never met, not DIR, and we have managed to pull off Great dives? I think O2X had some very nice dives in FL, and I KNOW Howarde (for example) is NOT DIR. It's not difficult to be like minded with dive buddies regardless of the agency.

The point isn't that you can only have great dives with DIR minded divers. The point is that for many of us who are not chasing the hero biscuit, it is a framework for which people can improve skills, learn how to gas plan properly, improve situational awareness and bring together other peripheral components that impact diving.

No one ever said that these ideas were invented by people who started DIR. No one even said that they are unique to DIR. If you have another system that teaches you how to improve these things, great. If you are smart enough to figure it out yourself without some system providing you a framework, great.

I'm not sure that using gauge mode, or having a BP/W creates great dives. You seem to ignore the fact that a WHOLE lot of divers have great fun WITHOUT ever hearing of DIR, and they can be good buddies, have good skills, good SAC rates.

No one says that those things make for a better diver. However, would you not agree that a diver who knows the basic assumptions used when coming up with the algorithms for dive computers is better off than he was before he knew? And a diver that knows how to distribute weight (and how it affects his trim) is better off than when he didn't know?

...and it just promotes the concept that DIR divers feel they are somehow better than everyone else.

No offense but it seems that almost every time you say something about DIR, you say something that is either partially untrue or completely untrue. Have a look back at 3 of the last 4 or 5 of your posts.

The notion of feeling like one is "better than everyone else" is not unique to DIR. Just ask the solo divers. And ask the RB divers. When you take DIR type of instruction, you are not told that you are better than everyone else. You simply realize that if you didn't know the basics going in and you get the basics coming out, you are a better diver than you were before you took the class.

 

[djanni]

I'm relatively new to the board and so I may have missed out on quite abit of history, but from my perspective, it seems that the DIR people tend to have to defend their reasons for DIR and they seem to be getting a bashing from anti-DIR people. The supposed imposing of DIR on non-DIR divers that seems to be what DIR folks are getting accused of doesn't seem to be happening to me as much as the non-DIR people trying to impose their views on the DIR divers.

Where do you see these posts where the "non-DIR" divers are explaining, by setting forth in careful and often elaborate detail how PADI or SSI have a better way - the right way in fact? Where do see the posts where non-DIR divers refer to GUE as Strokes?

Where do you see the posts where a PADI trained diver poses a question like the one below:

"While on a 60'-70' dive the other day I saw a group that behaved like robots. They all dressed the same, blue gloves, each a BP/W, they dove in formation, level in the water all the time, frog kicked in unison, had long hoses wrapped all over. They kept on swimming up to each other and exchanging regulators. In fact I never saw a group have to purge their masks so many times." "Do you think diving this way could possibly be a fun experience? Do you think a good person should approach them after the dive and with a big smile hand them PADI's phone number and suggested it might imporve their diving experience?"

Where are these posts you refer to?

 

[cool_hardware52]

Well put Adobo.

All I would add is the often repeated statement that the Equipment configuration is a minor part of DIR. It's the most instantly visible, and hotly debated, but in the end it's the "tip of the iceberg"

The mindset is the key portion, and in my experience it very difficult to understand until you embrace it.

Tobin

 

[dumpsterDiver]

If you're content with the way you dive, why should it matter?

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I'm NOT totally content with the way I dive, I recently started using a BP/W and I am always willing to try to implement new configurations to see if they appear to benefit me. I find many, many of the principals of DIR that I have been made aware of by looking at the internet are helpful. I am most intertested in gear configuration because I just don't dive with a team.

Things like "no-metal-to-metal" connections, a balanced rig, gas labeling, a back-up reg on a necklace (and other things) all seem to be very hard to find fault with. However, I seem to sense that the DIR people don't accept the fact that some divers may attain considerable benefits by simply applying SOME of the DIR stuff (and I don't mean bouyancy control or some other universally accepted basic diving skill).

 

[Adobo]

Things like "no-metal-to-metal" connections, a balanced rig, gas labeling, a back-up reg on a necklace (and other things) all seem to be very hard to find fault with. However, I seem to sense that the DIR people don't accept the fact that some divers may attain considerable benefits by simply applying SOME of the DIR stuff (and I don't mean bouyancy control or some other universally accepted basic diving skill).

This is actually a very good point. I can only speak for myself (and my miniscule level of knowledge when it comes to DIR).

While it is true that picking out parts and pieces of the DIR philosophy and applying it to one's diving has the potential to add significant benefit, the uninitiated may not know the impact of applying just parts and pieces as opposed to the whole. A couple of examples of this:
- what if a diver wanted to use a 7' hose on his primary reg (not unique to DIR but common to DIR) without adopting a total hog rig. Seems harmless enough right? Except routing a 7' hose is most easily done when you either have at a minimum a hog harness and more optimally when you have a cannister light.
- what if a diver wanted to use a cannister light (again, not unique to DIR but common to DIR) without adopting a hog rig. Where would you hang the cannister?
- now let's talk about a more consequential change - what if you adopt a hog rig without adopting the notion of team? A hog rig, as I understand it, is minimalist in its nature. So most of the common recreational profiles might be done is singles without the notion of a pony bottle. What would this diver do in an OOG emergency if he did not have a strong team around him?

In my humble... there is nothing wrong with adopting some very good practices that are not unique to DIR anyway. However, one needs to think through these things and try to anticipate. None of the parts/pieces are magic bullets. Some might claim that the whole added together is close to one though.

 

[cool_hardware52]

However, I seem to sense

?? How exactly?, ESP maybe. I might suggest that at least one of your senses needs recalibration

that the DIR people don't accept the fact that some divers may attain considerable benefits by simply applying SOME of the DIR stuff (and I don't mean bouyancy control or some other universally accepted basic diving skill).

The DIR folks I dive with have a couple universal positions:

1. Please don't try to convince me I'm wrong and by extention that what I've been taught is wrong, unnecessary etc.

2. I really don't care how you dive. Your diving "style" only matters when it impacts me, for example if you want to dive as part of my team. The single exception is grossly unsafe diving, if I see behavoir that puts you and by extention those around you at risk I'll speakup. If you aren't "playing on the freeway" you will hear nothing from me.

3. All DIR divers I personally know are more than willing to help, mentor, assist, dive with, anybody who expresses interest in learning more.

If you want to truely learn about DIR diving find a couple DIR divers in your area and meet for a dive. If you don't, don't.

Regards,


Tobin

 

[Jarrett]

The DIR folks I dive with have a couple universal positions:

1. Please don't try to convince me I'm wrong and by extention that what I've been taught is wrong, unnecessary etc.

2. I really don't care how you dive. Your diving "style" only matters when it impacts me, for example if you want to dive as part of my team. The single exception is grossly unsafe diving, if I see behavoir that puts you and by extention those around you at risk I'll speakup. If you aren't "playing on the freeway" you will hear nothing from me.

3. All DIR divers I personally know are more than willing to help, mentor, assist, dive with, anybody who expresses interest in learning more.

If you want to truely learn about DIR diving find a couple DIR divers in your area and meet for a dive. If you don't, don't.

Sounds like a good bunch of guys. Wish all the divers out there had this mentality.

 

[djanni]

?? How exactly?, ESP maybe. I might suggest that at least one of your senses needs recalibration



The DIR folks I dive with have a couple universal positions:

1. Please don't try to convince me I'm wrong and by extention that what I've been taught is wrong, unnecessary etc.

2. I really don't care how you dive. Your diving "style" only matters when it impacts me, for example if you want to dive as part of my team. The single exception is grossly unsafe diving, if I see behavoir that puts you and by extention those around you at risk I'll speakup. If you aren't "playing on the freeway" you will hear nothing from me.

3. All DIR divers I personally know are more than willing to help, mentor, assist, dive with, anybody who expresses interest in learning more.

If you want to truely learn about DIR diving find a couple DIR divers in your area and meet for a dive. If you don't, don't.

Regards,


Tobin

Tobin: You've expressed the DIR Supemacy well. Your #3 hit's the point right on the head. Especially the underlined part.

Geez.......... this crap is starting to get boring.

 

[Peter Guy]

Back to Lynne bashing ----

Why does she dive with non-GUE trained divers? (And I use non-GUE rather than non-DIR because I don't know, and I don't think anyone else really knows, what a "DIR Diver" is -- and unfortunately, too many people really mean "GUE Trained" when they write/say "DIR." -- but I digress.)

a. In no small part to infect them with the virus -- the virus of being a "thinking" diver with good "fundamental" skills relating to bouyancy and safety.

b. If she refused to dive with non-GUE trained divers she'd never dive with her husband (not that she'd think that was such a great loss, but, again, I digress).

c. If she refused to dive with non-GUE trained divers she'd miss out on a lot of why she dives -- to have fun, look at the pretty fishies and to wonder at the marvels one finds under the water -- the same reason most of us dive.

Why does TSandM evangalize about GUE training? Because she's seen the results of other training locally and found that training wanting. It isn't the result of bad instructors -- quite frankly her instructors were/are quite good by any standard I could raise. HOWEVER, I think we ALL agree that the basic training of the "recreational" Scuba diver (OW and AOW) is just that -- VERY basic. While she and I disagree on this -- I believe (and apparently the stats support me) the basic recreational training is sufficient to teach people how to dive safely AS LONG AS they have supervision -- that is, the basic DM led group dive while on vacation. They don't have to think -- they don't have to plan -- they just follow the DM as part of the "trust me" philosophy and remember to breathe on the way up, stop for 3 minutes at 15 feet (or so) and be back on the boat with 500 PSI. (BTW, I think that is great for the industry and for those involved and I praise PADI/NAUI/etc. for opening this sport to the masses.)

But here, in the Pacific Northwest, quite honestly the basic training doesn't really set up the "trainee diver" here to be an independant "recreational" diver. Something more, a LOT more is needed because of the currents, the visibility (or lack thereof), the cold.

I think THAT is why she asked the question if "DIR Training" (whatever that may be -- GUE/Non-GUE) is of more benefit to the "recreational" diver than the "technical" diver. My answer is still the same -- it depends on how you define the "recreational diver." (And no, this is NOT just a "lawyer's question" nor is it the same as knowing the definition of "is" -- contrary to what some of the smart-*ss'es might think.) A "recreational" diver who intends to be an independant diver in a place like the PNW really should get training like that offered by GUE, Breakthrough Diving or such so that they really do begin to understand how to "plan a dive and dive the plan." (Not to mention how to swim around a piling covered with anenomes and not "kick the ***** out of them" like TSandM did when she first learned to dive.) It isn't the gear that's important -- it's being taught how to be an independant diver and the "advanced recreational diver" needs to learn how.

If that means evangilizing for DIR -- good. Me, I'll stick to picking off bits and pieces and refuse to go to the Dark Side with the Borg Queen.

 

[SparticleBrane]

Me, I'll stick to picking off bits and pieces and refuse to go to the Dark Side with the Borg Queen.

That's ok, I'll take your place.