Video from a Training Dive with John Chatterton

[Marie13]

The OP has learned you never, ever post training specifics on SB. Period. You share stuff privately with the folks you like and trust.

 

[Heat Miser]

For all you knockers:

We are all kids at heart if you make things too difficult, kids can get dis-heartened and give up. If you make it fun so that they feel like they are learning something or accomplishing something new, more people are likely to continue.

Check out @Zack-Bloom Hydro Notes this is the workings of a group of guys, enthused, looking to improve and my vote for most likely to.

Diverging wildly off topic, you knockers, remind me about the debate between value investors and passive index investors... the next sharemarket crash your all going to be blaming the financial advisor (nee instructor) that told you passive was better, even though you had no idea at the time what you were investing in. Do your own research like @Zack-Bloom

 

[seeker242]

I don't think the OP has shied away from constructive criticism; what many are taking issue with is the unproductive and unnecessary criticism. Almost from the beginning there were attacks on the reputation of the instructor and multiple comments throughout the thread to the effect of "if you do xxx you have no business being a diver/instructor etc". That kind of commentary discourages folks from posting on SB and reduces that amount of learning that can occur. I can't tell you the number of friends and industry professionals whom I've asked if they follow SB...most answer no because there are too many toxic personalities on the board and the negative behavior taints their perception of diving.

I for one enjoyed the OPs video and commentary. I picked up a new tidbit or two and admired @Zack-Bloom for his honest assessment of what he did right and what he learned from the class.

Good points but I still don’t think that’s a good enough reason to not post any videos. If you don’t have a big ego to defend then even the most unconstructive criticism is not really that big of a deal. Who cares what other people think? What difference does it make? None really. Of course that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care what anyone thinks but soliciting criticism and then expecting it to ALL be constructive. I don’t think that’s very realistic. This is the Internet people have opinions Lol

 

[ChuckP]

Just watched the first half the video - excellent commentary. Just like a kid playing on a jungle gym, that was so much fun.

 

[Scuba-74]

The OP has learned you never, ever post training specifics on SB. Period. You share stuff privately with the folks you like and trust.

Why is that? His original post had this line: "Obviously we made mistakes, feel free to point them out to us and others here." Ask and you shall receive.

That said, I disagree with a few posters who get bent out of shape by seeing people kneel on the wreck, but my understanding is that OP posted this video to solicit criticism, not find universal praise.

 

[doctormike]

To whoever asked, yes my dive count isn’t anywhere near correct. Idk how it even got there. I didnt do it.

I think it’s funny how people are justifying what they see as good because “that’s what chatterton teaches”. It seems like classic, he was my instructor so he’s got to be right.

As an FYI, I finally watched the whole video with my wife. We were both appalled at the lack of skills allowed by chatterton. Again, I don’t fault the students. They are students and don’t know how they should be taught. The issue is simply chatterton is allowing a poor level of basic skills in his class. You guys can argue that’s just how he teaches, but I haven’t seen one good reason for kneeling to shoot bags and drop stages, having poor finning techniques, and not diving as a cohesive team.

The best reaction was my wife saying “is that fu—ing instructor kneeling to teach, what the f— is wrong with that guy”.

I think that you may be missing the point. And I appreciate that you are trying to improve diving skills and safety in general, we are on the same team. But consider this.

People aren’t saying that kneeling is correct just because JC lets people do it in class. It’s not an argument from authority. People are saying that he provides good training and skills that a thinking diver should have in their quiver as options for some circumstances. And so they seek out that training, have a dialogue with him, and try to learn from someone with a lot of experience.

As has been explained several times upthread, there are situations where (in the opinions of some posters, including me) kneeling is OK. There are reasons why no-touch isn’t always the best approach to wreck diving. There are downsides to running a line in some circumstances. People solo dive. Etc…

Now you apparently feel differently - you feel that kneeling is never appropriate, and doing it is a sign of being not just a “bad” diver, but an unsafe diver. That’s fine. But maybe you (and your wife) could remember that there are different ways of diving, and just because someone doesn’t spend the whole dive in perfect trim, with their hands out in front of them, doesn’t mean that they don’t have a reason for doing what they do. The point of diving isn’t to maintain trim.

To be honest (and I don’t mean to agency bash), one of the common pushbacks that I hear to the three letters below your screen name is intolerance of deviation. The idea that there is one and only one correct way of diving, and if you don’t do that, you are simply doing it wrong, full stop. I’m not so arrogant to think that. Which is ironic, since one thing that I HATE here on SB is the phrase “dive and let dive”. There are definitely right and wrong ways of doing things. But no matter how much I feel that, say, a BP/W is superior to a jacket BC, I understand that there are situations where a jacket is the better choice. Other things aren’t negotiable. If someone says it’s OK to go into unplanned deco on a single tank, then I’ll be right at your side calling them out as promoting unsafe practices. But kneeling simply isn’t the same thing.

 

[johndiver999]

Agree with seeker above, a diver should be able to defend his actions even against people who have a very different perspective. J.C. seems to do a lot of things that are different, and discussion of them is useful especially when they highlight contentious issues. I don’t agree with all the dir stuff, but you can be pretty sure that they have formulated logical and carefully considered protocols which they can defend.

I find the utter disregard for horizontal trim in the open water somewhat refreshing, I must admit. The carrying of the partially filled smb, not so much, but we haven’t heard from the op.

And while I ramble, if a diver is on the deck in a 3 knot current, hanging motionless and in perfect trim is a lot less
Feasible than dumping air and kneeling and hiding from the current as best they can. If he is teaching how to operate in the occasionally very strong currents of that area, perhaps one size doesn’t fit all.

 

[CT-Rich]

I have done quite a few videos and I usually edit them down to a couple of minutes of highlights from an hour long dive. Un usually skip the unglamorous parts of the dive. I have seen divers of all stripes do unglamorous things.

Many divers would shy away from some low vis, surging conditions that we NE shore divers experience all the time. It was really great to see a unedited, continuous training dive with a coherent running commentary. I think if there were more videos like this, we would see many similar if different issues being displayed in virtually all classes, because they are classes. JC has his own philosophy about wreck diving, apparently. He has not written the wreck diver bible or created his own agency (as others have done). I kind of like that he has created his own filter about what is important on a dive. It’s kind of refreshing.

 

[Lorenzoid]

People often post videos or course reports and then are taken aback by the critical comments, so I found it refreshing that the OP appears to welcome the comments. And the peanut gallery deserves credit for directing any criticism toward the instructor, not the student. Great video, by the way, including the narration. Was the camera head-mounted?

Not being a wreck diver, I'm not sure what to make of it all. I read the course description on Chatterton's web site. Although he makes it clear that a lot of experience is not a prerequisite, I would think that the student who would benefit most is someone who is already a solid wreck diver and is interested in learning from a legendary maverick possibly unorthodox, Northeast tactics (in Pompano Beach).

I don't think it would be for me. Going back to that analogy someone made between cave and wreck diving, I would think a hockey player could only benefit from a solid grounding in figure skating, even if the figure skating technique is invisible in play. I don't mean to imply I believe a cave diver makes for a good wreck diver--Chatterton's web site reminds us that "anyone who treats a wreck like a cave simply does not understand shipwrecks" and "the two diving disciplines are different"--just that, in ANY discipline, I believe in getting the good habits down cold before experimenting with tossing them out the window in favor of an alternative approach. None of this is in reference to the OP, of whose background I know nothing. It sounds like a fascinating course.

Thanks for the video.

 

[rddvet]

I think that you may be missing the point. And I appreciate that you are trying to improve diving skills and safety in general, we are on the same team. But consider this.

People aren’t saying that kneeling is correct just because JC lets people do it in class. It’s not an argument from authority. People are saying that he provides good training and skills that a thinking diver should have in their quiver as options for some circumstances. And so they seek out that training, have a dialogue with him, and try to learn from someone with a lot of experience.

As has been explained several times upthread, there are situations where (in the opinions of some posters, including me) kneeling is OK. There are reasons why no-touch isn’t always the best approach to wreck diving. There are downsides to running a line in some circumstances. People solo dive. Etc…

Now you apparently feel differently - you feel that kneeling is never appropriate, and doing it is a sign of being not just a “bad” diver, but an unsafe diver. That’s fine. But maybe you (and your wife) could remember that there are different ways of diving, and just because someone doesn’t spend the whole dive in perfect trim, with their hands out in front of them, doesn’t mean that they don’t have a reason for doing what they do. The point of diving isn’t to maintain trim.

To be honest (and I don’t mean to agency bash), one of the common pushbacks that I hear to the three letters below your screen name is intolerance of deviation. The idea that there is one and only one correct way of diving, and if you don’t do that, you are simply doing it wrong, full stop. I’m not so arrogant to think that. Which is ironic, since one thing that I HATE here on SB is the phrase “dive and let dive”. There are definitely right and wrong ways of doing things. But no matter how much I feel that, say, a BP/W is superior to a jacket BC, I understand that there are situations where a jacket is the better choice. Other things aren’t negotiable. If someone says it’s OK to go into unplanned deco on a single tank, then I’ll be right at your side calling them out as promoting unsafe practices. But kneeling simply isn’t the same thing.

The DIR under my screen name is put on their because I joined the DIR forum to post. I do strongly believe in most of the GUE mentality but don't only dive stringently to the standards they hold. I've dove sidemount for many years for instance.

I do think we'll have to disagree. I never once said that kneeling is unsafe. I also never once said that touching the wreck was wrong. I do believe minimal contact is important, but I've been on a wreck and had to use the structure to help myself move more effectively. The only thing that I've repeatedly said is that a technical instructor allowing his students to kneel in my opinion is allowing for poor basic skills. There were several other issues in the video that he shouldn't have allowed as a good instructor either, but watching the students and the instructor himself kneel is just ridiculous so it's the most glaring example to use. In a class, students should be held to a much higher standard. If he thinks kneeling is safer, then he can tell them or even demostrate, but I think teaching it's ok is bad. I've taken technical classes with instructors in the US and Mexico under NAUI, TDI, and IANTD. One in particular is an exceptionally highly rated wreck and trimix instructor with 1000s more instruction hours in wrecks than most well seasoned wreck instructors. Not a single one would have let their students kneel on the bottom to perform those skills. Come on, they kneeled just to drop bottles. I also think the number of good technical instructors that would allow that is exceptionally low. So yes, I will have to continue to agree to disagree.

The only reason I ever chimed in was the one guy got ripped for using the term propaganda, and I got what he meant because there is a ton of die hard Chatterton followers due to his legendary status. But the videos I've seen of alot of his classes online and this one show a lack of what I believe to be quality standards. So I was agreeing with the underlying theme of his post even if propaganda wasn't the ideal wording. I've also said that I respect the OP for posting his video and don't blame the allowance of subpar skills on them as students. The instructor shouldn't allow it. I've also never claimed to be perfect. My wife and I recently took our first CCR course. After day two the instructor felt he needed to up the ante in order to test our skills under stress. We had to do repeated controlled free team ascents from depth. It was god awful. Being new to CCR, our buoyancy and ability to control ascent was awful. A couple of times we both came out of trim due to the newness of it all. We looked anything but cohesive. It was embarassing and I could see the annoyance and disappointment in the instructor's eyes. So we took the rest of the day off eventhough it could have meant we walk away without our certification. We cleared our heads and discussed between ourselves and our instructor what went wrong. The reason it went so poorly is we focused on trying to be stable and controlled in our new ccr's and lost sight of basic skills such as ideal horizontal trim, working as a team, and the basics of ascent control. Things like coming ever so slightly out of trim on the units made it all go to **** because the gas in our counterlungs shifted upward, increasing our uncontrolled ascent. We went back at it the next day, kept the basic skills we were taught even before intro to tech and improved. Our instructor could have said it wasn't that bad and passed us, but he absolutely would have failed us over basic skills if we hadn't gotten it together. Those basic skills should be required for all classes in order to contniually build upon them as experience grows. I'm thankful I haven't had instructors that allowed subpar skills from us. We still feel our team dynamic on ccr could improve, so we plan to take fundies in order to find the holes in our basic skills that we don't see in order to not have an embarassing day again. And I do commend the OP because it's also obvious he holds that same philosophy of wanting to constantly improve.