Wait to take advanced open water? Or not?

[FinnMom]

This gets asked an extremely great deal. I'm sure I can't add anthing that hasn't been said.
Please search the question and you will find many informative and interesting discussions.

 

[TMHeimer]

One aspect of AOW that has been mentioned before (but not in this thread) is you will undoubtedly get one boat day of diving (unless you do the deep dive from shore). That may mean $100US & tip if you had just booked a charter yourself. So take that off the price of the course.

 

[Scubagolf]

No reason to wait. Think of AOW as OW Pt 2. The sooner the better in my opinion.

 

[Rich Keller]

Other people have said "No, don't do that. You really should wait until you have more experience to do that. Just dive more now and do that later" Essentially, they are saying "You're not really experienced enough to take more training classes"

But isn't the point of taking the classes to gain more experience to begin with?

I would go along with the people who say to wait. Do a lot of shallow long dives and master what you have learned before moving on to the next training. You will gain experience doing this and you will get more out of the AOW training then if you take it now. The learning part is easy it is fully understanding what you have learned that takes time. Put in the time so you are learning AOW issues rather then still working on OW issues while in an AOW class.

 

[Dave_lucas]

I took my AOW with 15 dives under my belt and 11 months certified and would do it the same way again.

Navigation:
I am not the greatest navigator I feel like they really glossed over it in my OW class by just having us navigate out and back. It was nice to have an instructor there to help fill in the gaps and teach me a few things and after the class and some practice I feel confident going out on a shore dive and getting back to where I started. This is a really important part of diving that I feel they should really teach more in depth in initial OW class.

Search and recovery:
Using the liftbag during search and recovery was a great experience I went into it thinking that it would be easy and no big deal but I walked away with a greater respect for the effort and skill required to actually use a liftbag in a safe manner. We had some large surge bouncing us up and down and it made it challenging but it was one of the best experiences that I have had.

Peak Performance Buoyancy:
While I have pretty decent control and trim from spending countless hours playing in the dive shops pool practicing it is a great to get some tutoring and it really helped to dial my wife in. This is a course that should really be taken early on so you can start down the correct path prior to developing bad habits. Again something that I think they should spend more time on in the initial OW class.

Deep dive:
It was great to get to experience going to 100' with an instructor with us for the first time they really took time to stress air usage, NDL and help us understand what comes with going deeper. As a OW diver is is really easy to go beyond the OW 60' limit now if we do we are not diving beyond our training and my understanding that can come into play with insurance if something were to happen.

Our other dive was supposed to be a night dive or dive propulsion as a backup but the weather was too bad and we had to switch to the boat dive for the final one. I grew up on boats and know my way around them so it was easy for me but my wife grew up in Colorado and the first time she was on a boat was diving in Mexico so it was great for her to learn more about them.

We did this while on vacation and it really did not cost us much more than what the normal diving would have been so we received quality time with an instructor, additional training, some adventure dives and received our AOW for maybe $75 more than the dive would have been.

I personally think it was good to do it early on as I would have felt it was a waste of time once I had more experience.

 

[boulderjohn]

Some random points:

1. The PADI v. GUE attitude of some people in this thread is interesting. The home of GUE is Extreme Exposure in High Springs. The closest GUE facility to you is Pompano Dive Center. Both of them teach both PADI and GUE. Do you think the instructors change their skills and attitudes depending upon the course they are teaching? Many PADI instructors are also tech diving instructors, including cave diving instruction, with those same skills. Jarrod Jablonski, the owner of GUE, is a PADI instructor.

2. As #1 suggests, picking the right instructor who will take you beyond the minimum is important. Check around.

3. The Advanced Open Water diver certification was designed by the Los Angeles County agency (then picked up by NAUI) with the primary purpose of exposing divers to different kinds of diving and helping them find a special area of interest. Yes, it was intended to improve dive skills to some extent, but the course creation was a reaction to a high dropout rate among divers after OW certification, and they hoped that exposing divers to different kinds of diving would keep them involved. It will not make you an advanced diver. It can be taken immediately after certification. If you wait until you have gained a lot of skill and a lot of different experiences before you take the course, you will be disappointed.

4. Wait another month or so and we may share a boat.

 

[TMHeimer]

Rich and John, 2 guys with way more experience than me, show the differing views. I'll go back to "It depends on the diver". If the OW skills and basic diving haven't been "mastered", do some shallow diving. If they have, take AOW now.

 

[DevonDiver]

Honestly, the way I've always interpreted OW and AOW was as a single process, with a break for convenience (to allow each section to be done on a 1-=week vacation etc...). The OW was 'streamlined' for the sake of making it quick, cheap, easy and effective for getting people in the water and diving as efficiently as possible. However, with only 4 dives minimum, that course no longer delivered the sort of experience building and variety of diving that makes an ideal outcome for a novice diver. Hence, the AOW course was created to fill that experience-building vacuum, and allow the process to happen under safe supervision and with a little direction on skills refinement (no new 'real' skills are added on AOW...).

On that basis, there's little or no point delaying taking the AOW course. If you do, you will find that your own experience aquisition will eventually supersede what could be gained from AOW training. That's probably why so many experienced OW divers personally don't see the need for it.

That said... the individual instructor makes a huge difference in outcome. A motivated, 'end-in-mind' instructor can use the AOW syllabus as a means to significantly refine and develop the trainee divers' skillset. Five training dives with a truly expert instructor, who is willing to mentor and flexible to adapt their training to your individual strengths and weaknesses... can be of enormous benefit.

Read my article: Are Some Scuba Courses are more Equal than Others?

I've run AOW courses that provided a focus on 'fundamentals' development; others which prepared divers for later wreck training, others as a foundation for subsequent technical training, some to develop good photography skills. All were focused to the individual diver's goals, strengths and weaknesses. All were challenging, regardless of the student's prior experience.... Read details of my AOW philosophy HERE

Avoid, however, those lazy muppet instructors who would just take you through a bare-minimum 'tick-list' of threadbare AOW performance requirements; allowing no supplementation or individualization of the scope of training; and basically do nothing more than over-charge you for 5 spurious 'fun' dives and a valueless plastic card.

The value in taking a course is ONLY from the quality of training you receive upon it, not the plastic you get handed at the end.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Honestly, the way I've always interpreted OW and AOW was as a single process, with a break for convenience (to allow each section to be done on a 1-=week vacation etc...). The OW was 'streamlined' for the sake of making it quick, cheap, easy and effective for getting people in the water and diving as efficiently as possible. However, with only 4 dives minimum, that course no longer delivered the sort of experience building and variety of diving that makes an ideal outcome for a novice diver. Hence, the AOW course was created to fill that experience-building vacuum, and allow the process to happen under safe supervision and with a little direction on skills refinement (no new 'real' skills are added on AOW...).

On that basis, there's little or no point delaying taking the AOW course. If you do, you will find that your own experience aquisition will eventually supersede what could be gained from AOW training. That's probably why so many experienced OW divers personally don't see the need for it.

That said... the individual instructor makes a huge difference in outcome. A motivated, 'end-in-mind' instructor can use the AOW syllabus as a means to significantly refine and develop the trainee divers' skillset. Five training dives with a truly expert instructor, who is willing to mentor and flexible to adapt their training to your individual strengths and weaknesses... can be of enormous benefit.

Read my article: Are Some Scuba Courses are more Equal than Others?

I've run AOW courses that provided a focus on 'fundamentals' development; others which prepared divers for later wreck training, others as a foundation for subsequent technical training, some to develop good photography skills. All were focused to the individual diver's goals, strengths and weaknesses. All were challenging, regardless of the student's prior experience.... Read details of my AOW philosophy HERE

Avoid, however, those lazy muppet instructors who would just take you through a bare-minimum 'tick-list' of threadbare AOW performance requirements; allowing no supplementation or individualization of the scope of training; and basically do nothing more than over-charge you for 5 spurious 'fun' dives and a valueless plastic card.

The value in taking a course is ONLY from the quality of training you receive upon it, not the plastic you get handed at the end.

I agree with almost everything you said - until the end. "value" is in the eye of the beholder.

You are forgetting that the card IS worth something - even if the training is crappy. It "allows" divers to be admitted to do more advanced dives on charters. For praactical purposes, it ends up being ESSENTIAL for many sport divers.

I am sure you teach a great AOW course, but any continuing Education should be better than worthless- even if it is a more typical course

 

[Nasser]

You are forgetting that the card IS worth something - even if the training is crappy. It "allows" divers to be admitted to do more advanced dives on charters. For praactical purposes, it ends up being ESSENTIAL for many sport divers.

Sure... let's just hand out cards to students who've received "crappy" training and are not qualified to be admitted to more advanced dives on charters.

Sounds like a great idea.