When to start Advanced Open Water Classes

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So, here I am sort of stuck in the middle of all this discussion. I have just shy of 20 dives and am taking the AOW (PADI) in a couple of weeks. I thought I would add my perspective FWIW.

When I got my card I felt ready to go diving with a buddy, and I did go diving with a couple of buddies. It turns out that while I was ready to go dive I still had a need for more experience with basics and I still had a lot to learn about basic OW dives in 30 feet of water. Now, 20 dives later, mask clearing, equalization and proper ascent rate are pretty much automatic. I rarely add air to my BC and I have 6 pounds less lead in my belt. Back then I was eligible for more training, today I am ready for more training.

I still have plenty to learn, and lots of sites that I want to go dive. I will be quite surprised to find that the AOW has nothing to teach me, quite surprised. I would suggest that you go make a few dives and see how well you really know your skills.

cheers
Jerry
 
Go at your own pace. When your ready to go deeper you will know it. It would probably be best to have your foundational skills well established before inviting narcosis along for the dives. As far as getting to dive with other more experienced. The ones you will truly want to dive with will understand and respect your pace. The ones that will become your diving friends will dive with you instead of bringing you along for a dive that you may feel uncomfortable about trying. Certification withstanding or not. Diving is about the experience of the dive. Not about who has the most experience. I know a few experienced divers who could re-learn a lot from a newbie. Happy, Safe Diving
 
Im sure im going to get blasted by a few people over this but here is my opinion on this topic. Which isnt really much. Ive had this conversation with several people, and i can see both sides of this. I think it all boils down to this, the understanding that the skills you learn in the AOW course doesnt mean that you are really ready for the advanced dives. (i know people are going to argue that). The title of AOW is just that, a glorified title that in alot of people opinions doesnt mean much. Im not going to get into every agency and their class structure on this, but ill just speak in regards to PADI, the only agency ive ever certified through.

Working on a resort we see tons of divers,who have tons of cards. And you realize that the number of cards that someone has isnt what is important. Ive seen some openwater divers that have had awesome instructors that are truly ready to buddy up and go diving without a divemaster or instructor. But ive also seen that more and more open water divers arent ready to do any diving except from a dive charter, with a divemaster and guides in the water. To me its not so much about the number of dives you have in your log book. Its all about the quality of those dives.

Ive also noticed that in my experience the divers that truly have emergencies and "freak" or "Bolt" are for the majority divers who are on there first 9 to 12 dives. (before anyone blasts me on this, this is just my opinion from working on a dive charter, i by no mean state this as a fact outside of what i have seen). SO in that situation when you look at things from that point of view i think people going from OW to AOW immediately isnt always a bad thing, because it gives them five more dives with an instructor.

But for the divers that go straight from OW to AOW i think they need to be choosing electives that really matter. IN the padi course you are going to get a deep dive, a night dive, and a tune up dive, but then you get to pick two electives. Choose wisely, this is where you can start to learn some skills that one day will make you an advanced diver. Choose something like Peak Performance Buoyancy, and Underwater Nav. This is also something that you will have to push for, ive seen alot of shops that push Fish ID, and Underwater Photo, and yes i know that bouyancy is covered in underwater photo, but not to the point that it is in Peak Performance.

Use the Advanced Open water course as a learning experience, learn some new skills, get some more dives with an instructor, but also see past the title in itself, just because you do a deep dive in the course, doesnt mean you are ready to buddy up and start diving deep on your own. SO be smart and HUMBLE about what you are learning, dont lose sight that you are still new to diving just because you have a piece of plastic that says your advanced.

But this is just my opinion, which doesnt really mean much
 
To the OP:

You might want to check out these recent threads:

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/basic-scuba-discussions/453354-aow-right-after-owd.html

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ad...54818-should-padi-ow-called-resort-diver.html


The AOW course can be very variable in delivery. The difference lies entirely with the professionalism, experience, motivation and personal philosophy of the individual instructor. There are three main approaches:

1) 5 "Glorified Fun Dives" Approach. Not valuable at any stage or experience level. It doesn't matter when or where you take it. Results in much cynicism about the benefits of AOW training from disillusioned students.

2) Core Skills Development/Refinement. Aims to tailor AOW course requirements to develop and refine the existing Open Water skill-set. Viewed as an extension to Open Water - the emphasis is on the words Open Water, not 'Advanced'. Could otherwise be called "Open Water #2". Best taken soon after completion of OW.

3) Intro To Advanced Diving Activities. Aims to introduce the diver to a more advanced skill-set and familiarize them with specific future activities they may wish to involve themselves in. Requires a strong base-line foundation in OW skills - so is best taken after a period of post-OW experience-building.

A 'good' instructor can supply either (2) or (3) depending on the capabilities of the student. i.e. they supply what best benefits the student as dictated by the student's confidence and competence. Some instructors may counsel towards (3) and suggest deferring the course until a strong base-line skill is obtained. Others see (2) as a prime means of developing that base-line skill at an early stage.

No 'good' instructor will deliver (1). That is the most common approach to AOW however, especially in high-volume tourist areas. Be warned...

This is how I am looking at AOW. I know that I will not be an advanced diver but I do know that I will have a base of skills to work on and towards. We took Nitrox with the instructor that will be teaching our AOW class. After having a class with him and having the chance a few other times to talk with him, my wife and I believe that we have found a really good instructor that will actually teach us something.

I think I was at 25 dives when I did mine. now this is not tropical waters where i dive so tossing in a dry suit can take a bit of time to get used to on top of all the other particulars of diving that you have just learned. I think taking a bit of time to let diving "settle in" would not be a bad thing depending on location and type of diving in the area and how often you are going to be diving. He were have quite a bit of current dives along with deep dives(all the wrecks around the island between Victoria and Nanimo there are 5 wrecks that are artificial reefs) so getting drift and deep experience is need if you want to get to join the dives which many rave about, at the same time there are also plenty of easy shore dives so it really comes down to you but I would make sure your at least semi what comfortable for your AOW and if you can one of the best adventure dives would be more of a skills based buoyancy dive which can help many divers shave both weight and time off learning buoyancy skills if the person teaching it half competent(which mine more than was and well even after that I still am working hard at improving though its not anywhere near as major amounts of tuning now).

So biggest things to consider is the following.
1) comfort. Are you comfortable in the water. do you have semi decent buoyancy control which can be hampered via exposure suits(mainly dry suits).
2) kind of diving your interested in local and not local.

3) just for another cert.

I did mine and well #3 was not even in my head but both of the other two were yes I want to do this because I was comfortable (and loved to dive I think by the time this summer will be done I'll have racked up about 50ish dives) and the dives I want o do where some are definitely drift dives catch 10 mile point(shore dive) at the wrong time and well you'll either be 40min away from where you jumped in at or being picked up by the US coast guard as another "swimming illegal immigrant". Great site that I love just has one hell of a current going through it when its not on slack.

My wife and I are comfortable in the water and feel we are ready to add some more knowledge and skill to our current training. As I said above, we both know we are not going to be “advanced” divers yet but be in a place to work towards being better divers. As for local diving, that is what we are gearing up for. We are doing courses that are beneficial to our local types of diving.


I know I am a newbie diver myself and that I do not have the experience that most of you have but I am still not going to be discouraged from taking AOW. I think it should be up to the person signing up for the classes whether he or she feels capable of performing the required dives or not. I am not talking about the cocky hot shot that is bullet proof, I am talking about a confident person that knows they are in need of more training. I want the training, I want the time with an instructor. Someone who will take the time to watch me and help me hone my skills. After meeting my new instructor I don't believe I would have got that kind of training at my last LDS but I will at this one. My current instructor is going to teach us good buoyancy skills, good/solid nav skills and not take us deep until we get some more dive experience in order to be able to perform in a safe and careful manner.

To the OP...if you feel confident and not cocky then I say go for it. Just remember what everyone is saying...we are not going to be advanced divers yet but we are just getting our feet wet so that we can be advanced at some point in the future. We will get our AOW cards but not until we earn them and I am completely fine with that. If it takes 6 months or a year I am good with that to, I am not in a rush and neither is my wife.

Good luck to you.
 
That old chestnut again, huh?

AOW = "Advanced Open Water" which is merely the next level of "Open Water" is not advanced diving in any way. Sure, it's the next level of certification, but saying you shouldn't take AOW too soon after OW, and instead "go get 20-30 dives first" is like saying that after taking Algebra I you should not go directly into Algebra II, but instead you should "go do some math first."

You don't HAVE to take AOW right after OW if you don't WANT to. But that's not the same as "not being ready" for AOW. If a diver is "not ready" for AOW right out of OW, then there was a problem with their OW class.

We will have to disagree. If you are still task loaded with the material already "learned". You will get little from any new material presented. Learning skills that involve adapting and being comfortable in an alien and to a certain extent unforgiving enviornment does not equate to advancing in mathmatics.

Sure many AOW dives are just another supervised dive in many ways. But is someone who is already in sensory overload going to get anything at all out of them. I have been on boats with a few ten dive AOW divers. For the most part all they got out of it was a card.
 
If you are still task loaded with the material already "learned". You will get little from any new material presented. Learning skills that involve adapting and being comfortable in an alien and to a certain extent unforgiving enviornment does not equate to advancing in mathmatics.

My opinion, as an instructor, is that learning is a process of controlled task overloading. The student is task-loaded from the moment they first don scuba equipment. Every session on an Open Water course makes increasing demands on the student. They are very task loaded throughout.... and yet rapid development occurs.

Additional skills and requirements are added incrementally, increasing task loading... but also serving to cement previously learned skills. Having to focus on new requirements means the diver has less capacity to focus on existing skill demands - this, in turn, has a tendency to lead to a process of skill 'in-graining'.

The same is true of 'comfort zones' - you don't increase them by staying within. You get more comfortable by exceeding your comfort level, but it is wise to do so under controlled and supervised conditions.

AOW increases task-loading capacity and extends comfort zones. As the military saying goes; "Train hard - Fight easy". Exposure to the demands of a (well-run) AOW course should significantly stretch the OW graduate - when the course is complete, they should find a return to basic OW diving to be a lot less demanding. OW then becomes 'easy'.

As a course, it is remarkably deplete in 'new' skills. Most of the 'new' skills are merely an extension of basic OW skills, or an adaptation of those basic skills to a new environment. It's not rocket science. If used as a training 'vehicle' to refine OW skills - to increase comfort by stretching comfort zones and to ease task-loading by familiarizing/introducing the diver to more supplementary tasks - then it becomes very relevant to the novice OW graduate.

Deferring AOW to a later time only serves to maintain task-loading and comfort zones at a static level. I don't see any logic in a theory that 'remaining static' promotes effective development.

Sure many AOW dives are just another supervised dive in many ways.... For the most part all they got out of it was a card.

This, I believe, is merely an indictment of the specific instructor's capabilities.

As an instructor, teaching OW class, I have confined water and four (4) open-water training dives in which to develop student skills. The development possible in those four (4) dives is quite staggering (zero to diver). Timely entry onto AOW training provides both continuity of training and the opportunity to engage in a further five (5) open-water training dives. Those dives more than double (x2) the training opportunity for the diver. The key factor is continuity of training. Combining OW and AOW into a continuous program should mean that the sum of the training exceeds the potential of the courses in isolation.

Continuity of training means that we (instructors) shouldn't draw a line across core skill development post-Open Water course. It should be a fluid transition whereby the existing strengths, weaknesses and capabilities of the OW student are brought directly into the context of AOW training and are seamlessly addressed there.
 
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This is how I am looking at AOW. I know that I will not be an advanced diver but I do know that I will have a base of skills to work on and towards. We took Nitrox with the instructor that will be teaching our AOW class. After having a class with him and having the chance a few other times to talk with him, my wife and I believe that we have found a really good instructor that will actually teach us something.



My wife and I are comfortable in the water and feel we are ready to add some more knowledge and skill to our current training. As I said above, we both know we are not going to be “advanced” divers yet but be in a place to work towards being better divers. As for local diving, that is what we are gearing up for. We are doing courses that are beneficial to our local types of diving.


I know I am a newbie diver myself and that I do not have the experience that most of you have but I am still not going to be discouraged from taking AOW. I think it should be up to the person signing up for the classes whether he or she feels capable of performing the required dives or not. I am not talking about the cocky hot shot that is bullet proof, I am talking about a confident person that knows they are in need of more training. I want the training, I want the time with an instructor. Someone who will take the time to watch me and help me hone my skills. After meeting my new instructor I don't believe I would have got that kind of training at my last LDS but I will at this one. My current instructor is going to teach us good buoyancy skills, good/solid nav skills and not take us deep until we get some more dive experience in order to be able to perform in a safe and careful manner.

To the OP...if you feel confident and not cocky then I say go for it. Just remember what everyone is saying...we are not going to be advanced divers yet but we are just getting our feet wet so that we can be advanced at some point in the future. We will get our AOW cards but not until we earn them and I am completely fine with that. If it takes 6 months or a year I am good with that to, I am not in a rush and neither is my wife.

Good luck to you.
I'm happy for you because in my books you admitted to the first two things that are required to being a good diver.
1) I'm/We are new to diving and I/We have to work on skills and improve
2) I think the biggest thing your looking for is not just an instructor but a mentor. Here I am lucky i have a club I'm with and a dive shop that has great mentors from those who are very skills orients to those who are also oriented on improving you as a person. I think you would benefit greatly not just from instruction but also from finding a good mentor.

Many LDS's are there to make money which i do not blame them as they are a business. What is great to find are those willing to go the extra mile the person who did my peak performance buoyancy course that many scoff at because its not done properly took me from a person who rode the power inflater like an elevator to a person who uses it just enough to get my course buoyancy and then to use my lungs for the rest. I can get to the point where my nose is a hand length from what I want to look at and then just hold my breath and go above what i was looking at (back kick is a work in progress). I had weighting issues at the wazoo and she helped with them getting weight spread out and helping me toss the weight belt that never stayed where it should.

At 62 dives am I an expert I will not say that but I come here to give a bit of perspective of a person who had just been through those issues/decisions. From my equalization issues that just needed a bit of work (over Christmas when I went home to Alberta) to stress about being new. There is nothing wrong with being new at anything so long as you approach it the right way and are willing to learn which it sounds like you are and I wish you all the best and hope when your ready to can do the deep dive in AoW and enjoy it seeing things that may not always be above 60ft. Myself i'm planning on taking my deep sometime this summer as there are a few things I would like to see that I cannot with my current cert (glass sponges are up on the list).
 
Back then I was eligible for more training, today I am ready for more training.

That there's one of the most cogent distinctions I've seen on this old argument ... and it gets right to the heart of the difference in philosophy between those who want to take (or sell) AOW directly out of OW and those who don't.

As with most things scuba-related, it depends on a bunch of things ...

- What are your expectations of the class? Why are you taking it? Is it for skills development? Or because you're simply not comfortable enough to dive without supervision? Or because you need access to a particular dive site or type of dive?

- How well did you really do in OW? How comfortable do you feel performing the skills you learned in that class? How solid is your ability to control your buoyancy? Can you make a safety stop without accidentally surfacing?

- What kind of environment are you diving in? What are the demands of that environment? How do those demands affect your skills and comfort?

The answers to all of these questions will help you determine whether or not an AOW class will be a good investment for you now ... or whether you should gain a bit of experience prior to taking the class.

Keep in mind that only you can really make that determination. Instructors are trained to sell classes ... and most agencies want them to sell you the next class straight out of the one you're currently in. That has both positives and negatives. It keeps you diving, and interested ... and it keeps a steady revenue stream coming in to the instructor and dive op selling you the classes. So those people generally have a vested interest in getting you into the class sooner, rather than later. So while they may be genuinely interested in what's best for you, it behooves you to listen to their advice with that in mind.

Your aptitude plays a huge role in how soon you'll be able to get something positive out of the class. Some people are ready straight out of OW ... but in reality that's more the exception than the rule. Some folks can be completely comfortable after a dive or two post-OW. Others take longer. It really depends on the diver.

Your reasons play a huge role. If you're uncomfortable diving unsupervised and taking the class to get more dives with an instructor, that's a valid reason to get more supervised dives. But perhaps AOW isn't the best approach, since it'll make it harder for you to focus on learning the new things the class is supposed to be teaching you. Hiring a divemaster to take you diving or finding an experienced mentor may be a better idea ... at least for a few dives.

Environment plays a huge role. Where are you diving? Cold water ... with its requirement for heavy exposure gear, gloves, hood, and weight ... makes learning to dive more difficult. Current, low visibility, surf entries, and a host of other factors have to be factored into your readiness to learn in that environment.

AOW is perhaps the most wildly variable class you can take, in terms of the instructor's approach. As DD pointed out, it can be as simple as a handful of guided dives, or as complex as learning true advanced diving techniques. Where you learn, your instructor's approach to the class, and what you want to take away from it all factor into whether or not you're ready.

As an example, I teach in a place where the water is cold (currently about 47 degrees F), visibility can be low (currently less than 10 feet), and we can have large tidal swings (15+ feet this past week-end) and therefore a lot of current. The skills to dive independently in that kind of environment can pose some real challenges. Many sites can get crazy-deep in a hurry ... therefore good gas management skills are important. Learning how to plan a dive using current charts is a basic skill. Learning how to dive with a buddy in low-vis conditions is a basic skill. Complex navigation skills are pretty much mandatory. Dealing with problems while task-loaded is pretty much mandatory (because we all have to at some point). Deploying a DSMB is mandatory in some locations ... particularly for boat dives. Therefore all of these are skills that need to be covered at the AOW level.

Other areas may need to cover things like surf entries ... or how to descend down an anchor line in heavy current ... or how to make entries/exits in rocky locations ... or any number of things that are specific to the environment you're learning in. Will you be ready to learn those things if you're still hesitant on your fundamental skills? Or will the task-loading overwhelm you to the point where you have to depend on assistance from the person teaching the class? Keep in mind that person won't be there when class is over, and you'll need to have the skills and confidence to do those things for yourself.

Only you can really answer those questions. Instructors have their own guidelines that they follow ... for reasons determined either by their philosophical approach to teaching or by their business goals. Neither of those really factor your needs into their recommendation to take the class ... only you can do that.

Diving's all about self-reliance. Once you're done with the confined water part of your OW class, you never again want to be a dependent diver. What you learn, and when you're ready to learn it are completely your decision to make. All any of us can do, really, is tell you some things you should think about before you make it.

Oh ... and about being a more desirable dive buddy ... keep in mind that a lot of divers, particularly at the local level, enjoy a buddy who knows how to have fun. Your experience means less than your attitude and willingness to learn. Lots of divers get a real kick out of taking new divers out ... their excitement over some of the simple things we've grown so accustomed to that we take for granted helps us remember why we got into diving in the first place ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
I just wanted to say that while I haven't responded to everyone's post I have read all of them and really appreciate everyone's thoughtful responses!
 
You'll never get agreement as to whether to do it right away, or wait. And the reasons for/against are all valid.

So, I'll just say what I think (and did, at the time):

AOW after 25 dives.

Then Rescue after 50.
 
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