36 replies to this topic

[Jerrymxz]

The vast majority, with only an exception or maybe two, whom I have ever met, who purports to be a DIR diver was arrogant, holier than thou and cultish. Not the kind of diver I’d want to buddy with on a shallow reef dive then a rock and roll drift dive at the Blue Corner then a dive to the forward hold in the San Francisco Maru. Different dives call for different philosophies and approaches.

I dive double steel 100’s in a more or less GUI configured rig. But I also dive a single in a recreational one reg setup with a 7foot hose and my octo in a necklace. I also dive a pony in a plastic harness with no octo or BC. Then I’ll break out an uber cool Mike Nelson double hose aqua-lung that is just plain fun!! That reg may make the trip to the Caymans in October just for the heck of it. If given the chance I’d dive a hooka rig if the setup looked sound.

I enjoy talking about diving. Ask Clint. I was on the boat on his first dive trip out of OW class and his first wreck dive. Ask WW who has more dives in a year then I’ll ever get. And a hundred others on here from lots of great SD trips. I want to talk about diving not about the Philosophies of a dive organization.

FOR ME Cookie cutter outfits are not my cup of tea for every single dive. An EAD of 100 feet? Really ?

Just my 2psi.

Find a respected instructor that fits your needs and can help you reach your goals.

I stand by my previous post.

[TCdamsel]

Ellen what makes you think the GUE classes will help you? Were the divers on the trip that you interacted with of that training and mindset? Have you met someone who you think is all that and a bag of chips AND they are GUE certified?

I am curious how you came to the conclusion you did when you could have come to MANY conclusions and frankly GUE Fundies was not my first guess!

Also what are you trying to accomplish? Ability to deal with current? Ability to stay perfectly straight/flat in the water column? Ability to deal with some of the most challenging conditions such as Socorros?

Knowing what you want to accomplish will help us to give you a more valid reply.

First, thanks to everyone for your feedback and support. I appreciate it so much. To answer your questions, Kamala, none of the divers were GUE trained that I was aware of but they spoke a lot about being instructors, diving in arctic waters, hard core everything. I've dealt with strong current before, having been to Palau twice. The problem on this trip was that I couldn't get enough layers of neoprene to stay warm and then couldn't seem to get the right amount of lead. I wasn't used to wearing that amount of weight. The water was around 72. I froze my ass off!!! I just felt like I had so little control. Add that to a lot of anxiety. Yes I want better buoyancy and trim, more efficient propulsion that gives me more control over my body in the water, the ability to stay flat, straight, upside down if need calls for it, and the ability to deal with challenging conditions.

What led me to conclude that GUE would help me? There is a certain frequent female poster on ScubaBoard who talks about GUE Fundies as if it will transform a diver. Nesher and I have been friends for several years and he has encouraged me to do Fundies.

I do not in a million years want to do tech diving. I just want to be a competent diver, who can hold a camera steady without losing control of my buoyancy, dive in the Galapagos or Cocos eventually, and deploy an SMB with a spool while still underwater. Oh, and navigate my way out of a paper bag...

So having said all that, I wasn't really aware that there was anything else out there besides GUE to teach me these things.

So I'm open to anything you suggest. Any of you know anyone in the Oakland County area of Michigan. I am literally moving into Bloomfield Hills in the morning.
Thanks, Ellen

[lv2dive70]

And while I would welcome informed discussion about the pro's and con's of some of the organization's philosophies - some of which I'm not sure about how *I* feel (standard gases vs. best gases, rec limits at 100 feet, etc.) - I am struggling with the condemnation I'm reading above.

The vast majority, with only an exception or maybe two, whom I have ever met, who purports to be a DIR diver was arrogant, holier than thou and cultish....I enjoy talking about diving...I want to talk about diving not about the Philosophies of a dive organization.

Jerry - I personally have enjoyed talking about diving with you the few occasions we've had to interact, and I've enjoyed your posts on this board. What I meant to suggest above was something more constructive as a topic, sorry if I wasn't making that clear. I guess I just don't see how it's "talk[ing] about diving" to put down GUE training bc some people who claim to be DIR divers are arrogant, etc.

[peterbj7]

I am struggling with the condemnation I'm reading above

I hope you don't think I was condemning GUE or DIR (and yes, I know they're not synonymous). I have met good divers who have come from that stable. But from what I've seen I don't think it's for me, and I have cogent reasons. Although I have never done any of their courses I am pretty familiar with them (though maybe out of date) and have had both many dealings with GUE divers and some with their HQ. I just have a big problem with arbitrarily prescriptive dogma that I don't agree with anyway. My own training was about as broad and open as it could be, and I'm sure it improved me. Certainly the group diving disciplines espoused by GUE come into their own with cave diving, but again there are other highly valid approaches which are quite different from the GUE/DIR approach.

But with this sort of diving it all really depends on the competence of your instructor and your relationship with him/her. I now choose instructors by name and identity, not agency.

[lv2dive70]

Well the one thing it looks like we all agree on - and with which I concur heartily - is to choose one's instructor. And I'd add that doesn't mean based on general reputation being "great" or "the best" - it's a really good idea to talk to people - multiple people, if possible - who have taken classes with the instructor in whom you are interested. It's amazing what you will learn if you ask... different people have different styles, and sometimes you have to listen very closely to answers you are given to ensure an instructor's style will match with yours. Of course important to talk with the instructor, too.

[WreckWench]

Kate a quick question? Have you reached a point in your training where you can say beyond a shadow of a doubt the approach you are studying/training/taking is the best approach for you? Or have you taken from the training the parts you like and added them to *your* own style which includes things you've learned from other schools of thought?

[lv2dive70]

Kate a quick question? Have you reached a point in your training where you can say beyond a shadow of a doubt the approach you are studying/training/taking is the best approach for you? Or have you taken from the training the parts you like and added them to *your* own style which includes things you've learned from other schools of thought?

Well Kamala - I'm not just taking one approach right now, so I definitely can't say that any one approach I am studying/training/taking is the best approach for me I'm moving forward WITH GUE, and I'll be back in SC in three weeks working on non-GUE tech training with Bill!

The question I think you are asking is what do I think I WILL do? And I honestly don't know the answer to that right now. I'm in the middle of processing exactly *what* I think. I have learned four ways to do valve drills THIS YEAR alone. I can't keep up with four ways to do valve drills. There are two aspects - can you reach your valves, and how do you check for issues? Philosophically, the approach to the second question is different in the GUE world and the non-GUE world. To what extent, I am not sure bc I haven't taken GUE Tech classes, only Rec classes. But it's bc of issues like these, at some point in the not-too-distant future, I am going to have to make a decision, bc I can't afford to be clouding the waters too much when it comes to tech diving approaches.

[WreckWench]

Ellen what makes you think the GUE classes will help you? Were the divers on the trip that you interacted with of that training and mindset? Have you met someone who you think is all that and a bag of chips AND they are GUE certified?

I am curious how you came to the conclusion you did when you could have come to MANY conclusions and frankly GUE Fundies was not my first guess!

Also what are you trying to accomplish? Ability to deal with current? Ability to stay perfectly straight/flat in the water column? Ability to deal with some of the most challenging conditions such as Socorros?

Knowing what you want to accomplish will help us to give you a more valid reply.

First, thanks to everyone for your feedback and support. I appreciate it so much. To answer your questions, Kamala, none of the divers were GUE trained that I was aware of but they spoke a lot about being instructors, diving in arctic waters, hard core everything. I've dealt with strong current before, having been to Palau twice. The problem on this trip was that I couldn't get enough layers of neoprene to stay warm and then couldn't seem to get the right amount of lead. I wasn't used to wearing that amount of weight. The water was around 72. I froze my ass off!!! I just felt like I had so little control. Add that to a lot of anxiety. Yes I want better buoyancy and trim, more efficient propulsion that gives me more control over my body in the water, the ability to stay flat, straight, upside down if need calls for it, and the ability to deal with challenging conditions.

What led me to conclude that GUE would help me? There is a certain frequent female poster on ScubaBoard who talks about GUE Fundies as if it will transform a diver. Nesher and I have been friends for several years and he has encouraged me to do Fundies.

I do not in a million years want to do tech diving. I just want to be a competent diver, who can hold a camera steady without losing control of my buoyancy, dive in the Galapagos or Cocos eventually, and deploy an SMB with a spool while still underwater. Oh, and navigate my way out of a paper bag...

So having said all that, I wasn't really aware that there was anything else out there besides GUE to teach me these things.

So I'm open to anything you suggest. Any of you know anyone in the Oakland County area of Michigan. I am literally moving into Bloomfield Hills in the morning.
Thanks, Ellen

Thank you! Your reply makes much more sense now. Knowing Nesher I know he is an excellent diver and he is GUE trained. If you opt to go this route you will accomplish the following:

1. You will learn the core fundamentals of bouyancy and you WILL be good or you will not pass the class. Not passing is not all bad...for most they do not pass the first time unless they already have awesome skills, learn quickly and have an excellent instructor who adopts a more reasonable approach vs one of perfection. Even if you get one that expects perfection (because your life depends on it and in the training realm that you will be studying under AKA LEARNING TO STAY ALIVE IN A CAVE...then your life DOES depend on it.) Too many classes are watered down and even some GUE classes have gone that way but many remain true to the original intent....learn to dive in a prescribed manner that will consistently ensure you are capable of staying alive doing one of the most arduous forms of diving.
2. GUE will certainly be a good basis to learn to dive a drysuit but they will also stress that you dive the same configuration all the time which means a drysuit all year round. There are good reasons for this approach and good reasons against this approach. Being exposed to at least one of them will help you decide what is right for you. We have many knowledgeable members who would be happy to help you see alternate approaches which I suggest you look at all perspectives and choose what is right for you and YOUR style of diving regardless of what you decide...it will be best for you because YOU decided it was and not someone else.
3. You will encounter people who do not understand GUE and respond with snips and snaps and yes misinformation. You will also encounter people who do understand GUE and pick and choose from the training the aspects that make sense for their diving conditions and style. You will encounter divers who use GUE in the context it was designed in its entirety. And you will also encounter people who after taking the primer or fundies class will then proceed to tell someone like myself with nearly 2400 dives under my belt that I do not know what I am doing and if I do not do things they way they now been educated...I will die. They are right on a very thin thread of reasoning...if I attempt to do intense cave diving for which GUE was developed without following these strategies I could very well find myself in a world of hurt. But I will never go beyond cavern cert and I will never be a cave diver. And I have taken technical training under seveal agencies as well as some GUE and I have mixed and matched all of that training in a way that makes sense for me. So far so good...I have not died despite doing it a different way.

I also think your reasoning is good. Better buoyancy will make you feel better in the water and that will go a long ways in giving you confidence. Be prepared to potentially not pass the first time. Again this is ok...it does not mean you are a failure. It means you have not mastered a level of proficiency to move forward in your GUE training. And most GUE instructors are not afraid to fail a student. Many students respect this. There is nothing worse then a watered down class. OTWDiver is a classic case of someone who is not afraid to flunk you. But he is becoming more and more rare outside of GUE in that respect.

If you take the class with a better understanding of what you are subscribing too...you'll do better and be able to accept the outcome in the proper context. Again if you do not pass...that is not a bad thing. It means you meed more practice and if this is your first exposure then its unlikely you'll master such a new approach so quickly. For example there is no vertical diving. All diving will be done absolutely horizontal. There are MANY valid reasons for this approach and very few valid reasons against this approach. In an overhead environment you must be horizontal or you risk stirring up the silt and you could lose your orientation and not survive. Also when off gassing what part of your body should be at 15-20 feet? Your head? Your torso? Your computer? It makes sense that your ENTIRE body should be at that depth so a horizontal position is the ONLY way to achieve this. Again not to beat a dead horse...while I know and believe this approach to be the most valid you will often see me in a more traditional *recreationsl* vertical posture as it is easier for me to watch other divers around me and having only dove recreational profiles I consider the tradeoff to be acceptable. If I'm diving technical profiles as I was in Truk...that is an entirely different story. However I will say there is huge merit to practicing what you will ultimately need. For example...if I were to be more diligent in practicing as perfect of a horizontal position as I could in ALL diving conditions then when I needed it most...it would be more natural for me. Or as the trade says...my body would have more perfect muscle memory. This is core to GUE training and it has TONS of merit. However in other non-caving applications not subscribing to the letter of the training does not mean you will automatically die. Sadly some students either misunderstand the real message from their GUE training or they can not properly articulate it or they apply it to situations it was not designed for and they often end up telling people like Peter and myself that we do not know what we are doing. I blow it off but many divers rightly would find that demeaning. Hence much of the controversy over GUE.

As with the ongoing statements that the instructor is everything...so is the student. If you are open minded you'll accept all inputs and make your own ultimate decisions. Sadly some people need to be *right* and need to be *better* than others and would be annoying under ANY training agency. However they gravitate to the challenge and degree of difficulty and the confidence of this agency and ultimately give it a bad name just as they would any organization.

I hope my rambling has helped you. I'm sure I'll spark add'l discussion and I expect it to be respectful and objective and hopefully educational.

Again...when someone with 100 dives tells someone with thousands of dives that they do not know what they are doing and they will DIE...no one would respect them regardless of the agency they were trained under. And I am not stating that every GUE student feels this way or would ever consider saying it to someone else. However in the 10 times or so that it has been said to me...all were GUE trained and all were after I had at least a 1000+ dives under my belt. THAT is why I think you will find passionate discussion on the topic from someone who has not taken the classes. Kamala

[lv2dive70]

Kamala that was one of the most well-reasoned posts I've ever read from someone from outside of GUE explaining GUE! I do want to clear up one thing, especially as I may have (inadvertently) contributed to it over the past couple of weeks...

While GUE does advocate a consistent kit, I've switched from a drysuit to wetsuit mid-class (not my first fundies class where I NEEDED to do that bc I was struggling with the drysuit) and the instructor had no problem with it. Actually, the only reason he suggested I revert to the drysuit was that I seemed to have more control over my buoyancy and trim in it, than in the wetsuit, not bc of consistency. Anyway, I am more comfortable in my drysuit for various reasons and had every plan to wear it in S Fl week before last,,, until I got there and wore it for two dives and it was just too much. So after the first two dives, I switched to my wetsuit, both in Key Largo, where none of my friends cared either way, and in West Palm, where I was diving with a DIR diver who also was not wearing a drysuit now that it is summer (and it wasn't a deco dive).

On another note... I'd just like to be there when ANYONE (regardless of what agency trained them) told Kamala she was gonna die bc of how she dives. I can only imagine the response that would get, today at any rate! I will say, both GUE instructors I had counseled strongly against that kind of thing but I guess you can't control people.

One last point of clarification - primer is a 2-day workshop (no pass/fail), fundies is a class (4 possible outcomes, rec or tech pass, provisional, fail).

Thanks Kamala, again, great post.

[lv2dive70]

There is quite a lot of well-intentioned discussion in this thread about why GUE or DIR divers approach things the way they do. While some of it is close, it's not exactly how it's been represented to me, nor is it the full picture that was painted for me. (which would of course be difficult in a thread vs. conversations/training). With regards to a lot of the specifics as to the "why" behind GUE's approach, I wouldn't consider speaking for the organization. But there is a lot of good information put out by GUE itself (one link, in particular, that I referenced earlier, speaks to some of this) and the classes actually cover a lot as well.

I do want to clarify a few things from my experience only:

• Some of the most active GUE/DIR divers I know, dive with non-GUE (albeit GUE-trained) divers on a regular basis. As do I - my primary tech diving buddy is not GUE although he has taken their drysuit class. (of course, I am not calling myself DIR either ;-))
• DIR diving is not just for survival and training no matter how much it might seem like it is. For me, I have more fun and I'm more relaxed now that my skills have improved. I'll admit, for some people, the skills themselves are more of the end in and of themselves - for others (like me and quite frankly, most of the people I know) the skills are the means to an end - being comfortable in the water in whatever situation you happen to be in so you can fully enjoy your diving.
• The skills learned in primer or fundies are, indeed, a baseline for moving in tech or cave training. But they are also solid skills for any recreational diver who wants to improve their skills purely for recreational diving, as well. I went into why in an earlier post. There have been quite a few people taking fundies recently with no intention of moving into tech or cave.

As always, YMMV!

[Landlocked Dive Nut]

We've kind of turned this thread into a pro/con regarding GUE/DIR, which does not really help Ellen and may, in fact, keep her away from fundies since it seems to be such a controversial subject even in the mostly benign realm of SD.com forums.

Most recreational divers can benefit from additional buoyancy training and learn different propulsion techniques (or get decent fins), and very few recreational divers can navigate out of that wet paper bag, even if they've taken the NAV class for their AOW cert. I could get advanced training from my local dive shop in all 3 of those areas, from an instructor I know and trust within my certifying organization. I didn't have to go into the tech realm to get better in those areas.

Ellen, I've dived with you as well, and thought you were comfortable in the underwater environs when you're around people you know. You do tend to chill easily because you have an enviable low-body-fat frame. Adding tons of neoprene is never my first choice (as most of you know!) and requires lots of lead in a recreational gear set-up in salt water just to submerge, and then you have to deal with adding & removing air from your BCD at depth after all that neoprene compresses. Not fun for you, based on your earlier posts. You may want to seriously investigate dry suit diving, which would give you the added benefit of diving at home in those cold Michigan waters when you can't get to the tropics to dive with me! And of course when you DO get to dive in the tropics, you already have the 5mm neoprene and are comfortable diving with that in warmer waters.

[peterbj7]

There is so much more I could say! All I will say is, remember and focus on the essentials and don't be misled by the hype. Follow the mantra that "in an emergency it is the least well learned skills that are forgotten first". Your training, whatever agency it is with, should put you through highly stressful situations, and if you enjoy your training dives I would suggest you aren't being stressed enough. If you are NOT stressed you will not discover what you can do in an extreme situation and you may not have learned anything useful. Remember that the best planned dive can go to pieces and it is how you then behave that will determine your fate - well designed and stressful training can help enormously when that happens.

Edited by peterbj7, 30 July 2011 - 11:33 AM.

[lv2dive70]

There is so much more I could say! All I will say is, remember and focus on the essentials and don't be misled by the hype. Follow the mantra that "in an emergency it is the least well learned skills that are forgotten first". Your training, whatever agency it is with, should put you through highly stressful situations, and if you enjoy your training dives I would suggest you aren't being stressed enough. If you are NOT stressed you will not discover what you can do in an extreme situation and you may not have learned anything useful. Remember that the best planned dive can go to pieces and it is how you then behave that will determine your fate - well designed and stressful training can help enormously when that happens.

Not sure if this is directed at me or in general... but in case it was directed me...I was saying I am enjoying my FUN dives a lot more since my training. And while I did actually have some fun the last time I took fundies (specifically while doing land drills) there were plenty of stressful situations introduced at an appropriate times... some were described in the course reports that I linked to. BTW, in general - we are still talking about recreational training here, aren't we? GUE Fundamentals is recreational training - and I have never taken any GUE tech training so I am not referencing that in any way, please let me clear that up if there was any question.

Anyways, to Tammy's point, enough said on this topic by me. I can speak to these classes as I've taken one of them and one very similar to the other. OTOH, others feel very strongly about this organization, and those feelings are making it into this thread even though they are based individual's opinions of what GUE/DIR is about, and aren't related to what one would learn in the class. This limits the conversation that can occur.

[peterbj7]

No Kate, I must admit I was thinking more of "tech" diving. Though really diving is diving, and the difference between a nice easy "rec" dive and a tough "tech" dive is only one of degree, not kind.