Precision Diving

In my previous article, Dive Training Evolution – Rule of Primacy, I talked about how diving instructors can utilize the rule of primacy to evolve dive training. In this article, I’ll discuss how we can use the principle of intensity to continue the evolution.

The principle of intensity states that what is learned must be intense enough to be retained. Uninteresting, yet essential precepts must be conveyed to the student diver with sufficient
intensity to ensure retention and use in day-to-day practice. Basically, a person will learn more from the real thing than from a substitute. Let’s take a look at a couple of ways we can use the principle of intensity when teaching scuba diving.

In the classroom
Intensity doesn’t have to come from extreme situations in order to get convey the urgency of what is being taught. When instructors put together lesson plans for their classes, important concepts or ideas contained in the presentations should emphasized by use of color, highlighting, underlining, or italicizing. The use of humor, irony, or incongruity is beneficial in creating dynamic and memorable concepts, which may easily be inserted into the student diver’s long-term memory. When discussing key concepts in scuba diving, the use of illustrations, brief stories, and most especially scuba diving equipment is especially valuable in enhancing the intensity of the subject matter. It is important to develop reasonable styles of conversation and analysis which maximize intensity in the presentation of otherwise dull materials and concepts. The classroom imposes limitations on the amount of realism that can be brought into teaching. The instructor needs to use imagination in approaching reality as closely as possible. Classroom instruction can benefit from a wide variety of instructional aids, to improve realism, motivate learning, and challenge students. Instructors should emphasize important points of instruction with gestures, showmanship, and voice. Demonstrations, skits, and role playing do much to increase the learning experience of students. Examples, analogies, and personal experiences also make learning come to life. For these very reasons, on-line scuba diving courses fail miserably when compared to the same courses taught by a knowledgeable instructor who has significant experience in scuba diving.

In the water
Today, in-water instruction can benefit from a wide variety of instructional aids to improve realism, motivate learning, and challenge students. When teaching new student divers, they first must be able to crawl before they walk and to walk before they can run. Starting off student divers on their knees at the bottom of a pool is fine in the beginning. However, as the student progresses, they must start to perform the skills under stress in a controlled environment. By combining skills, instructors can start to increase the level of intensity that the students experience. For example, in the open water class, students must demonstrate performing an air share ascent. Why not toss in there a mask removal at the same time? By slightly increasing the task loading, instructors can increase the intensity of the skills and thus watch the reaction of the students. Did they handle the extra task loading in a calm manner? What kind of decisions did they make when handling the added stress? In these task loading sessions, students can then be taught the thought process that must go on in order to successfully handle the events and to prevent them from getting worse. Many people do not like the practice of scuba instructors removing a students mask. However, this practice can be done safely, while in a controlled environment. If the practice is first introduced in a shallow pool, after much practice in mask removal and replacement, it can become much easier when the mask is taken in an open water environment.

Summary
The principle of intensity can become a very powerful teaching aid when utilized correctly. It leads to knowledge retention and stresses critical thinking in the student. It also can force the instructor to think creatively about how to teach the skills. This is the added benefit in that the instructor must continually review how they teach the skills in order to improve, or come up with more intense situations, to increase student learning.

Dive Safe,
Duane Johnson
Precision Diving

The sport of scuba diving has evolved greatly since it’s inception. Our equipment has improved by leaps and bounds over the past 30+ years. We have better breathing regulators, buoyancy compensating devices, dry suits, etc. to improve our comfort and safety when diving. However, many people will argue that dive training has not evolved as nicely as diving equipment. In order to evolve dive training, our classes must change.

Evolution is defined as a change of traits. In order to evolve dive training, we must change the traits that exist in the current course offerings. The 20 skills the RSTC require members to teach create a good foundation. However, it’s how these skills get taught that is equally as important.

To address this, let’s take a look at the rule of primacy. The rule of primacy states that what a person learns first is the most prevalent. When a person is under stress, they will revert back to primacy. In scuba diving, we do not want our first encounter with an out of gas emergency to be after we are already certified. We do not want a simple mask leak to cause a fast ascent. The startle factor of such events are quite likely to cause reactions based upon instinct rather than training. The rule of primacy is apt to be a diver’s worst enemy in a startle situation. The failure of training to provide prior experience into abnormal situations is a failure of the instructional program and the instructor. Good judgment and appropriate decision making can only exist through situational exposure. Diving instruction is expected to prepare students to dive into the expected and to avoid the unexpected.

For dive training to evolve, we have to progress past primacy and into repetition, which is also a very powerful part of the learning process. Continue doing the correct behavior over and over and over again the right way and it will over-write the improper technique. This is why practice dives become very important. We must practice our skills over and over again such that they are instinctive. When these skills are instinctive, the correct behavior will be used in an emergency. This is why it is so important to teach how to do the skills correct in the beginning open water courses and for instructors to stress practice dives in addition to doing fun dives.

By slowing down open water classes and focusing on correct skill form, thought process and repetition, scuba diving instructors can utilize the rule of primacy and create a solid foundation for the new diver to build upon in continuing education classes. Utilizing the rule of primacy, we can start to evolve our dive training programs.

Don’t just practice to get it right, practice so you CAN’T get it wrong!

Dive Safe,
Duane Johnson
Precision Diving

Attention new divers or divers considering purchasing your first regulator. You’ll want to read on. When I was a new diver, I wanted to purchase my own equipment. So, like many people, I went online to research what I wanted. My instructor used a Scubapro MK25 with a S600 second stage. He raved about it. So I purchased a set from Leisure Pro. The day after I got my new regs, I took them to the dive store down the street to set them up. The owner asked where I got them and I told him. He then lectured me on how bad LP was and that my regs were purchased on the gray market. Not knowing what that was, I assumed it was bad. He also told me that I would have to pay for parts for the annual service. If I purchased the reg from him, the parts would be free. So, fearing death from my LP regulators and the high cost of their service, I promptly returned them to LP and bought a lower quality set of regs from the dive store.

The following year, it was time for their annual service. So I took them to the dive store. When I picked them up, I was surprised at the high cost of the service. I asked why the price was so high. I was told that even though parts were free, I still had to pay for service. I was shocked as I wasn’t told this when I purchased the regulators. I was even more shocked to learn that my regulators didn’t need new parts every year. They only needed new parts every other year. So that first year after my purchase, they only needed a cleaning and inspection.

Being the business person that I am, I went home and analyzed the transaction. I quickly realized that buying the regulators from the dive store didn’t save me much money over time. When you consider the price of the parts is about $90 for the three stages (1st, primary 2nd and octo). Most regulators only need new parts every other year. The regulators that I bought from the dive store were $200 more than LP. I would need to own the dive store regulators for five years to start benefiting from the free parts. $90 every other year, for five years is just over $200. Now, the average diver may not keep their equipment longer than five years. Many divers want to upgrade to something new and cool. So, by eBay’ing the regulators after a couple years, you actually will lose money. We can also look at the cost of buying the regs from LP and parts every other year. If I would have bought the LP regulators and kept the them longer than 5 years, I wouldn’t be saving money. Buying the parts every other year, in 5 years I would have erased the savings from buying online.

The myth of the free parts is that they really aren’t free. You will still pay for servicing your regulators and you would need to own your regulators for quite some time in order to compensate for the savings from buying online. So when you are in your favorite dive store researching your first regulator purchase, make sure you ask all of the questions up front about servicing costs, how often the regulators need new parts, and how much those parts cost. Don’t be bullied into purchasing a higher priced, lower quality regulator as I was. Do your homework and become an educated consumer.

I welcome your questions and comments.

Dive Safe,
Duane Johnson
Precision Diving

“It’s just like prostitution!” a good friend said to me a while ago. I was having a conversation with an old friend about the diving industry. We started talking about why we dive. The conversation soon went south.

Have you ever asked yourself why you dive? Many people respond with a variety of answers. Some range from interacting with the aquatic world to the challenge of advanced level diving. All of this is fine, for the casual diver. However, many people really never get why diving is a great activity. There really is only a tiny percentage of divers who feel that the activity of diving has taken on a new meaning in our lives. Diving has given me some of the greatest experiences of my life, next to my family of course. These experiences have given me a larger meaning in my life. That is, I respect the sport of diving and strive to enhance the diving experience for others. That respect has changed how I view the sport, how I teach diving, how I interact with other divers and how I do business with dive stores and others in the industry.

The sad fact is that there are many, many people out there who view the activity of diving as a way to make money only. How do I know this? What data do I have to backup my claim? Well, I worked for a Fortune 500 company. One of my roles was in competitive intelligence. I had access to market research for a wide range of industries, including the scuba industry. I also analyzed the scuba industry for my final project when completing my MBA. So when I say that profits were placed as a top priority of dive industry members, there is significant data to back that up. These people have chosen to sell out to the industry rather than focus on what’s really important. The diving.

There’s nothing wrong with being in the diving business. Businesses, after all, are for profit organizations and should be allowed to make a profit. However, they should be doing it by placing a high emphasis on diving and not on maximizing profits. You see it all the time. Just look on the internet message boards. There are a bunch of dive shops on-line, that as soon as they get a new product in stock, they advertise it on the internet as the greatest thing ever. But they have not clue what the pros/cons are of that particular product. It’s all about sell, sell, sell and getting you to spend your hard earned money. The ironic thing is that 99% of dive store owners THINK they are business people, even though they have no formal training in business practices, and try to act as experts in business matters. If they were such shrewd businessmen, they would realize that they don’t need to maximize profits by increasing their revenues (i.e. sell, sell, sell). As a person who has worked in a variety of roles in a large business, it is funny to watch these people fumble around. I can even predict their next move/mistake because I have seen it in other failing businesses. Take any class in small business and you will learn that over 75% of all small businesses fail after 5 years. By 10 years, that number jumps to 90%. This is primarily due to management shortcomings. Most of the dive stores who have lasted quite a while, have done so mostly by luck and not because they formally designed it that way.

Everything comes down to the dive. Diving has become a part of me, just like my kids. I would never sell out my kids, so why would I sell out diving? Has diving taken a higher meaning in your life? Have you changed how interact with other divers? If you are an instructor, has it changed what you teach and why you teach it? When I was going through my IDC, integrated into the it were ways to sell merchandise, dive travel, and more training. During my instructor course, the course director said that I shouldn’t do anything for free. Granted, people should be paid for their time and knowledge they give. However, some of the greatest experiences I’ve had as a diving instructor was when I was just mentoring a new diver. No class, no money changed hands and I didn’t have to sell out. It was about great discussions and diving experiences. This mentoring has kept them diving and enjoying our sport. If I had charged them for my time, I doubt they would still be diving. It’s not about how much money one makes or doing anything for money. It’s simply about diving.

Do you get why we dive?

Dive Safe,
Duane
Precision Diving