A little while ago, I had someone locally contact me to evaluate his technical diving skills. He had already been through a technical diving class from a well known tech instructor in the Lake Michigan area. He was looking for an assessment of his technical diving skills and knowledge as he was a newer technical diver. Always willing to help out those in need, I agreed if he bought me lunch at the quarry. I spent the day with him and his skills were less than spectacular. After talking to him, he mentioned that he only had to do the skills for his class once or twice. This got me thinking, perhaps he had a bad day when diving with me or perhaps he just had a lucky day during his training. The light bulb went off in my head.

What is this Mastery Thing?

Certainly, I’ve talked about mastery of diving skills in many of my posts on this blog. But one thing I have failed to mention about mastery, is that mastery should be repeatable. By having students perform skills just once or twice, they may get lucky and perform the skills very well, that one time. Then on the next day, they aren’t so lucky and perform skills poorly. If an instructor evaluates them on that good day, how does he/she know if the student really has mastered the skills? The opposite can also be said. If the student is really squared away and they are assessed when they are having a bad day, they may not pass the class. Mastery isn’t simply doing a skill, or skills, well once. True mastery and understanding of skills and concepts must be demonstrated over time.

This is why I’m an advocate of longer classes. I like longer classes, not to add more skills or make the class harder, but to give people more time to demonstrate that they have learned all of the skills. If the students have not completely mastered the skills to the point they cannot repeat correct behavior, then instructors should spend more time mentoring and coaching to help the student get up to the level needed so that the correct behavior can be repeated.

Removing Luck

When we start to remove luck (both good and bad), we will start to get an idea of how much the student has actually learned from the class. From there we can start to transition from being an instructor, teaching skills, to the role of mentor or coach. This is really where students will start to get comfortable. They’ll start to relax and have fun with their training. For those dive professionals out there who don’t know, when students have fun during their training, and are comfortable, they will be more likely to continue diving and become much more than the occasional vacation diver. When divers dive more, they’ll take more training, buy more equipment and basically help grow the sport of diving.

Dive Safe,
Duane
Precision Diving