The Internet is full of discussions and advice on how to choose a good Vacation, hotel so in the same way the Internet is full of advice on how to choose a good diving course. However, online advice has its drawbacks, so in this text we will consider what you need to pay attention to in order to know a lot and feel safe in the water after the course and at the same time to make the course simply an adventure.
First, let’s consider where we want to dive in the future. Is the diving to resemble that of the movies – reefs, colorful fish, blue water or rather to explore our Polish lakes – also fish, but the water is green and quickly (deeper) quite dark.
If we are preparing to dive on reefs, that is, in the sea, we must, given the training, notice and separate skill from experience. The course should give us as many skills as possible, but training anywhere in Poland will not give us the experience of reef diving. Therefore, when selecting a course, let’s focus on where we can learn the most. You need good conditions to learn, and that’s why an artificial tank like Deepspot that meets the conditions of an “analog” simulator of diving conditions is an ideal place for training. What else is needed when we evaluate a diving course – the professionalism of the staff, the availability of preferably on-liner training materials and what is most important the time spent in the water and, in fact, the time spent in equipment underwater.
Learning the theory
For learning theory, online teaching, combined with instructor discussion before pools or dives of elements of theory, works best. Simply put, with such a method, we can spend most of our time watching training videos and repeating to check our understanding of knowledge – tests that we can calmly solve and, based on good/bad answers, master the theoretical basics better. Then, with the instructor, we can talk freely about the theory we are learning and connect it to the skills we are gaining or the beginning of practice.
Pool exercises
The beginning of learning to dive requires mastering the use of diving equipment and swimming in it, as well as two very important skills:
Breathing underwater (very easy skill)
Swimming (a little more difficult)
Breathing underwater
Underwater, thanks to diving equipment (see the texts on the equipment blog), breathing is as easy as on the surface. If you’ve ever swum with a tube on the surface of the water, breathing from a scuba diving machine with air from a cylinder is even easier. Put the mouthpiece in your mouth, exhale and then breathe freely.
Buoyancy
When we are underwater, we are in a bit of a submarine situation, we can either sink slightly or we can be thrown towards the surface or we can have what is called neutral buoyancy, that is, in such a situation the water will neither push us towards the surface nor will we sink towards the bottom, this is an ideal situation for a diver because we can freely – lightly working our fins to swim in the direction we want. Swim towards the reef, the fish, your partner or slowly surface or submerge.
Pool section (shallow) of the course
The pool is such a gym for divers; in the pool we learn the basics of diving in safe controlled conditions. You learn how to use diving equipment underwater, as well as how to swim in it and adjust your buoyancy so that it is neutral, adapted to the diver’s needs. We also learn to control with a partner so that we swim together as a pair or in a group, and we master exercises based on basic emergency situations that can happen during a dive and the course, among other things, teaches how to dive but also how to deal with emergency situations.
Diving (deeper) part of the course
The pool part of the course consists of shallow dives at the beginning, at depths shallow enough for the students to be able to stop at any time, i.e. 1.2-1.5 meters, then slowly the dives are a little deeper, but they are still shallow dives; deeper dives concern the phase of the course which we define as open water diving, i.e. we dive to slightly greater depths related to the maximum depths allowed for beginners in the course:
For the OWD course for adults, it is 12 meters for dives 1 and 2 and 18 meters for dives 3 and 4.
For children ages 10 to 12, the maximum depth is 12 meters on dives 1 to 4.
Back to the question of how to choose a good diving course?
Let’s evaluate how much in-water activity is in the course program including how much time we are likely to spend underwater. Let’s ask what kind of time we will spend diving because this is one of the basic criteria to judge whether this course will give us a lot of skills. If one course takes three months but we spend an hour and a half underwater and the other course takes five days but we spend three hours underwater, then most likely the supposedly shorter course is better. Let’s also consider the logistics of the training whether we will be able to repeat certain activities in case of any problems. This is a certain disadvantage of courses on long-distance trips, where we go for a certain period of time and at the end of our vacation we simply return back even if we don’t manage to master in certain diving skills. In such a situation, there is no time to practice extra. Courses done in Poland make it easier for us to possibly repeat certain classes, exercises until we feel really confident in the water and underwater.
Criteria for a good course:
A large number of hours in the water; including underwater, both shallow and deeper dives. Possibility to enroll in additional classes at the end of the course or after the course for practicing less mastered skills. Will provide opportunities to continue training in subsequent courses if we like the diving.
In addition, it is worth mentioning the availability during the training of a large selection of full equipment as to size. So that before the course you do not have to buy any pieces of equipment. After the course, we’ll probably want to buy certain pieces of diving equipment, or maybe all the equipment; but we’ll be buying it with some expertise already, and our decisions will be better informed than before the course. When you sign up for a scuba diving course at Deepspot, we are sure to fit and test any diving equipment you need without any problems.
Summary
Large selection of full diving equipment ( we go to class with a towel and swimsuit)
A large amount of time spent underwater at various depths.
Comfortable conditions to learn faster.
