Why continue your diving education?

As a scuba instructor, I am asked a very common question among beginner and advanced divers. Which is, "Why would I want to continue my diver training?"

When we certify our newly open water students, we give them 2 free days of rentals to go out and experience diving outside of the classroom environment. Us pesky instructors like to constantly tell you what to do, where to go, how long to be there. It is nice to be able to take what you have learned from your open water class and just go diving. If you are not comfortable yet to go by yourself, you can always join a group dive outing. Diving with a group of enthusiasts divers helps you to learn and practice your newly acquired basic scuba skills: BWRAF, making a plan, following the plan, neutral bouyance, ascents and descents in controlled manner, monitoring air supply and good buddy communication, all while remembering to breath!

Once you feel like you are comfortable with the basics, it is now time to expand your dive knowledge and challenge yourself a bit in a controlled environment with a qualified instructor. Remember, your instructor has taken the same class you are taken AND has taken another class on how to teach it, plus taken another class how to teach to all different levels and experiences. The knowledge and experience that instructors have gained in teaching many different levels of divers is priceless.

The PADI Advanced Open water class is a great stepping stone after your open water class. The two out of the five required advanced intros are underwater navigation and deep diving between 70-100ft. The other three dives will be optional on environment, instructor and student requests. Gone Diving likes to take you out for a boat dive for your deep intro. If you have only been shore diving, this is a great opportunity to get to see other areas that are accessible by boat only. Once out there, you might find a new interest in diving that you never even considered. Learning Underwater Navigation gives you the confidence to be able to know where you are at on a dive and how to return back to your starting point.

As a newly certified diver, you may be having a heck of time when you go diving. The gear being to heavy, you feeling awkward under the water, running through your air to quickly. This might not give you the confidence to want to take an Advance class. You can take the Peak Performance Bouyance class first and learn how to properly weight your self. Learn different weighting options that you might not have learned or used in your open water class. Getting properly weighted helps you gain bouyance easier under the water, using less air inflating your BCD or drysuit, learning proper breathing techniques to extend your enjoyment under the water. You will find diving much more enjoyable and excited to continue on with your diving education.

You may be an older diver that just got open water certified or has been certified for years. You may find the Enriched Air Nitrox class is what you need to help your dive planning to be safer. This is class session only, going over why Oxygen and Nitrogen can be good and bad for you. Learning how to reuse our Air Tables and Nitrox tables for safer dive planning. Most of all, why computers are necessary.

Every class you take helps you in becoming a better diver. I guarantee you will come out of every class learning something and challenging yourself to a new diving milestone! Education never makes us dumber but makes us ask more questions. The questions we keep asking, we can keep learning from. Diving is a vast area of learning and I know that I make an effort to take a continue education class each year. I am amazed at what I learn by taken a class, going out and practicing what I learned and finding a new interest to take another class and learn some more. Continuing education, that is why it is called continuing.