Briefing

       


Briefing

Part 1:
The General Context

Part 1:
The General Context

Part 1:
The General Context

Understanding Challenges

All divers risk facing one or more of these conditions:

Problems
When our skills are insufficient and we cannot proficiently apply them.
Plateaus
When our skills are just average and we can't elevate them to a higher level.
Regressions
When we lose our skills, such as the geometry forgotten after studying it.

The Determinants of Success

Considering two people who attended the same standardized course led by the same instructor, why do they often obtain very different results?

And what about these same now certified divers who, although they have taken the same certification, succeed to manage the same fun dives so differently?

It is the personal characteristics of each individual that determine the final result, influencing performances and the entire diving career.

Personal characteristics affect the way instructors teach, the way students learn, and the way certified divers dive.

No Blame

As for everyone and in every sector, personal characteristics allow us to approach and practice certain activities better and more easily compared to other activities. This is normal, common to all, and we should not worry about it.

Crucially, someone who seems to be unfavored in a given activity by their personal characteristics can achieve better results than someone who seemed naturally more predisposed.

Practical Meaning

The training received during the OWDC can determine the whole diver's diving career, and for many divers it is the only form of training received in their whole career.

But diving courses have Gray Areas, shortcomings whose consequences can persist even after the course ends.

Thanks to personal characteristics, some divers compensate for shortcomings, first during courses and later in their fun dives.

But for divers for whom this instinctive approach doesn't work well, a different approach is necessary.

Divers enter in water from boat

Part 2:
The Specific Issues

Part 2:
The Specific Issues

Part 2:
The Specific Issues

Gray Areas

Courses determine our training. The quality of our training determines the quality of our performance when fun diving. Yet, as said, however well-organized, all the standardized diving courses have Gray Areas.

A Gray Area is not necessarily a mistake, and it is often a necessary choice in an effort to avoid organizing infinitely long and overwhelming courses.

However, to achieve our success we must work on the Gray Areas of traditional courses, and here are four points on which to focus.

#1 Lack of information

We need information to change a current situation. This information exists, but finding it is not always easy.

Two examples? Buoyancy and the info necessary to manage the Gray Areas. Open a diving manual and look for this information. Probably there are just a couple of pages about buoyancy, not enough to master it, and of course nothing about how to manage the Gray Areas.

#2 Load of information

To dive, we need to know a huge amount of various types of information, and the possibility of being overwhelmed is a concrete fact that occurs for many divers.

Failing to manage all this load of information, it will create stress, and we will not be able to apply and use it.

#3 Courses Entry Point

Every course has its entry point, a set of assumed conditions upon which it builds new competencies.

In the Open Water course, there is no previous training that can be used to achieve the goals. If, due to our personal characteristics, we are far from the entry point, then we might not achieve them.

The risk is to carry these gaps throughout our whole diving career.

#4 Courses Exit Point

Newly certified divers need concrete knowledge of what they should do from now on to consolidate and develop the skills just learned.

Current issues could derive from not having been told how to keep improving. Paradoxically, we could have obtained our diving license maybe even succeeding quite well, and the difficulties might have arrived later.

Diver

Part 3:
The Solution

Part 3:
The Solution

Part 3:
The Solution

Taking Control of Our Diving Journey

We believe that divers are not always solely responsible for their status, especially at the beginning of their careers.

Courses have shortcomings, and often instructors fail to tell students how to manage them after the course conclusion, when traveling the world as now certified divers.

A Deliberate Path to Improvement

Basically, The Diving Method focuses on the single procedure that everyone applies when first learning something and then wanting to develop and put it into practice.

Due to personal characteristics, someone applies this procedure instinctively, while others might need to focus on how to apply it.

Diving with purpose

Problems, plateaus, and regressions are consequences of failing to manage Gray Areas, diving almost randomly and, at best, hoping that something good will happen.

The solution is to dive with a purpose, being aware of what to do to change the actual state of things. There are four points on which we must focus.

#1 Behavioural ABC

This is the fundamental procedure we cited: a loop of the three most basic and simple steps we all apply to learn, solidify, and maximize a skill.

But divers have chosen a very unique and stressful playground, and they must adapt the procedure to the SCUBA diving context.

#2 Technical ABC

While diving, there are practical actions from which it is necessary to start, and not applying them is like writing with the non-dominant hand: we are not in control of the situation, inevitably leading to poor execution.

#3 The Key Element

The Key Element brings everything together: the Behavioural ABC, the Technical ABC, and the technical information related to the skill we want to improve.

After discussing and accepting the Key Element, the rest becomes almost a natural consequence.

#4 Avoid Confusion

Divers easily get overwhelmed due to the huge amount of information and the very nature of diving itself, and they get easily distracted by wonder and stress.

But Confusion can compromise everything. To prevent it, there is a way already used by the most expert divers to manage their more complex dives, and it is simply senseless not to use it in our fun dives.

Before Next Dive

We are all on our personal journey from novice to expert, and whatever our goal is, avoiding acting randomly and relying on luck can only help.

The solution is a method to counteract gray areas, and you can get it by clicking this green 'Buy' button.

Buy