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D.I.R.F The great debate
By Mark Chase on 9 October 2008
Skills Before Training
The big debate amongst divers who are planning to do a DIRF course is whether or not to practice your skills before receiving the training. My thoughts on this are heavily influenced by the comments of Richard and other GUE instructors and by the use of the Provisional Pass system.
It’s obvious that in this case the two divers who did skills and drills together before the course passed and the two that didn’t were referred for reassessment. This is surely a powerful argument for pre practice. However the instructors argument is don’t learn things incorrectly and build up the wrong muscle memory. Learn it properly on the course and then use the provisional pass as your tool to completing the assessment.
This is also a powerful argument. After a lot of thought I am forced to agree but only up and to a point. It is an awful feeling to fail anything in life. There is kudos in passing your driving test at the first attempt and there is shame in taking it three or four times. Divers are generally a proud lot and I feel sure that divers who choose to dive within the GUE system are more proud than most. Come to the course with no preparation and I would expect a provisional pass to be mandatory for all but the very talented divers.
The simple truth is, nothing in general diving and popping out to dive a 30m wreck or even a 100m wreck, prepares you for DIRF. It’s a fairly unique skill set and unless you’re in the habit of doing skills in 6m of water you’re going to struggle. Back before I started using a slob knob my shut down drills included undoing the waste buckle on my rig and hoiking the set up on my back. This sort of thing is no longer allowed. The fact that it worked fine is not the point and that’s a concept a lot of people struggle with.
The sort of preparation I would suggest is essential is to balance your rig properly getting weighting and trim as close to perfect as you can without the aid of video. If you have access to video or even stills, then use it. Nail your buoyancy under stress at 6m. Hover at 6m and do your normal shut downs a la BSAC TDI or what ever your persuasion. Finally learn to clip and unclip your equipment single handed. If you can attain a level of comfort in doing these skills at 6m in the horizontal position then you will be ready for DIRF and should be able to pass.
A real benefit is to attend the course as a team of two who have dived together and trained together and have a handle on communication and second guessing the strengths and weakness of your buddy.
So what did I think of DIRF?
In general terms the course was excellent and the levels of diving skill demonstrated by the instructors Richard and David were very impressive. The training really starts to make you think as a team, all be it a buddy team now that the course numbers have been reduced to four from the original six. The skill set is a very basic but made hard by the working depth and the insistence of correct procedures and maintaining depth trim and station.
I had heard stories about hardened divers walking off the course because it was too tough. I find this hard to fathom. Parts of the training were frustrating but I found nothing to be beyond the ability of the average decompression qualified diver to achieve, it was just the marks for style that were elusive. I can well imagine a diver who has never had to hold position in the water before, struggling with the demand to achieve this and cope with the task loading. My buddy for the weekend was having big problems with balance trim and weighting but I didn’t notice any attempt by the instructors to step in and proactively deal with this problem. The divers appeared to be deemed fit to sort out their own issues with nothing more than a few verbal tips. In one instance such verbal guidance was enough to sort out a problem to the delight of the diver but my buddy seemed doomed to struggle on with what he had and I felt he should have received more hands on support.
I would have liked to have seen more dry runs of set piece skills and drills and more time spent between dives advising the divers on what they should be doing. I laughed out loud when told after the course had finished that my shoulder D rings I had struggled so hard to reach should perhaps be moved up higher. I had wrongly assumed this was unacceptable but I was reminded that that in fact the webbing rig was a starting point not a finished item. I had been told this but I had forgotten.
It was too dammed cold to be mucking about. I feel it likely that had the water and air temperatures been above hypothermic, that time would have been spent in water after the formal dives messing around with kit and weighting.
I was disappointed that we received no course notes or even calculation sheets for things like minimum gas and calculation of thirds. Richard told a story demonstrating situational awareness that scared me. He said during a cave dive assessment in the Emergence de Ressel he was asked to tell the instructor if he had noticed a piece of slate set in the floor of the cave. This piece of slate is apparently noteworthy and he said that he had. In order to demonstrate his situational awareness he was then asked what his run time and depth was on passing the slate and to outline his deco commitment at that point in time? Such recall would be totally beyond my ability but perhaps they expect that level of retention and believe we should have totally memorised the Power Point presentation during DIRF.
However in their defence I was very impressed with the way the instructors encouraged further communication after the training had stopped and emphasised that the course should be seen as the beginning of a working instructor student relationship. With this as the case I have no doubt my instructor will go over any issues I have forgotten if only I can remember which questions to ask.
I don’t quite understand how they managed it but they have opened my awareness of team diving. Perhaps the lack of intervention by the instructors that I have criticised in this article was the very trigger that sent us on the path of considering our buddies as integral to our success or failure. Other organisations apparently teach this but no one has successfully got the message across to me before.
The one thing I really feel has changed in me following the course is my understanding and appreciation of standards. Standards in equipment standards in gases standards in basic drills and skills. Whilst many fear the loss of identity and some are rightly concerned that a standardised system deprives the diver of the in depth understanding brought about by adaptive learning, when it comes right down to it, if your going to dive as a buddy pair or worse still in that widely despised state of a “team” then standardisation is essential to success.
No one size fits all diving system is going to be without faults. It’s frankly a miracle they pulled it off at all. It’s not the perfect diving system for all dives by any stretch of the imagination. However, it’s a dammed good system for most dives. Yes, compromise is necessary but it’s for the greater good.
So What Now?
So now I need to train a bit, polish some skills and get back in the water and prove I am good enough to be a DIR diver. I am overwhelmed by the support from other DIR divers to assist me in this and I feel the sense of community amongst DIR divers is strong and growing stronger. A lot of the old school aggressive DIR internet personas have gone and new ones are being advised to tone it down. DIR has a new image. George Irvine (GI3) had been retired and I suspect asked to back off from his vicious attacks on the rest of the diving world on the Internet. JJ is the figurehead now and his position is one of quiet confidence. The new mantra is “This is what we do. This is why we do it and if you want to join us then do. But you have to do it like this.”
I can live with that. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to be part of an organisation with that attitude, I would actively support it.
I have no doubt in my mind now that I will continue on to take the Tech1 level training course. This fits nicely into my plans to dive shallow wrecks on Open circuit as the course is a single decompression gas, 45m depth qualification.
Past that depth I will revert to diving a CCR. The reasons for this are obvious in terms of logistics and gas costs. DIR is not standing still it is evolving with a new open water level course and an improved DIRF course that will extend the training to include Nitrox and Rescue skills. These improvements will stop divers from having to take training outside the envelope of DIR thus enforcing one of the training pillars of DIR in Primacy.
At this time the DIR system does not encourage the use of CCR equipment for the open water diver. Due to this limitation it is unlikely that I will ever be truly DIR. I have been warned that by choosing to dive CCR on deep dives and only using the DIR system on shallow dives I will lose the right to call myself a DIR diver. I can live with that. I suspect that one day quite soon DIR will have to embrace a full Closed Circuit Re-breather I suspect it will be of a similar design to the KISS with modifications to allow loop recovery in the event of a flood. If they were to adopt a unit like this I would use it and then I could become fully DIR but until that time I very much doubt it will happen.
Chris Bordman said the following of DIRF:
“Without doubt, this was the most powerful and professional learning experience I have ever had in diving. Whether you have technical aspirations or not, if other GUE instructors can teach as well as Andrew Georgitsis, I would challenge anyone not to come to the same conclusion.”I misunderstood this when I first read it, thinking that the course must be really challenging and intense. It is not, but I think I now understand what he was saying. The video debriefs make this course special, they take diver training to another level. The skills are pretty basic and there isn’t even a written exam at the end but the trim, buoyancy control and the need for situational awareness are a challenge. All the courses I have ever done past PADI AOW have done skills tests one on one with the instructor. The only time a buddy became involved was when he was playing dead. During DIRF I never once did a skill one on one with an instructor. This was a surprise and I found it hard to balance my responsibility to my buddy with the need to focus on my own diving.
Having finished the course, I am now aware of what DIR expect from their trainee divers. It makes perfect sense why they needed to set up DIRF. I have no doubts now as to how hard Tech 1 will be and why. None of the skills will be new to me but they level of control and awareness expected whilst they are performed will be a serious challenge.
Most of my regular trimix dive buddies would fail DIRF if they took it tomorrow. They would repeatedly laugh and ask what’s point when asked to clench their buttocks lift their knees and arch their head up. They have been diving deep wrecks for years and developed their own way of doing it and it works for them. However close examination will uncover the truth. Almost to a man they will refuse to dive with any one they don’t know and would definitely only do a serious dive with their regular buddies or solo. They know each others kit inside out and they gas plan as a team of two and they will have agreed and practiced bail out systems. They are a mini DIR entity.
DIR are attempting to provide a system so tight that any DIR diver anywhere could dive with any other DIR diver on any dive within their qualification band. Quite a challenge in its self but having now experienced the training I think they might have pulled it off.
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Author: Mark Chase
Email: info@travel-dive.com
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