We Don't Need No Education

You absolutely must follow training standards.  Until you don't.  

When is that point?  How distant a deviation is acceptable?  What is your responsibility, if you are an instructor or mentor, to act as an example at all times?  You start really getting into the long grass with these questions; the frontiers through which there are a couple of well-worn, lazy paths which can be dangerous and destructive, like a commonly used hike shortcut which becomes a torrential waterfall at the first showing of rain.

Example:

How did you learn deco gas switching?  Instructors, how do you teach deco gas switching?  Now… how do you actually do it?

I am not going to walk through the steps of the former two in my own case, but I'll tell you how I actually make a gas switch.  I always wear my gasses in the same places, distributed on both my left and right sides.  When it's time to make a switch I reach for the regulator on what I know will be the right tank, I get the second stage out and ready, confirm the tank is on, then put the thing in my mouth and start breathing at the correct time.

Those of you either recently trained or otherwise familiar with standards will notice about 42 steps missing up to and including showing everyone in your dive team both the tank, the first stage, the second stage, and a notarized living will detailing exactly what steps they should take if you accidentally forgot to label your MOD in the correct units.

In a recent discussion with another instructor they scoffed when I told them this.  They were wondering after the red valve knobs I have on my 50% bottles.  “It just catches the eye,” I explained, “My 50% regs are red, too.”

“But you would switch to 50% at 70 feet where red wavelengths would have already been diffused, so it would just look black,” they correctly, if pedantically, pointed out.

Ignoring both that I mostly cave dive where everything looks black unless you shine a light on it, I ignored the comment.  I also didn't say anything about how I don't bother looking at the tank valve when I'm making a switch.  What I depend on is that I put the right distinctive regulator on the right distinctive tank before the dive.  Then, during the dive, when I deploy a plastic Cyklon (as distinctive a regulator as exists) I know that 50% will come out of that mouthpiece, because whatever color it is, whether I can even see the reg or not, the only thing I use a plastic cyklon, in all it's weird looking glory for, is as a 50% reg.

It isn't that I'm immune to physics or that I have outsmarted training standards.  I have preparatory procedures and equipment to confirm a series of data that do, indeed, need to be confirmed before making a gas switch.

Do I teach it this way?  No.  There are way more steps in the way I demonstrate it and teach it... even though I'm using my awesome regs.

“I'll just get different regulators, like you,” some eager student may say, if they happened to read this blog.

“This is one of only a very few regulators that trick will work with,” I'd explain, “And they're about seven hundred bucks new… you gonna spend that on a deco reg?  Follow the steps as you learned them.”

Instructors, especially vastly experienced instructors, run the very serious risk of behaving as a poor example.  Perhaps not during classes, but when simply out diving their vast experience and the tools and refinements and personal style over the years has developed into something seamless, which works perfectly for them, but could turn things critical on someone without their many years of experience.

Few instructors I know, either recreational or technical follow training standards during their own, personal, non-teaching dives.  Because… and here's the crux of it… training standards only apply during an active class, when there is a teacher(s) and student(s).  When there is no formal, documented teacher/student relationship, the training agencies have no oversight.

(Note: when people who have a pre-existing teacher/student relationship are diving together, say, right after a class, things get ethically and, probably, legally hairier.  A responsible instructor should continue to encourage strict procedural adherence through those times, as opposed to, “You're certified now, do what you want,” or worse, encourage potentially reckless behavior like, as a totally random example apropos of nothing, diving to/past 200 feet more than twice a day.)

That said: it is pure folly to interpret “instructors don't follow training standards” as “training standards are overly conservative.”

The standards are there as minimums… minimums with the best, most capable students in mind. A more typical student will require more work on top of these, repeated exposure over time. Whether ideal or ordinary what they initially learn from their instructor will be used as a foundation upon which they can build their own styles and decide on their own tricks.

When?

Yeah, I'm not going to answer that.  It's a long, wide, blurry line between when the standards as you learned them should be followed to the letter and when you can start fooling around with what works for you. This line gets even blurrier if you haven't learned according to standards, when an instructor has allowed you scope to believe the shortcut that will turn into a waterfall is acceptable... as long as it doesn't rain (which it inevitably will sooner or later). Poor buoyancy control, crap finning, sloppy gear configurations, lack of buddy or body awareness: these are paths to the dark side.

So while I can't give you a standard answer on when standard breaking becomes safely allowable I can parrot back to you is an old line I’ve variously heard ascribed to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Pablo Picasso:

“You've got to learn all the rules so you can break them.”

Learning them -- mastering them -- comes first.

Afterward:

All this comes with a very, very big BUT. As you evolve and learn you must ALWAYS be vigilant for the creeping evil of normalization of deviance. Think things through. Don't ever do shit just because you got away with it this time or someone (even someone you like or even respect) told you you could. Just because some lazy shortcut worked today doesn't mean it will work tomorrow.