I gave a presentation at OZTeK 2015 entitled " Is Our Training Failing Us? Developing a Culture of Sustainable Safety Practices for CCR"
Since OZTeK, I have been contacted by quite a few people requesting that I post a copy of my presentation here on CCRX. Because the presentation is about an hour long, I thought it might make more sense to post a different segment of the presentation every two or three days. That way, people can bat around the ideas, discuss the validity of my various points, and offer any contrasting points of view. Each segment of my presentation starts with what I consider to be a specific myth within the CCR industry and community. I have identified 22 different myths.
Let me also mention, that the material in this presentation is simply my opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views or protocols of any particular training agency or manufacturer, nor are my observations intended to be critical of any particular agency or manufacturer.
Myth #1 - TRAINING IS PRACTICE
*I want to start off by saying that I’m a huge proponent of consistent training at every level. Find the best, most qualified instructor you can find at each level and make sure that you enroll in a class to learn the basic concepts and skills. However training does not ensure mastery. Practice ensures mastery.
The Great American football coach Vince Lombardi once said: "Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect!"
*
Too many times I’ve had students show up to take advanced CCR classes only to demonstrate a lack of understanding of basic skills and virtually no ability to complete the skills. Skills like dil flushes, bailout procedures, manual operation and so on and so forth. Basic mod one type stuff. Believe it or not, this is more often the case than not! Do I blame their instructors for this lack of mastery? Perhaps in some cases, but in many cases, the students have simply forgotten the skills or become so unpracticed at them that they are virtually worthless to the diver. I often read divers discussing complex CCR rescue scenarios on the on-line forums in heated debate, to solve extremely rare and almost non-existent problems, yet they have virtually no real life skills when it comes to the basics. I have to assume that they were trained on them at one time, yet due to short class schedules, or one-off parroted demonstrations to their instructors, they are deemed to be fully ready for the next level! What a load of crap!
Mastery comes through repetition. Perfect practice makes perfect performance. Slow down, repeat, evaluate, adjust. Repeat, evaluate, adjust, Repeat, evaluate, adjust. This is how a trained professional musician or a professional athlete has acquired mastery of a skill. And just like a musician or athlete, if the practicing stops, the skills degrade and at some point, the musician, the athlete or the diver is no longer able to perform at peak performance.
John Stockton, one of the most famous and most prolific point guards in NBA history was purported to have shot a minimum of 1000 free throw shots per day, year round in order to stay at his high level of excellence. John Coltrane, the famous Jazz Saxophonists, spent 8 hours per day practicing scales! Not playing jazz, but practicing fundamentals!
In my opinion, a student should not progress on to the next class level until he has mastered the skills at his current level. Mastery comes through repetition. Repetition does not come through more training. We train so that we understand what is expected of us and for further evaluation so that we can gain the skills for self-evaluation.
Training:* Where a student is taught how to do something by an instructor.
Practice:* Where a student repeats what they’ve been trained to do until they can do it automatically, or without thought.* It becomes a conditioned response that bypasses the parts of the brain that are most paralyzed in extreme stress situations.
Training*is when you watch proper technique and try to duplicate it until the instructor says, “you’ve got it” and you move to learning the next technique.
Practice*is when you repeat that perfect form at various speeds, consciously paying attention to every detail, until one day you wake up and realize that you can do it perfectly, automatically, and FAST, without having to think about it.
Myth #2 coming in a couple of days!
Since OZTeK, I have been contacted by quite a few people requesting that I post a copy of my presentation here on CCRX. Because the presentation is about an hour long, I thought it might make more sense to post a different segment of the presentation every two or three days. That way, people can bat around the ideas, discuss the validity of my various points, and offer any contrasting points of view. Each segment of my presentation starts with what I consider to be a specific myth within the CCR industry and community. I have identified 22 different myths.
Let me also mention, that the material in this presentation is simply my opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views or protocols of any particular training agency or manufacturer, nor are my observations intended to be critical of any particular agency or manufacturer.
Myth #1 - TRAINING IS PRACTICE
*I want to start off by saying that I’m a huge proponent of consistent training at every level. Find the best, most qualified instructor you can find at each level and make sure that you enroll in a class to learn the basic concepts and skills. However training does not ensure mastery. Practice ensures mastery.
The Great American football coach Vince Lombardi once said: "Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect!"
*
Too many times I’ve had students show up to take advanced CCR classes only to demonstrate a lack of understanding of basic skills and virtually no ability to complete the skills. Skills like dil flushes, bailout procedures, manual operation and so on and so forth. Basic mod one type stuff. Believe it or not, this is more often the case than not! Do I blame their instructors for this lack of mastery? Perhaps in some cases, but in many cases, the students have simply forgotten the skills or become so unpracticed at them that they are virtually worthless to the diver. I often read divers discussing complex CCR rescue scenarios on the on-line forums in heated debate, to solve extremely rare and almost non-existent problems, yet they have virtually no real life skills when it comes to the basics. I have to assume that they were trained on them at one time, yet due to short class schedules, or one-off parroted demonstrations to their instructors, they are deemed to be fully ready for the next level! What a load of crap!
Mastery comes through repetition. Perfect practice makes perfect performance. Slow down, repeat, evaluate, adjust. Repeat, evaluate, adjust, Repeat, evaluate, adjust. This is how a trained professional musician or a professional athlete has acquired mastery of a skill. And just like a musician or athlete, if the practicing stops, the skills degrade and at some point, the musician, the athlete or the diver is no longer able to perform at peak performance.
John Stockton, one of the most famous and most prolific point guards in NBA history was purported to have shot a minimum of 1000 free throw shots per day, year round in order to stay at his high level of excellence. John Coltrane, the famous Jazz Saxophonists, spent 8 hours per day practicing scales! Not playing jazz, but practicing fundamentals!
In my opinion, a student should not progress on to the next class level until he has mastered the skills at his current level. Mastery comes through repetition. Repetition does not come through more training. We train so that we understand what is expected of us and for further evaluation so that we can gain the skills for self-evaluation.
Training:* Where a student is taught how to do something by an instructor.
Practice:* Where a student repeats what they’ve been trained to do until they can do it automatically, or without thought.* It becomes a conditioned response that bypasses the parts of the brain that are most paralyzed in extreme stress situations.
Training*is when you watch proper technique and try to duplicate it until the instructor says, “you’ve got it” and you move to learning the next technique.
Practice*is when you repeat that perfect form at various speeds, consciously paying attention to every detail, until one day you wake up and realize that you can do it perfectly, automatically, and FAST, without having to think about it.
Myth #2 coming in a couple of days!
