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GUE Fundamentals Course

Purpose

The GUE Fundamentals course is designed to refine your diving skills, helping to provide unique capacity with buoyancy control, in water position and propulsion techniques. This immensely popular recreational course takes your personal diving skills to levels you never thought possible. Please talk to one of our staff to get details about this amazing program.

Prerequisites

  1. Must meet GUE General Course Prerequisites as outlined in Section 1.6 of the GUE standards.
  2. Must be a minimum of 16 years of age
  3. Must be a certified open water diver from a recognized training agency
  4. Must be able to swim a distance of at least 50 feet/15 meters on a breath hold
  5. Must be able to swim at least 300 yards/275 meters in less than 14 minutes without stopping. This test should be conducted in a swimsuit and, where necessary, appropriate thermal protection.

Duration

The DIR Fundamentals class is normally conducted over a 2- to 3-day period. It involves a minimum of twenty (20) hours of instruction, encompassing both classroom and in-water work.

Course Limits

  1. General Training Limits as outlined in Section 1.4
  2. Student to instructor ratio is not to exceed 6:1 during any in-water training and should be adjusted downward to account for bad conditions and/or poor visibility
  3. Maximum depth 60 feet/18 meters
  4. No decompression
  5. No overhead environment diving

Course Content

The DIR Fundamentals course is normally conducted over a 2- to 3-day period. Combining lecture and practical (in-water) sessions, this course focuses on cultivating the foundational skills required by all diving practice. It is focused on increasing diving fun by reducing stress and increasing diver proficiency through proper control of buoyancy, trim, propulsion, teamwork, and other DIR principles.

Course requirements include a minimum of eight (8) hours of academics and four (4) in-water sessions.

Required Training Materials

  1. Doing it Right: The Fundamentals of Better Diving. Jarrod Jablonski, GUE, 2001, High Springs, Florida.
  2. DIR Fundamentals Workbook.

Academic Topics

  1. GUE organization
  2. Why DIR Fundamentals?
  3. Diving proficiency
  4. Buoyancy and trim
  5. Streamlining and equipment configuration
  6. Propulsion techniques
  7. Situational awareness
  8. Communication
  9. Breathing gas overview
  10. Dive planning and gas management
  11. Diver preparedness

Land Drills & Topics

  1. Dive team protocols
  2. S-drill and valve-drill
  3. Equipment fit and function
  4. Propulsion techniques
  5. Pre-dive drills
  6. Surface marker deployment