The PADI Advanced Open Water Diver Course – bring your diving to the next level

Sadly the Advanced Open Water Diver Course is often taught in a very poor way. For many dive shops it is just a way to make some easy quick money without giving you the chance to develop skills to reach the next level of diving. The course consists of a total of 5 dives, where the deep dive (maximum to 30m) and underwater navigation are required. Unfortunately often you just do 5 fun dives and in the end have another diving license card without real improvement of your skills. It is a two days course. Like mentioned deep and underwater navigation are required, the other dives are elective dives from a variety to choose from.

Here you see a list of the elective dives

Boat Adventure Dive	Digital Underwater Imaging Adventure Dive	Dive Against Debris (AWARE) Adventure Dive
Drift Adventure Dive	Enriched Air Adventure Dive	Fish Identification Adventure Dive
Night Adventure Dive	Peak Performance Buoyancy Adventure Dive	Search and Recovery Adventure Dive

The truth about the elective dives

Here is the truth many other shops are not telling you, all of this elective dives, with one exception, are not improving your essential diving skills. These skills are breathing (how efficient you are with your air), trim (your positioning in the water), buoyancy (always be neutral buoyant during the dives) and propulsion (how efficient you move through the water with your kicks). That is why Peak Performance Buoyancy dives will be always in my advanced course. Just there we practice making your a more efficient diver.

For all dives we follow the PADI standards, but unfortunately learning frog kicks are not a requirement during the buoyancy dive. Therefore I add more exercises and techniques during your Advanced course. Best example are the frog kicks, a different kicking technique which brings you to the next level of diving. Just using flutter kicks all the time will always limit your true potential underwater. There is a reason while all dive professionals are using frog kicks. Just with this technique you are capable to move freely 3 dimensional underwater. You can go forward, sideways and even swim backwards. That and more we will practice together.

Other elective dives like a boat adventure dive will not help you at all, mostly you dove already anyway from a boat. There are many adventure dives to choose where you can get a specialty diving license for that, but most of them are useless for you. Good for the shop to make money. People doing this unnecessary specialties are the perfect dive shop customers, they are called card collectors. Sadly most often these specialty card collectors are not good divers, but finished a lot of courses.

Advanced Open Water Diver – course overview

So how will you do your PADI Advanced Open Water Course (AOWD) with LIVE FOR DIVING. On the first day we start with two peak performance buoyancy dives. The only way to get better with your essential key skills is to practice them under water. Therefor instead of 5 dives for AOWD required, you get an additional for more time underwater.

My goal is that after completion of the course, you are a better diver. We will end this day with a night dive. An AOWD course without experiencing diving in the night is not a proper advanced course. These 3 dives are done from the beach for having enough practice time and a stress free teaching environment without tight boat schedules.

On the second day we will join the Maeda boat for another 3 dives. It will be the required deep dive and underwater navigation plus another elective dive. Cape Maeda has not just the Blue Cave to offer, there is also a spot for a 30m deep dive along a vertical wall. Also we will join the boat from 10 o’clock, allowing a good rest from the night dive before.

From my experience customers love having pictures from their time underwater, therefore I recommend the Digital Underwater Imaging Adventure Dive, where you can practice your photography and video shooting skills. All the underwater imaging has to happen neutral buoyant if you want good looking results. So reward yourself with beautiful pictures from all the hard work improving your diving skills the day before.

DAY 1	DAY 2
Peak Performance Buoyancy Dive 1 Peak Performance Buoyancy Dive 2 Night Dive 3	Deep Dive 4 Underwater Navigation Dive 5 Digital Underwater Imaging Dive 6
from 1 pm till 9 pm	from 10 am till 5pm