Live For Diving

Open Water Diver Course – The first step in your diving career

Your instructor decides if you will constantly struggle with your buoyancy. The main reason for that are outdated teaching styles, where students kneel on the floor for learning and performing diving skills (shown in the left image below). Here is a YouTube video showing what kind of divers this teaching style creates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq2aLpphZWQ

Or you can learn the proper way of diving with LIVE FOR DIVING, to be in absolute control of your positioning to become ones with your environment (me shown in the right picture below).

The different parts of the Open Water Diver Course

The Open Water Diver Course consists of three parts. Comfortably from home, you can finish all the theoretical parts in your own speed to give your all the time you need to soak in all the necessary information. The old times are over to study the book and watching videos about theory stuff during your vacation in Okinawa. No classroom needed anymore, thanks to e-learning.

The second step is to learn all the necessary skills for a safe and enjoyable dive adventure. This part can be done in a pool or what I prefer directly in the ocean. There are plenty of easy accessibly safe beaches, where we have pool like conditions. So it is like a pool, but with the unbeatable benefit of plenty of space and interesting underwater environment. We want to dive the ocean and not in lakes, so there is no point in learning in a pool if we can adapt immediately to the lovely salty ocean. This will be done on day 1 and 2 of the course.

The last step to complete the course will be 4 ocean dives. The first two dives to a maximum of 12m depth (40 feet) will be from the beach. This takes a lot of stress away from the students, because there is no boat schedule and limited dive time, what pushes us. We can take it easy and slow down to your pace. The last two dives (maximum depth of 18m, 60 feet) can be done either from shore or boat, up to your preference.

During your course we follow all PADI teaching standards, but more practice time will be added for your benefit. Instead of 4 ocean dives, you will do 5 by choosing LIVE FOR DIVING. The only time to improve your skills is spending more time underwater. To do so the 5th dive was added. Also the key element in proper diving is to be neutral buoyant, so it means when you stop moving underwater you will just stay in position, feeling completely weightless hovering without sinking down or float upwards.

The big problem specially here in Japan is that people are not neutral buoyant at all, it appears so while moving through the water, but at the moment they stop kicking, they sink down, stirring sand up or destroying corals. LIVE FOR DIVING was created to teach people the proper way of diving, so to become a real diver. There are two types of diver, the real divers and people who just constantly swimming underwater while breathing air from their scuba cylinder.

That is why the first thing we will practice in the water is to be neutral buoyant. It takes as long as you need. Just while neutral buoyancy is established, learning and practice other skills makes sense. Here there is no kneeling on the floor performing skills. During a dive, you would not thinking down to the sea floor, just to clear your mask. Practicing skills in a natural diving position will make sure that you enjoy your dives in the future.

Course overview

DAY 1	DAY 2	DAY 3
swim test confined session first ocean dive	rest of the confined skills two more ocean dives	the last 2 ocean dives final exam (if not using e-learning)
from 9am till 4pm	from 9am till 4pm	8am till 2 pm, depending on boat schedule