Education
Anatomy of a Fundamentals Class
GUE Instructor Examiner Guy Shockey explains the thought and details that goes into GUE’s most popular course, Fundamentals, aka “Fundies,” which has been taken by numerous industry luminaries. Why all the fanfare? Shockey characterizes the magic as “simple things done precisely!”
By Guy Shockey
Header image by Julian Mühlenhaus.
Divers are attracted to GUE training for a variety of reasons, some of which may include a desire to increase their level of comfort and safety in the water and continue their diving education with world class instructors. Some divers might be experiencing dissatisfaction with their previous training, or they might simply want to begin their training in technical or cave diving. The reasons are as varied as the individuals. For most divers who are already open-water certified, the first step in the GUE training ladder is the GUE Fundamentals course. So, let’s talk about what a Fundamentals course is, what you should expect, and what actually happens in the class.
Fundamentals is a four-day course that includes a minimum of 30 hours of instruction. The course consists of both academic class work, out-of-water drills, and instruction in the water. You will most likely also participate in a pool session as well, where you will be expected to complete your swim test and your breath-hold swim test.
During your classroom work, you will cover several subjects including but not limited to buoyancy and trim, streamlining and equipment configuration, propulsion techniques, situational awareness, communication, breathing gas overview and dive planning, and gas management. Many of these subjects will be familiar to you from previous diving courses, but in the case of Fundamentals course, you should expect a superior standard of instruction compared to what you have received previously. Note also that the diving portion of the class is conducted using nitrox 32, GUE’s basic standard breathing gas. If you are not already certified to dive nitrox, you will also come away with a nitrox certification.
One of the central tenants of GUE instruction is the importance of the team in diving. Consequently, your course will begin with an introduction of all your teammates as well as your GUE instructor. GUE instructors are experienced divers and educators and truly enjoy sharing their experiences with their students. In many cases, you may not be familiar with your course mates, and this introduction serves to begin the team-building process. Your instructor will also take this opportunity to spend some time introducing GUE as an agency.
Simple Things Done Precisely
It has been said that the GUE Fundamentals instruction can be best summarized as “simple things done precisely.” While nothing about Fundamentals is complicated, you will still be expected to achieve a particular objective standard of performance before you earn a passing grade in this class.
This objective performance standard is spelled out clearly in GUE Standards. Even though your instructor will go over this with you very thoroughly at the beginning of your class, you should review it for yourself on the GUE website. For the majority of divers, this will be the first time in their diving education that they will have been exposed to an objective performance standard. There is no subjectivity here: you either meet the performance standard or you don’t.
On this basis, your instructor will then decide if you have met the performance standard criteria for:
a) Receiving a Technical pass, the standards of which are quite high, and which is necessary for you to continue your GUE training in either technical or cave diving
b) Achieving a Recreational pass for those who plan to continue rec diving
c) Receiving a Provisional pass, requiring that you practice and return later for re-evaluation
d) Failing the class
As was mentioned, the performance criteria are not complicated in and of themselves. For example, maintaining neutral buoyancy throughout the water column is not a difficult task, but you will be expected to maintain a “buoyancy window” that is either 1 m/3 ft or 1.5 m/5 ft depending on whether you are looking for a “Tech” pass or a “Rec” pass.
You will be expected to demonstrate advanced propulsion techniques such as the frog kick, the modified frog kick, the flutter kick, the modified flutter kick, and the back kick. Again, these propulsion techniques are not difficult, but they will require some practice. You will also be expected to maintain a certain standard of “trim” in the water. Trim refers to your ability to demonstrate a horizontal attitude in the water. You will also need to demonstrate a series of drills in the water while maintaining buoyancy and trim. This sounds simple, but it is probably the most difficult part of the course since a little task loading can complicate an otherwise reasonable demonstration of buoyancy and trim.
Creating Thinking Divers
GUE students are expected to come to GUE classes with the required equipment as specified in the course outline. During the first part of your class, your instructor will go over all your diving gear thoroughly, will provide a critical review of your equipment, and will offer suggestions on its appropriateness and fit.
That’s when you can start asking questions: GUE divers are thinking divers and do not adopt a particular piece of equipment or gear configuration for a less-than-optimal reason. If you want to know the “why” of something, ask. There are no “because” answers in GUE: each question has probably been addressed somewhere by someone, and if your instructor does not have a logical and concise answer, they will find it for you.
The rest of your course will consist of both classroom lectures as well as open-water diving, where you will practice and demonstrate your skills. These water sessions will be somewhat different than what you may have experienced in your previous diving training. This is not a case of “follow-me” diving but hands-on education where you are expected to organize, lead, and run your own dives.
Getting Wet
A team captain will be appointed for each dive, and they will be expected to lead the divers in the water as much as a sports team captain marshals the players on the field. This role will be rotated throughout the team, and everyone will get multiple opportunities to lead dives. Your instructor will evaluate your progress and provide you with meaningful feedback and concrete suggestions.
This feedback will also be supplemented by your instructor’s secret weapon: video review. Each dive session will be recorded on video to assist in the debriefing. The power of a video replay is extremely effective! You will be able to see, in glorious HD, how you are progressing. It takes the subjectivity completely out of the equation and provides useful information for your instructor to assist in helping you to correct mistakes as well as allowing you to reinforce existing good skills.
As mentioned, you will be expected to complete your swim test and your breath-hold swim test. Ironically the swim test seems to be one of the most dreaded parts of the course, yet it is also the part of the course which you can easily prepare for and practice beforehand!
Consider that, as a diver, you are in open water, and the only thing keeping you from drowning is your life support equipment or your ability to float or swim. It only stands to reason that you would be able to demonstrate a moderate ability to swim! If you feel this may be a problem, I would strongly suggest taking a few lessons beforehand and work on your swim technique.
You should expect to spend a lot of time in the water and need to make sure your exposure protection is sufficient. Make no mistake: this course is intense and comes fast and furious. Your instructor will allow as much time as possible for you to practice or repeat your skills during the course, but the course does have an expiration date. That said, there are several things you can do to make the most of your time in the water.
Be Prepared
To recap, it’s important to come to class prepared by having done all the required reading and pre-class exercises. You and your teammates are investing a good deal of time and money in this training, and it is not fair to expect the rest of the class to receive less value for their training because you did not do the preparatory work. Also, keep in mind that the course is intense and often goes into the evening. You will be tired and perhaps want to skip the required reading. Don’t make that mistake. None of your previous training will make up for not being prepared.
Next, if you are unsure about the equipment requirements, contact your instructor for advice. These requirements are very specific and are there for your benefit. You will understand why once you start the course. If you are fortunate to have the opportunity to dive or socialize with GUE trained divers, ask them about their gear arrangement. Moreover, if you decide to take the class in double cylinders, get some experience with them beforehand. A Fundamentals class is not the place to experiment for the first time with a new drysuit or a new set of doubles. Don’t add to your task loading by having to manage new equipment.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, find some GUE divers in your area and dive with them. They can be a useful resource regarding your upcoming course. Mentorship is a very important part of GUE diving, and I don’t know a single GUE diver who wouldn’t be willing to help a newbie with advice, and most likely be inclined to jump in the water to help with skill development.
GUE Fundamentals is all about simple things done precisely. Students consistently come away from the class feeling that they received good value for their dollar. Remember, when beginning a journey, the knowledge of where you want to go is essential. Also necessary is an understanding of where you are when you begin your journey. At the completion of the GUE Fundamentals course, you will have a very clear picture of where you are in terms of your diving. The nature of the course provides everyone with an objective, standardized frame of reference.
You will also have a very clear picture of where you are in relation to the baseline for diving competency. Remember that it doesn’t matter where you are in this learning curve so much as it matters that you know where you are. Many problems and incidents in diving come from unprepared divers encountering unexpected circumstances. The real value of the Fundamentals class is that it will show you exactly where you are on that learning curve, and it will substantially move you along it in just four days!
Dive Deeper:
InDepth: Back to Fundamentals: An Introduction to GUE’s Most Popular Diving Course by Rich Walker
InDepth: Never Too Late: Veteran Sports Diver Tackles GUE Fundamentals by Sue Crowe
GUE: GUE Diver Training
Guy Shockey is a GUE instructor and trainer who is actively involved in mentoring the next generation of GUE divers. He started diving in 1982 in a cold mountain lake in Alberta, Canada. Since then he has logged somewhere close to 8,000 dives in most of the oceans of the world. He is a passionate technical diver with a particular interest in deeper ocean wreck diving. He is a former military officer and professional hunter with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science. He is also an entrepreneur with several successful startup companies to his credit.
Community
I Trained “Doc Deep”
Numerous divers have died trying to break scuba depth records over the years, and the losses continue. Their deaths not only impact their families, friends and their support teams, but the diving community as a whole, as technical diving instructor Jon Kieren knows first hand. He was Guy Garman’s aka “Doc Deep,” first tech instructor and friend, who ultimately tried to dissuade Doc from attempting his 2015 dive to 365m/1198 ft, which proved fatal. Here is his story.
by Jon Kieren
As I look back at my career so far, there are plenty of things I wish had done differently, students I know I should not have passed, and divers I continue to worry about. It’s all a part of building experience as an instructor, but there’s one that will haunt me forever.
Almost eight years ago, I got a text message that I knew was inevitable. I had been having nightmares about it for years, including just the night before. I had prepared myself the best I could, but it’s still one of the worst things a dive instructor can experience.
“Guy didn’t come back”
For several years prior, I fought to stop the monster I believed I helped create. A constant knot of regret, fear, and guilt lived in the pit of my stomach. When that text finally came, sad as it was, I knew I would no longer have to wait anxiously for the foreseeable bad news.
Throughout my career as a technical instructor, the topic of depth records and Guy Garman’s name has come up frequently. It’s always been a tough discussion for me to navigate. Wanting so badly to defend the man who was like family to me, but too embarrassed and guilt-ridden to discuss it. I bit my tongue as armchair quarterbacks and keyboard divers ranted about how stupid he and his whole team were with little to no knowledge about him as a person.
Thankfully, after a few years, those discussions slowed down a bit, and I thought the days of depth records were finally gone. But, with recent record attempts reigniting the same discussions, I thought it might be time to finally share what I know about Doc Deep and how he came to perish at the end of that line 365 m/1200 ft below the surface.
Like anyone, Guy had his flaws. However, most of them were due to his incessant need to be the best at whatever he was doing at that moment. He led a truly extraordinary and passionate life, which ended as extraordinarily as it began.
He grew up in the Amazon jungles of Peru with the Aguaruna natives where he was nicknamed “Hummingbird” because of his constant buzzing about and his need to be involved in and understand everything. I remember listening to his stories of hunting crocodiles as a young boy with his native brothers, and his pet jaguar that would walk him to school and guard his bedroom at night. In my eyes he was truly a Renaissance man—marathon runner, alpine climber, and yet a physician in osteoplasty and head, neck and facial plastic surgeon.
Guy was certainly no stranger to hard work, sacrifice, danger, or pain. As a young man, I often turned for support and advice to this truly remarkable person who became one of my dearest friends. It’s unfortunate that most of what seems to be remembered about him is his lack of diving experience and fatally flawed dedication to accomplishing something he believed was important.
I’ll never defend his pursuit. In fact, I furiously opposed it for years, eventually needing to sever my relationship with him and the technical diving community in St. Croix, USVI, that I had built with such optimism and pride. However, I do believe it’s important to share what I know about how his fateful dive came to be so we can openly discuss the failures of the system that created this “monster” and try to put an end to these foolish pursuits.
One of the biggest criticisms (rightfully) was his lack of experience. But, to explain how he got where he was with so little experience, it’s important to understand the culture he grew up in. And this is where the weight of guilt sits heavily on my shoulders.
The Lure of Technical Diving
I found my passion for technical diving out of boredom, to be honest. Swimming for several years along the shallow reefs on top of the dramatic walls of St. Croix as an open water instructor, I was getting pretty burned out from the repetitive lifestyle and from seeing the same fish every day. So, as many 25-year-olds do when they’re bored, I started to do some pretty stupid stuff, such as single tank bounce dives on air to 75 m/250 ft … until I almost died.
After that, I decided to get the fastest and cheapest technical training I could. I booked a flight to Honduras, and a few weeks later I was a hotshot technical diver. Heading back to St. Croix with no teammates, I did even more stupid stuff. At least this time I had doubles and deco gas with me, but I quickly realized I needed some teammates and maybe a squirt or two of helium. So back to Honduras I went, and another few weeks later, I was a trimix instructor. With less than a year of technical diving experience and full support from my instructor trainer, and within training agency standards, I went to 90 m/300 ft for the third time ever with students in tow. Because the agency signed off on my instructor ratings, I had no reason to believe I didn’t have the experience or know-how to be doing what I was doing. They said I could, so I had a blind and naive confidence that what I was doing was OK.
Doc Deep had just moved to St. Croix and started diving when I was getting the tech community going. Just after finishing his advanced open water course, he was wandering around our shop checking our gear when he saw the banner on the wall advertising us as a technical training facility. When he asked the shop staff about it, they gave him my number and we set up a time to chat.
Now, keep in mind, I was like 26 years old and thought I knew everything there was to know about diving. A beast inside me had awoken, and I felt like I NEEDED to go as deep as possible as much as possible. Then Dr. Guy Garman pulled up in his Mercedes to talk about technical training.
Guy seemed incredibly sharp, and excited about technical diving. Plus, money seemed to be no object. So, I signed him up for the third round of tech courses that I had ever taught. I made sure he met all of the minimum prerequisites and course requirements and, within a few weeks, he was a trimix diver. When we started talking about depth records, Nuno Gomes held the record at the time and as an invincible 26-year-old, I thought, “If he can do it, why can’t we?”
We dove a lot, and I taught a bunch of courses trying to build a team of local divers to help us explore deeper and deeper down the walls of our small Caribbean island. Guy supplied the helium. My partner at the time was my primary teammate, and we were then doing dives in the 120 m/400 ft range, with Guy acting as a support diver (and financier) for most of it. But after a bit, I could sense his frustration growing. It was clear he was not happy in a supporting role, and his ego was screaming that HE needed to be the one to dive the deepest.
I clearly remember one boat ride out for some 120 m/400 ft+ dive where he was acting like a grump. As I was about to descend, I told him not to worry, that he’d be next, and he shot me a look that made me realize our relationship was no longer an equitable one. That dive went OK, but it told me that I needed to think about the amount of resources involved, as well as the risk to us and the support divers. Perhaps it wasn’t worth it just to see a big number on a dive computer. After some soul searching, my dive partner and I agreed that we needed to change the way we pursued technical and deep diving, and leave the pursuit of “depth just because” behind us. Guy didn’t like that.
Over the next few months, we began focusing on longer duration dives at shallower depths as opposed to uber deep dives, and my partner and I built up some experience on our new rebreathers. Guy, however, distanced himself from us and started talking about how he wanted to be the deepest diver with our other teammates.
Around this time, I got offered a job in South Florida that I just couldn’t refuse, so I took it. I left a couple of months later. Before I went, I tried to have conversations with him and our other friends on the island about how I thought his pursuits were reckless with almost nothing to gain. But in the end, I just had to leave it at that and try to put it out of my mind as I created both physical and emotional distance from the whole situation.
The Drive For Depth
Over the next year, a couple of new tech instructors arrived on the island filling the void I had left. Eager to make a name for themselves, they quickly became wrapped up in Guy’s pursuits. I think this is where things really began to take a turn for the worse. The teammates who still remained on the island were very close with Guy, but they were reluctant to support him. However, with the newcomers’ encouragement, Guy continued to aggressively drive forward, earning the nickname “Doc Deep”.
They started going deep. Really deep: 152 m/500 ft, 183 m/600 ft, 244 m/800 ft. On one 600 ft+ dive, one of the new guys got severely bent. Even so, everyone pushed forward, many were convinced Guy was the one to break Nuno’s record. In 2014, Ahmed Gabr reportedly reached a depth of 332 m/1090 ft, and Guy decided to aim for 365 m/1200 ft.
I couldn’t ignore what was happening anymore when I started seeing the social media posts about their plans and hearing the same from the team at events like DEMA and TekDiveUSA. I pleaded with my friends to not support him, knowing full well what would happen if they continued. They insisted if they didn’t help him, he would do it alone. I believed them, and understood the position they were in. So, I implored the training agencies to publicly condemn these pursuits of irresponsible and dangerous record breaking attempts for their own sake, and to warn the professionals involved, but they wouldn’t take a position.
The momentum seemed to be unstoppable at this point; this thing was going to happen no matter what. I said “goodbye” to Guy after a dinner we shared at TekDiveUSA in 2014, with me knowing it would likely be for the last time.
Week after week, the knot in my stomach grew, and then the day came that I had been dreading.
Of course, the news spread quickly through the diving community, bringing extremely harsh criticism to all of those involved in the form of articles, blog posts, and forum rants. It was hard to keep my mouth shut, but I just couldn’t get involved. I was sad, angry, and became quite depressed. Even though, rationally, I couldn’t see how I could have done anything differently, I felt guilty. I wasn’t alone. Guy’s close friends and family were deeply affected. Most stopped technical diving or diving altogether. One drowned himself in rum and is still fighting to come back.
My relationship with these people was fractured. I couldn’t help but be angry even though I knew they were only trying to do the best they could to keep him alive. Others who advertised themselves as deep support specialists continued to offer services to help divers achieve extreme depths. As could have been predicted, accidents happened and people got hurt, but that didn’t seem to stop them. Not until very recently, has the frenetic pursuit of deep water record breaking seemed to slow a bit.
So what went wrong on the dive? It wasn’t anything significant, because it doesn’t take a lot at 365 m/1200 ft. Guy’s family has GoPro footage, but the details haven’t been released to the public, and it isn’t my place to do so. All I can say is that successfully diving that deep—and living to tell about it—is more a matter of luck than skill. If anything goes wrong, it’s almost impossible to recover from; and if someone does succeed, I believe it’s simply because it wasn’t their day to go. What do we learn from these stunts? Nothing. We already know what it takes to put a diver that deep, it’s just not with scuba.
The Aftermath
In Mexico, I questioned a recent depth world record team who asked, “What did we learn?” In their formal presentation, they claimed their reason for not using rebreathers or habitats was that the team didn’t have the knowledge or experience to do so, and gaining that experience would be too expensive and time consuming. They used very low helium content mixes trying to avoid HPNS, but suffered severe narcosis and CO2 issues, making it impossible to manage an entanglement at depth and very nearly resulting in an uncontrolled ascent from an absurd depth that was only stopped by sheer luck. They responded to my “What did we learn” comment by stating that, in the future, they might use more helium and rebreathers. These are all things the vast majority of the technical diving community have understood for over a decade, but they just never thought to ask people who were actively doing extremely big dives almost every weekend.
I recognized a clear similarity in the two teams, a strong reluctance to seek or accept advice from those who were far more knowledgeable and experienced than they. Almost like they thought if they did it all themselves from scratch, that they would find some magic trick nobody had thought of. Or maybe they were just trying to avoid being told that what they were doing was reckless. Either way, one team got lucky, the other did not.
So where do we go from here, knowing that these reckless boundary pushing personalities will always exist? I think we have to encourage training agencies to publicly speak out against depth records and petition Guinness to stop acknowledging them. Most importantly, I think we need to raise the minimum standards for instructors so that only those with a significant amount of real-world dive experience are guiding new technical divers into the world of deep diving, and are doing so responsibly. I absolutely should not have been qualified to teach Guy Garman technical diving. I was at the absolute peak of the Dunning-Kruger effect when we began our relationship, as was he when that fateful dive took place.
As instructors and industry leaders, we need to watch and listen for clues in our students that their motivation might have more to do with record breaking and ego than competent diving and worthwhile exploration, and set them right when and where we can. This is a skill that instructors need to develop. I was too young and too excited about tech diving to see the signs at the time, and suffered the ultimate consequence.
However since working with Guy, I’ve refused to issue certifications, withdrawn students from classes, and severed working and personal relationships when I see individuals unwilling to accept that the limits apply to everyone. It’s a tough discussion to make, but as instructors we need to try to guide students in a responsible way.
This doesn’t mean we need to condemn pushing the limits. Most of us are here because we want to discover what we are really capable of. But mentoring divers to show them what limits can reasonably be pushed, and which ones (like depth records) simply cannot, is important.
Pushing a boundary should really only be tolerated if there is something to learn or discover, in other words, if it’s a risk worth taking. Otherwise we’re just apes beating our chests.
Guy left a huge hole in my heart when that text came in, but I try to use it as a reminder of the impact I have on aspiring divers and the importance of reinforcing a conservative approach to technical and cave diving. While this is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever written, I think it’s important that we speak openly about these types of events so others can learn from them.
See Companion Story: The Risk and Management of Record Chasing by Neal Pollock PhD
Dive Deeper
Wikipedia: Guy Garman
Undercurrent: A Fatal Attempt at a World Record (2015)
Men’s Journal: Prominent scuba diver presumed dead after world-record attempt off St. Croix by Pete Thomas
Scuba Tech Philippines: Guy Garman: World Depth Record Fatality by Andy Davis
Scubaboard: Doc Deep dies during dive.
Others stories by Jon Kieren:
InDEPTH: SUMP POTION #9 by Jon Kieren
InDEPTH: Grokking The FATHOM CCR: My Dive into the Nuts & Bolts with the Inventor by Jon Kieren
Jon Kieren is a cave, technical, and CCR instructor/instructor trainer who has dedicated his 13-year career to improving dive training. As an active TDI/IANTD/NSS-CDS and GUE Instructor and former training director and training advisory panel member for TDI, he has vast experience working with divers and instructors at all levels, but his main professional focus resides in the caves. In his own personal diving, Jon’s true passions are deep, extended range cave dives, as well as working with photographers to bring back images of his favorite places to share with the world.
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