Skills Development Workshops

---

Mastery of basic dive skills is essential for all divers at every level.

These include (but are not limited to): Equipment identification, selection, inspection, assembly, and functional testing; basic dive planning; buoyancy and good finning techniques; proper breathing; simple underwater navigation; effective underwater communication; gas management; basic emergency procedures; SMB and reel usage; and more.

If you haven't mastered basic skills, you'll find it increasingly difficult to manage learning new skills with each progressive course. Before long, you'll be over your head, unable to keep up.

This workshop is designed to focus on developing a diver's core basic diving skills. Participants are assessed for weak areas, each area of focus is taught and demonstrated, and participants are strongly encouraged to take over more aspects with each dive. Skill development is progressive, moving from simple to complex, and students are expected to improve through performance.

The minimum age for this workshop is:

• 15 years old with parental consent, a signed waiver, and an interview by staff, or
• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisite for this workshop is:

• OWSD certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.

Ever see a good diver resting, motionless in the blue, not moving but hovering, and then move effortlessly in the water, and think to yourself, "How can I do THAT?"

Pinnacle Diving Company teaches ALL divers from their Open Water course and up these skills, but "mastery" takes time, careful guidance, and dedicated practice.

And that is exactly what this workshop is all about.

Proper buoyancy, trim, and finning has more of an effect on your body and your dive than most people realize. Good buoyancy, trim, and finning reduces stress on the body, making it easier to move in the water, which lowers the body's demand for oxygen (and its need to remove CO2), lowering your heart rate, which lowers your respiratory rate, meaning you breath less gas and your dive becomes longer and more enjoyable. Additionally, breathing less means you take on less inert gas load, lowering your risk of DCS development as a result, and you'll feel less "tired" after the dive is over too.

All this just from maintaining proper neutral buoyancy, good trim, and using good finning techniques.

This is an entire workshop specifically dedicated to mastering buoyancy, trim, and proper finning techniques.

Areas of focus will include: Basic anatomy; respiration; ideal breathing; self-awareness (twitching and movement); center of gravity, and weight and moment; equipment configuration; minimum weighting; use of a BC / drysuit (optional); fin selection, musculoskeletal mechanics, and finning techniques, to include proper flutter kicks, modified flutter kicks, frog kicks, modified frog kicks, helicopter turns, back finning, and precision in movement using fins.

The minimum age for this workshop is:

• 15 years old with parental consent, a signed waiver, and an interview by staff, or
• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisite for this workshop is:

• OWSD certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.

Diving deep safely requires an advanced understanding of physics and physiology, gas management techniques, careful planning, a conservative mentality, and the ability to stick to a plan. Depth can be dangerous for the daring, overconfident, and undertrained, and this workshop will provide those tools from a Technical Diving perspective.

In this workshop, we will provide divers with a deeper understanding of the physics involved with diving deeper, the associated dangers, and teach divers how to properly plan and execute deep dives using proper gas management techniques and technical profiling under recreational parameters.

You didn't learn THIS in your "Advanced Open Water course" unless you took your Advanced course from us!

The minimum age for this workshop is:

• 15 years old with parental consent, a signed waiver, and an interview by staff, or
• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisite for this workshop is:

• AOWSD certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.

Unless you took your Advanced Open Water course from Pinnacle Diving Company, the vast majority of divers out there complete a "square" and/or a "triangle" pattern in their AOWSD course, and get their "navigation" block checked off the list... Yet completing a square or triangle pattern underwater does NOT actually teach anyone how to truly "navigate". Instead, it teaches you how to make 3 or 4 turns, and unfortunately, most divers walk away just as lost, still unable to find a seashell in the sand...

PDC takes a completely different approach, and our AOWSD students must complete an underwater "Star Course" (anyone who's ever served in the military and gone through Selection or been required to complete Land Nav knows what this is), and as such, must actually LEARN "how" to navigate underwater to complete this requirement.

And that's what this workshop is all about.

In this workshop, students will learn, practice, and perfect the use of an underwater compass, recap essential navigation knowledge, covering both dead reckoning and terrain association, and put those skills to practice, in order to complete our underwater Star Course, both during the day and at night (limited visibility).

The minimum age for this workshop is:

• 15 years old with parental consent, a signed waiver, and an interview by staff, or
• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisite for this workshop is:

• AOWSD certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.

Sidemount diving offers increased stability, safety, capabilities, options to emergencies, increased bottom times, and much, much more... However, sidemount also brings with it increased equipment loads, increased equipment complexity, increased dive planning and gas management complexity, and the potential for running into some dangers--such as exceeding limitations...

Many divers learn to sidemount for the pros, but their training is too quick or not thorough enough to iron out all the cons, leaving them with poorly configured equipment, hanging or floating cylinders, incorrectly routed hoses, bad trim, and minimally-developed skills.

That's exactly why this workshop exists.

The Sidemount Workshop will bring it back to basics with harness adjustments, gear configurations, equipment manipulation in the water, and proper action sequencing and timing, before moving on to perfecting buoyancy, breathing, trim, and finning, and finally developing a deeper understanding of CG, Weight and Moment, emergency procedures, and human factors that affect us all while diving.

The minimum age for this course is:

• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisites for this course are:

• Sidemount Certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.

A "good" Drysuit Diver Course should provide training and education on the use of drysuits, to include types, features, fit, function, thermal protection options, controls, buoyancy characteristics, and be heavily focused on emergency procedures.

However, to perfect the use of a drysuit is more nuanced a skill that takes time to develop.

This workshop is dedicated to mentorship of drysuit skills development, to include trim attitude, neutral buoyancy, equipment manipulation, and propulsion techniques, allowing participants time in the water to perfect suit use and management.

The minimum age for this workshop is:

• 15 years old with parental consent, a signed waiver, and an interview by staff, or
• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisite for this workshop is:

• Drysuit Certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.

Most divers only practice Search and Recovery once... During their Advanced Course. After that, this skill degrades quickly until it's completely lost.

This workshop is designed to reintroduce certified divers to Search and Recovery procedures, and covers planning considerations, navigation, limited visibility conditions, search methodologies and patterns, problem solving and computations, rigging, and light salvage and recovery of items underwater as practical skills.

The minimum age for this workshop is:

• 15 years old with parental consent, a signed waiver, and an interview by staff, or
• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisite for this workshop is:

• AOWSD certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.

Diving at altitude can be extremely dangerous for the untrained sea-level diver, and even for the trained Altitude Diver, it is a perishable skill.

This workshop is designed to recap the required knowledge for altitude diving, and improve the skills of trained altitude divers, while conducting dives at altitudes at or above 300m (1,000ft) above sea level (ASL).

The minimum age for this workshop is:

• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisite for this workshop is:

• Altitude Certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.

Every diver learns how to "Plan their dive, then dive their plan", but not all dive plans are well-developed or well-thought out. In fact, most divers make loosely based plans, with minimum considerations, largely based on assumptions. Further, most divers then go dive and don't even stick together, immediately violating the plan.

Now... We're NOT saying ALL dives should be detailed and thorough, or even strictly adhered to. That would just sap all the fun out of much of our diving, now wouldn't it? But we are saying, that with increased risk and increased complexity, proper dive planing must be effective, and being able to dive as a team becomes essential.

In this workshop, participants will learn a technical approach to dive planning, be introduced to the SORD-TGS/RECS planning model, participate in AAR's, and learn team diving and communication aspects to dive operations.

The minimum age for this workshop is:

• 15 years old with parental consent, a signed waiver, and an interview by staff, or
• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisite for this workshop is:

• OWSD certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.

Every diver at every level should know, understand, and practice their Emergency Procedures. Yet the reality is, the vast majority rarely if ever do.

Emergency procedures vary depending on level of training, and this workshop is intended to focus on procedure identification and correct response by use of detailed discussion, surface practice, and in-water reaction drills, based on the participants certification level.

The minimum age for this workshop is:

• 15 years old with parental consent, a signed waiver, and an interview by staff, or
• 18 years or older.

The minimum prerequisite for this workshop is:

• OWSD certified.

Participants may rent some equipment for locally conducted workshops, however, ideally all participants should supply their own equipment, and all equipment must meet safety requirements. If a participant needs one or more specific equipment items, they must acquire them before the first dive day of the workshop. PDC is able to aid students in acquiring their own equipment at any time. Please visit the DIVE GEAR page to inquire.