By Dorota Czerny

All photos courtesy of GUE

In this conversation, Dorota Czerny and Jarrod Jablonski discuss the thinking behind GUE’s Performance Diver course and its place in today’s diving education. They reflect on why many divers struggle most with foundational skills, how stability and buoyancy shape everything underwater, and why investing in the basics is often the most challenging and rewarding step in a diver’s development. The discussion also addresses common misconceptions and explains how Performance Diver supports confident progression without compromising standards.

For nearly 20 years, I’ve taught divers through GUE Fundamentals, and one theme has remained remarkably consistent: Many people describe it as a turning point. Not because it teaches secret skills, but because it brings attention back to what actually makes diving feel calm, controlled, and reliable.

For a long time, the end of a class looked familiar in the best way: Divers felt immense pride. They could feel the difference—they were more stable, calmer, and in control—and they felt that spark of curiosity about what else might now be possible. And yes, there was often tiredness too, sometimes real fatigue, because building control in the water demands focus and repetition. But the goal has never been to chase exhaustion or treat intensity as proof. The goal is performance that lasts, because it rests on foundations that hold up in real conditions.

Over the last few years, though, I started hearing a different kind of feedback alongside the satisfaction: “This was transformational… but I wish I’d had more time to make the foundations even stronger before adding everything else.”

That comment stayed with me—not because Fundamentals is too hard, but because it revealed something important about how divers are arriving at training today—and what they need from it.

What changed: not the need for skills, but the pathway

The core truth hasn’t changed. Comfort and confidence underwater aren’t built on advanced procedures. They’re built on stability—your ability to hold position, manage buoyancy precisely, stay aware, and communicate clearly while still feeling composed. If you can’t be stable, calm, and present in the water, everything more complex becomes harder than it needs to be.

“What has changed is the typical starting point.”

When the Fundamentals course was designed years ago, many participants were already very experienced and were actively seeking a direct path into projects and higher-level training within Global Underwater Explorers. They were willing to take on a densely packed course because they had more time in the water, and because “pushing through” a demanding schedule was simply how training was often approached.

Today, many divers arrive differently. They do their homework, they’re highly motivated, and they want a clear path, but they may not have the same amount of in-water experience before stepping into a compressed, skills-heavy experience. That reality shows up fast: trim, propulsion, awareness, teamwork, and communication are not “nice-to-haves.” They are the must-have base layer that turns future dives—whether recreational adventures or technical goals—into something realistic and repeatable.

And when that foundation needs more time, it isn’t a weakness. It’s just how skill development works.

Why Fundamentals can feel “too packed” and why that matters

GUE Fundamentals covers a lot. It develops positioning, buoyancy control, propulsion, and team diving with clear communication, then it layers in underwater skills that progress from simple to complex, alongside the knowledge and procedures needed to support all of it. It’s a powerful course, and it can also be a very compressed and intense experience.

When a course becomes so overloaded that it leaves divers exhausted, we have to ask an honest question: Are we maximizing learning, or maximizing intensity?

“Training isn’t measured by how tired someone is at the end of the day. It’s measured by what a diver can reliably do afterward.”

Some divers thrive at that intense pace. Others feel overwhelmed to the point that learning slows down. That doesn’t mean they’re not cut out for it. It often means the foundation needs more time and clearer space to develop before additional complexity is layered on.

The purpose of the GUE Performance Diver Course

It is not a “lighter” version of Fundamentals, and it isn’t a way to avoid demanding standards. It is designed around a simple idea: Some divers need a focused space to build foundations properly before adding more complex skills.

For that reason, the GUE Performance Diver course concentrates on the elements that create true control in the water. The course prioritizes buoyancy control and understanding what drives it; stable body positioning and comfort maintaining it; propulsion fundamentals and efficient movement; awareness and communication; and the early habits of teamwork. It also introduces GUE’s equipment approach and a handful of basic procedures so divers understand not only what the configuration is, but also why it supports stability, awareness, and team effectiveness.

Just as importantly, Performance Diver is supported by adaptive online learning (GUE Mastery Learning™), so much of the core theory is completed before in-person training. That shift changes what happens during class time. The instructor becomes less a source of information and more a source of inspiration, like a coach—someone who can observe closely, diagnose what’s happening, and help each diver build a repeatable plan for improvement. It’s not about doing less; it’s about removing unnecessary overload so the right work can be done where students actually learn to dive: in the water.

“Isn’t shortening training lowering quality?”

It’s a fair question, because in many industries “shorter” can mean “simpler,” and “simpler” can mean “less rigorous.” But that assumption doesn’t hold when the goal is skill acquisition.

“Foundational skills are hard because they require control over your body and your attention—not just knowledge.”

You can intellectually understand buoyancy on the surface, but you cannot truly develop buoyancy, stability, and awareness without meaningful time in the water and deliberate practice after the course.

Performance Diver protects the time and focus needed for that foundation, and then empowers divers to take ownership of their development through practice between courses. In other words, it supports divers in aiming for mastery of these skills before they step into more advanced training. This is simply a structure that gives foundational skills the time they actually require, and it reduces the risk of divers carrying “good enough” basics into advanced environments where gaps become limiting, inefficient, or unsafe.

Who Performance Diver is for

The Performance Diver course is designed for divers who want to improve in-water stability, confidence, and control, and who are curious about the mindset and training approach behind GUE. It’s for divers who want a clear pathway forward but don’t yet feel ready for the full scope and pace of Fundamentals. It’s also, like all GUE classes, for divers who like to understand what they’re doing, why it matters, and how to get better—because durable improvement is rarely built on imitation alone.

For divers coming from other agencies, it can be a particularly useful entry point because it creates a solid baseline before more demanding task loading begins—that moment when they are asked to hold position, stay aware, communicate, and execute new procedures at the same time. For others, it is simply the right place to begin: a course that builds capability without rushing the process.

How it fits into the bigger pathway

At GUE, the goal isn’t to produce divers who can perform a skill during a class. The goal is to develop divers who can perform reliably in real-world environments and keep improving.

That becomes especially important as divers move into higher-level training such as cave, technical, or rebreather programs. In those settings, it isn’t enough to just know the procedures. If foundational skills are not strong, everything becomes harder: Stress increases, awareness narrows, and decision-making suffers. Advanced training becomes less productive and less efficient. Instead of a constructive challenge, some divers get overwhelmed to the point that they are no longer learning—they’re simply getting through the dive. That isn’t a character issue. It’s a signal that the foundation needs more attention.

As training progresses, the instructor’s role also changes. At more advanced levels, the instructor increasingly becomes a mentor, because the goal is not to script every scenario but to develop divers who can think, adapt, and solve problems in situations nobody can fully predict. That development starts with foundations, and Performance Diver is one way we ensure those foundations are built deliberately.

Mastery and performance: what we’re really aiming for

Dive classes can be mentally and physically exhausting, often with long days spent away from home. But GUE classes are not about wearing students down; they’re about developing performance that lasts by instilling a mastery-learning mindset. That is, divers taking responsibility for their own learning, practicing with intention, and continuing to improve after the instructor is no longer next to them.

“Performance is the snapshot. Mastery is the direction of travel.”

And that direction—learning how to learn, and learning how to improve—is one of the most important things we aim to give divers in every GUE class.

---

Enjoyed this read? Here are more stories that tie into it.

DIVE DEEPER

InDEPTH : Excellence In Performance: Introducing GUE’s New Performance Diver Course, by Ulrik Juul Christensen, Jennifer Thomson, & Dorota Czerny, (2024) 

InDEPTH : Twenty-five Years in the Pursuit of Excellence – The Evolution and Future of GUE, by Jarrod Jablonski, (2023) 

InDEPTH : Anatomy of a Fundamentals Class, by Guy Shockey, (2021) 

InDEPTH : The GUE Pre-dive Sequence, by Dimitris Fifis, (2020) 

InDEPTH : Never Too Late: Veteran Sports Diver Tackles GUE Fundamentals, by Sue Crowe, (2020) 

InDEPTH : Single-Tank Diving Can Be Fun (And Challenging) Even for a Tekkie, by Liz Tribe, (2019) 

---

Dorota Czerny serves as Executive Vice President of Global Underwater Explorers and is a member of its Board of Directors, focusing on organizational development, education strategy, and strengthening the instructor development pipeline. A dive educator with decades in the industry, she is also an Instructor Evaluator and has served as an Instructor Training Program Director, contributing to how GUE coaches, assesses, and develops divers over time. Beyond training, Dorota is involved with Phreatic Organization, supporting exploration and science-driven initiatives focused on groundwater resources and marine caves, with an emphasis on protection and conservation of these fragile environments. Her work consistently emphasizes performance that lasts—built on fundamentals, reflective practice, and learner ownership.