The PADI Advanced Training Academy: Your Next Step

If you've ever finished your Open Water course, pinned your certification card to the fridge, and then wondered "what now?" you're exactly who the Advanced Training Academy was built for. It's the bridge between being a newly qualified diver and being a genuinely capable one, and every December we see a surge of people booking it, either as a gift for someone else or as a New Year present to themselves. With Christmas gift vouchers now available at our Reading academy, there's never been a better moment to look at what this program actually involves and why it matters so much for your progression as a diver.

What Is the Advanced Training Academy?

The Advanced Training Academy is our structured route through the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course and beyond, designed specifically for divers who want more than a single weekend of adventure dives. Rather than treating Advanced Open Water as a box-ticking exercise, we build it into a proper academy experience with focused coaching, a sensible mix of dives, and a clear view of where you go next. It sits within our wider Professional Academy pathway, which means the instructors running it are the same people developing future dive professionals, so the coaching standard is genuinely high from day one.

You'll complete five adventure dives during the core course, but the Academy wraps extra briefings, skill practice, and mentoring around those dives so you leave with real competence, not just a certification card. It's the difference between having done a deep dive once and actually understanding how to plan and execute one safely and confidently in the future.

Who Is It For?

This course suits two main groups. The first is divers fresh off their Open Water certification who want to consolidate their skills quickly while everything is still fresh. The second, and increasingly common in our Reading academy, is divers who qualified years ago, have maybe done a handful of holiday dives since, and want a structured refresh alongside genuine skill development rather than just another guided reef dive.

We also see a good number of people book the Academy as a stepping stone toward something bigger, whether that's technical diving, underwater photography, or eventually training as a Divemaster or Instructor through our Professional Academy. If any part of you is curious about where diving could take you long-term, this is the point where that path starts to become visible.

Prerequisites and What You'll Need Before You Start

You need to hold a PADI (or recognised equivalent) Open Water Diver certification, and be at least twelve years old, with a Junior Advanced Open Water award available for younger divers. There's no minimum number of logged dives required, which surprises some people, though we always recommend getting a couple of dives in beforehand if it's been a while since your last one.

Medically, you'll complete the standard diver medical questionnaire, and if you answer yes to any of the relevant questions we'll ask you to get sign-off from a doctor before you get in the water. Equipment-wise, everything can be hired from us for the duration of the course, though if you're planning to dive regularly it's worth talking to our team about which bits of kit are worth owning early on.

What a Typical Session Looks Like

Morning: Theory and Briefing

Sessions usually start with a focused briefing on the dive you're about to do, whether that's the mandatory Deep Dive, the Underwater Navigation dive, or one of the elective adventure dives like Wreck, Drift, or Peak Performance Buoyancy. Rather than a generic run-through, our instructors tailor the briefing to what you specifically need to work on, based on how your previous dives have gone.

In the Water

Each adventure dive has clear objectives, and your instructor is watching closely for the things that matter, trim, air consumption, situational awareness, and how calmly you handle anything unexpected. Debriefs happen straight after, while everything is fresh, so feedback actually sticks rather than getting lost between sessions.

Between Dives

Surface intervals are used properly rather than just sat out. We talk through what went well, what to adjust, and how each dive connects to the bigger picture of your development as a diver. It's this coaching layer, more than the dives themselves, that separates the Academy from simply doing five adventure dives back to back.

What You'll Actually Learn

Beyond the specific skills tied to each adventure dive, such as compass navigation, controlled descents to depth, or managing a current, the Academy builds three things that matter for every future dive you'll ever do: better buoyancy control, sharper situational awareness, and genuine confidence in your own decision-making underwater. Divers consistently tell us this is the course where diving stopped feeling like a series of instructions to follow and started feeling like something they actually understood.

You'll also get an honest introduction to deeper diving, down to a maximum of thirty metres, under close supervision, which demystifies depth in a way that reading about it never quite manages. Most divers who've completed the Academy describe a genuine shift in how relaxed and capable they feel on subsequent dives, even ones far less structured than their training dives.

Common Questions Before You Book

How long does it take?

Most divers complete the core five dives over a single weekend, though we also run it across weekday evenings and a weekend for people who prefer to spread it out. The full Academy experience, with the additional coaching and mentoring built in, typically runs over two to three sessions.

Is it physically demanding?

Not especially. If you were comfortable on your Open Water course, you'll be comfortable here. The deep dive is the most physically noticeable element simply because of the increased gas density at depth, but your instructor manages the pace carefully and there's no rush.

What happens after I finish?

Most divers move on to specialty courses that match their interests, whether that's Wreck, Nitrox, or Digital Underwater Photography, and a good number go on to Rescue Diver, which is the next real milestone toward professional-level training. Our team will talk you through the options that suit where you want your diving to go.

Why It's Worth Doing, Especially Right Now

Winter is, somewhat counterintuitively, one of the best times to do this course. UK visibility in our local training sites often improves once the summer algae bloom has settled, and pool and confined water sessions mean weather is rarely a barrier. It's also a genuinely thoughtful gift, several of our Christmas voucher purchases each December go toward exactly this course, bought by partners, parents, and friends who've watched someone fall in love with diving and want to help them go further with it.

If you're setting a resolution to actually use your certification more in the coming year rather than let it gather dust, this is the single course most likely to make that happen, because it rebuilds your confidence from the ground up.

How It Fits Into a Bigger Pathway

The Advanced Training Academy isn't a dead end, it's a junction. From here divers typically branch toward Rescue Diver and then Divemaster if professional-level diving appeals, toward our Tec Academy if technical diving catches their interest, or simply toward a long, happy life of well-planned, well-executed recreational diving. Whichever direction you take, the skills built here are the foundation everything else sits on.

Ready to take the next step, or buy it as a gift this Christmas? Book onto the Advanced Training Academy or get in touch to ask about vouchers, we're at Bellman Court, Great Knollys Street, Reading, or call +44 (0) 118 9761 729.