How We Create a Great Training Experience at Midwest School of Diving
Patrick Cosgrove Jun 08, 2026
If you've been thinking about learning to scuba dive, you've probably done a little research — and maybe come away with more questions than answers. What does the training involve? What gear do you need? How long does it take? Is it actually safe?
Those are exactly the right questions to be asking. And after more than 40 years of training divers in Minnesota and beyond, we've gotten pretty good at answering them.
Here's an honest look at how we approach training — and why we think it makes a difference.
It Starts With the Right Foundation
Our Open Water certification course is where most divers begin, and it's designed to do one thing above everything else: build real confidence.
We break the course into three phases, and each one is intentional.
Knowledge first. Before you ever get wet, you'll learn the fundamentals — how pressure works underwater, how to read your gauges, how to breathe and move efficiently, and how to handle the situations that matter most to your safety. Our instructors walk you through everything, and no question is too basic. We'd rather you ask a hundred questions in the classroom than have a single one pop up at 30 feet.
Pool training next. This is where things start to get real. You'll practice your skills in a controlled, shallow-water environment before you're ever asked to apply them in open water. Buoyancy, gear handling, clearing your mask, recovering your regulator — you'll repeat these until they become automatic. Our instructor-to-student ratio is six-to-one, which means you're getting genuine attention and feedback at every session, not just watching from the back of a group.
Open water checkout dives to finish. Your final step is completing your certification dives in a real lake. We train at Square Lake in Stillwater — a beautiful site with excellent visibility and multiple underwater platforms — where your instructors guide you through the skills you've already practiced, now in the environment where you'll actually be diving. When you surface from your last dive, you'll hold a certification recognized at dive sites around the world.
That progression — knowledge, pool, open water — isn't arbitrary. It's how people actually learn. Each phase prepares you for the next, so by the time you're in the open water, nothing feels foreign.
What's Included — And Why It Matters
Let's talk about something that tends to surprise new students.
A lot of dive shops advertise a course price — and then hand you a separate gear rental list once you've signed up. Air tanks, BCDs, wetsuits, weights — it adds up quickly, and by the time you're done, you've paid significantly more than you expected.
We don't do that.
Your Open Water course includes all the essential gear you need: tanks, BCDs, weights, and wetsuits. One flat price, no surprises, no add-ons. When you compare our total cost against what other shops charge once gear rentals are factored in, our students typically save $250 or more.
We've structured it this way because we believe the barrier to diving should be excitement, not cost. If you want to get in the water, we're not going to let a gear rental list be what holds you back.
Where We Train
Part of what makes dive training memorable — and effective — is the environment you train in. We're fortunate to have access to some genuinely excellent dive sites.
Square Lake in Stillwater, MN is our primary open water training site. With visibility ranging from 10 to 25 feet and underwater platforms at multiple depths, it's well-suited for new divers building their skills for the first time.
For advanced training, we move to deeper, more dramatic sites. Lake Ore Be Gone in Minnesota offers visibility up to 50 feet and depths exceeding recreational imits, with sunken attractions including a helicopter, an airplane, and a school bus — the kind of diving that makes you want to plan your next trip the minute you surface. Lake Wazee in Wisconsin is another advanced site with similar depth and visibility.
And if you're interested in traveling for diving, we run group trips as well — liveaboards on Lake Superior and Lake Michigan in the summer, and winter destinations like Grand Cayman, Cozumel, and Fiji.
Beyond Open Water: Where Divers Go Next.
Getting your Open Water certification is a genuine achievement — but for a lot of divers, it's the beginning of a longer journey, not the destination.
Once you're certified, a wide range of specialty and advanced courses opens up, and we offer most of them right here.
Drysuit and nitrox are our most popular specialty courses, and for good reason. A drysuit extends your comfortable diving season well beyond what a wetsuit allows — critical here in Minnesota. Nitrox extends your bottom time and reduces surface intervals, which means more time underwater on every dive.
Ice diving is something we're especially proud of. We run some of the most respected ice diving programs in North America, culminating each year in the North American Ice Diving Festival — an internationally recognized event that draws divers from across the country and beyond. If you've ever looked at a frozen lake and wondered what's underneath, we'll show you.
Wreck diving, night diving, and deep diving are all part of our curriculum as well. These aren't just checkbox courses — they're experiences that change the way you see the underwater world.
And if your ambitions run even further, we offer a complete path to professional instructor certification. We've taken divers from their very first breath underwater all the way to teaching their own students — under one roof, with the same team. It typically takes about two years and represents one of the most rewarding things a diver can do.
The Part That's Hard to Put on a Brochure
We can describe our curriculum, list our training sites, and explain our pricing — and all of that matters. But the thing that keeps students coming back, and keeps them sending their friends and family our way, is harder to quantify.
Our instructors actually love this. They love diving, they love teaching, and that combination produces a learning environment that you can feel the moment you walk in the door. We've been doing this for over 40 years — not because we have to, but because we genuinely can't imagine doing anything else.
If you've been on the fence about learning to dive, or wondering whether now is the right time, we'd love to have a conversation. Stop by the shop, give us a call, or visit us at midwestschoolofdiving.com . You don't need any experience. You don't need any gear. You just need to show up.
We'll take it from there.
Ready to get started? Register for your Open Water course or contact us with any questions.
