The Tec 40, 45 & 50 Ladder: What Each Step Actually Teaches

Technical diving has a reputation. Say the words and people picture tangled rigs, impossible depths, and divers doing something faintly reckless in the dark. It sounds like a different sport entirely.

PADI Tec 40, 45 and 50 technical diving courses — The PADI Tec Deep ladder, step by step: Tec 40, Tec 45 and Tec 50.

It isn’t. The jump from recreational to technical diving is a ladder, and PADI’s Tec Deep path breaks it into three clear, manageable rungs: Tec 40, Tec 45 and Tec 50. Each one adds a bit of depth, a bit of decompression, and a bit more capability. Take them one at a time and the whole thing stops feeling mysterious.

First, the one big idea

Recreational diving has a golden rule: you can always ascend straight to the surface if something goes wrong. Technical diving crosses that line on purpose. You plan dives that require decompression stops, committing to hang at certain depths on the way up to let your body off-gas safely. That single shift is what all the extra gear, gas and training exists to support. We unpacked it in our post on what really happens on a decompression dive.

The three rungs

●Tec 40 — to 40 m. Your first taste of decompression diving, in small controlled doses. You’ll learn to carry and manage a single decompression gas (enriched air up to around 50% oxygen) and make short deco stops, with one foot still in familiar recreational territory.

●Tec 45 — to 45 m. Where it gets properly technical. The deco ceiling comes off, so you plan and run full decompression dives on twin cylinders, using a deco gas of up to 100% oxygen. An optional Tec 45 Trimix path opens up for divers heading deeper.

●Tec 50 — to 50 m. The top of the Tec Deep ladder. You run more complex decompression dives using up to two decompression gases to optimise your ascent, and it’s the gateway to the deeper trimix courses beyond.

Why climb it one rung at a time

The beauty of the structure is that it never asks you to leap. Each course builds directly on the last, adding depth and complexity in bites you can actually digest. You’re never thrown into a deep decompression dive on a rig you’ve never worn. You grow into it.

It also means you can stop wherever suits you. Plenty of divers find Tec 40 or Tec 45 gives them everything they want and never feel the need to go further. There’s no failure in that.

The ladder is there to climb at your own pace, not to race to the top.

It makes you a better recreational diver too

Technical training sharpens everything. The gas planning, the buoyancy, the calm problem-solving all bleed back into every dive you do, deep or shallow. Even if you never intend to run a decompression dive for real, a course or two will make your ordinary reef dives noticeably better. You can see where the path leads in our overview of the courses we offer.

Take the First Rung

Curious whether technical diving is for you? Come talk to us about starting with Tec 40 here in Bohol. We’ll show you the gear, walk you through the first rung, and let you decide how high you want to climb.

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ALL POSTS BY Jonathan Rowe