Why so much Horizontal trim ?

[ccx2]

Not wanting to highjack gcarters thread about trim so I started this one to ask, Why so much attention to strive to be perfectly horizontal when diving ? It seems some think it makes them look bad to others and tags them as a novice. Why is trim so important to some and how does it benefit ? I must be a Dork because my feet/fins are usually about 10/15 degrees high .

 

[chrpai]

Checkout:

Proper Trim for Scuba Divers - What Is Trim, and Why Is It Important for Both Recreational and Technical Scuba Divers?

I don't practice and talk about trim to hurt other peoples feelings or to try to impress people. I do it because it's the right thing to do and I want to set the example to those around me if they happen to pay attention to me.

 

[BluewaterSail]

If you are horizontal, your body needs to push less water out of the way as you move forward. This means less effort, so lower air consumption rate.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

It has nothing to do with looks, and everything to do with work. Water is very heavy, and the more out of trim you are, the more of it you have to move out of the way in order to go where you want to go. The more water you have to push out of the way, the harder you work ... and the harder you breathe ... and therefore the shorter your dive will be.

Better trim means less effort ... and therefore longer dives.

It really is that simple ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Doc Harry]

Watch this video, and see the effects of not keeping a horizontal trim

Awful - YouTube

 

[USFpsychDiver]

Trim = control. With good trim, buoyancy, and propulsion comes good control, the ability to go where you want to go when you want to go there with minimal effort, very small fin movements and no torquing the body or flapping the arms. This will make diving way more fun for you. With good control you don't bang into delicate formations breaking them, or stir up clouds of sediment from the bottom munging visibility. This will make diving way more fun for the people you dive with.

And not to disagree with NWGD, but I do like to look good...

 

[supergaijin]

Also if you haven't hit the reef already with your head, you're much less likely to hit it with your fins

 

[mathauck0814]

It's OK to have your feet higher than your head. Horizontal, in this case, refers to the body. The legs should be generally bent at a 90' angle at the knee. Another benefit of the horizontal trim in addition to the efficiency achieved in moving fore and aft is that your greatest "drag" is on moving up and down, so you can leverage the greatest surface area of your body to harness that drag to make very specific fine tuning adjustments to your depth (more so than you would be able to in a more vertical orientation)

 

[Crush]

There are many good replies to your post above. Bear in mind however that while it is very good practice to be able to maintain horizontal trim, there are circumstances when being out of trim is acceptable and even desirable. For example, if you are swimming along a gradually descending reef, you may want to be parallel to the reef (to avoid kicking it) and therefore not perfectly horizontal (with respect to the center of the Earth). Or, you may need to enter a horizontal opening head-first. Being able to maintain horizontal trim means that you and your gear are stable and balanced under water, allowing you the ability to adopt whichever orientation best suits your diving situation.

 

[Cosmographer]

I don't find proper trim difficult to attain, but perhaps because I'm a new diver, I just don't like it. Yes, when I'm trying to get somewhere, I will be perfectly horizontal. This also goes for when I need to hover just inches off a reef or something.

But besides those 2 circumstances, I prefer not to be trim. Very rarely do I dive while looking straight down at the bottom. I like to look ahead as well, but if you're perfectly trim, you need to cock your head back a bit to look forward, and I find this to be a strain on my neck. Perhaps as I get more experience, I will come to prefer being trim all the time, but for now, I definitely do not. Come to think of it, I do have a neck problem .. if that's a part of it, maybe I will never prefer being trim. hmmm....