Could the need for ankle weights be influenced by gender?

[radinator]

The nice thing about BP/W is they can help you compensate for heave or light feet. When I dive my 6 mil single layer, I have the wing mounted in the lower holes in the plate. When the water got colder and I added my second layer (which is like a shortie), I started having floaty feet because of the extra neoprene around my quads - until I moved the wing to the upper holes. Now I know to mount my wing in the appropriate holes for the layering of my wetsuit and I'm trimmed out in both cases.

I haven't tried the setup with a drysuit yet...

 

[Kriterian]

There is a new book out that explains all the differences between men and women while diving, hopefully this will help you.

 

[fmw625]

I have to use 1 ankle weight on the neck of my tank below the reg to keep my feet from sinking. Initially I moved my tank up as far as I could without banging my head on the reg and my feet still sunk. 1 ankle weight on the tank neck helped my problem.

 

[Snowbear]

I use less weight than most of the men I dive with. That's with similar thermal protection (drysuit and undies).

Scubagrrrrrrrl ~ don't worry about it.... you need what you need. With a 7mm farmer jane, you'll need a lot of lead just to get that suit to sink. It's got nothing to do with your gender. Then at depth, you'll need a lot of gas in your BC to compensate for the suit compression.

 

[Paco]

Though not relative to ankle weights but more so to possible gender difference is the following. My son-in-law is taking his rescue diver class and because much of this class is done at the surface and because that part of the lake is really warm right now, 3 mil suits were recommended. This guy is so negative that he did not need any weight at all to sink with scuba (alum 80 tank). During the surface rescue exercise his buddy had one heck of a time keeping him at the surface when neither had their bc because he his naturally so negative. Don't know if I've ever heard of this with a woman.