Although not as popular as "normal" swimming, finswimming is a regular sport here in Italy, and was widespread already in the seventies. It is practicised both in pools and in open water (sea, lakes).
Both I and my wife hold a license as finswimming instructors.
Since the late eighties, competitive finswimming is done only with monofins. In the seventies it was with two separate fins, long, with reversed slope of the blade (so the blade is angled upwards when standing), mostly made of fiberglass. In 1978 I did see the first carbon-fiber blades, mounted on Russian blue foot pockets, employed upside-down for getting the required upward slope.
The kicking technique is also different: free divers' goal is efficiency: travelling the longer distance with the minimum effort and hence oxygen demand.
Finswimmers' goal, instead, is maximum speed, whatever the effort required.
So while many scuba divers employ free diving fins with good results (I and my wife are among them), provided that the proper kicking style and directional control have been mastered, finswimming fins are instead absolutely bad for scuba diving.
Both I and my wife hold a license as finswimming instructors.
Since the late eighties, competitive finswimming is done only with monofins. In the seventies it was with two separate fins, long, with reversed slope of the blade (so the blade is angled upwards when standing), mostly made of fiberglass. In 1978 I did see the first carbon-fiber blades, mounted on Russian blue foot pockets, employed upside-down for getting the required upward slope.
The kicking technique is also different: free divers' goal is efficiency: travelling the longer distance with the minimum effort and hence oxygen demand.
Finswimmers' goal, instead, is maximum speed, whatever the effort required.
So while many scuba divers employ free diving fins with good results (I and my wife are among them), provided that the proper kicking style and directional control have been mastered, finswimming fins are instead absolutely bad for scuba diving.
