holy cow that's a lot of lead

[sdexcalibur]

Now I know it depends on a large number of factors on how much weight you carry, but I'm 5-7 190lbs. Dive with a 6.5 wet suit, gloves,hood. and I need about 27+. I dove with 27 and couldn't stay down. Any tips on how to reduce my weights. My dive teacher is about the same body type as me. Wears a 5/4/3/wet suit and dives with like 8 lbs. or am I stuck with this 30lb monster

 

[jbd]

for too much weight is to dive and dive and dive and dive .......................................................and dive some more. This will lead to relaxation which will lead to less lead needed.

 

[Padipro]

I would agree that 27lbs is quite alot of lead for someone of your body type wearing a 6.5mm wet suit but I wouldn't worry to much about it in the begining. Many people require an excessive amount of weight when they first start diving, things like fear, excitement and anxiety can lead to bad breathing control which can adversely effect ones buoyancy. If your equipment, specifically your suit, is new that can have an effect on your weighting as well. A new wet suit is more buoyant then an older, used, one. As the suit is repeatedly compressed during the dive it looses some of it's buoyancy and again you'll be able to shed a few pounds. As you gain more experience and become more comfortable in the water you'll gain more control over your breathing and will be able to start shedding some of that extra weight. Remember to breath slowly and deeply, work on your buoyancy control until you have it down perfectly, to move up or down in the water just slightly, say to rise enough to clear something small on the bottom, use your lungs instead of adding more air to your BC (take a slightly deeper breath then normal) and most of all practice, practice, practice. Start by dropping just a pound or two and see if you can still maintain neutral buoyancy during the entire dive, if that works dive for a while with it and then drop another pound or two. In time you'll be down to a reasonable amount of weight.

Scott

 

[budgy]

It's something we all have problems with when we start diving.
One of the keys is relaxation and trim. If you are tensing your body to maintain a horizontal attitude, its hardly easy to relax.
I wonder how much progress you would eventually make if you dived with a lead shot belt and after every dive you removed several shot.

 

[art.chick]

Everyone has said it well. I will add that you can;t compare yourself to your instructor; he has a lot more experience, and his suit is older & thinner than yours. Are you in a 1-pc or a 2-pc wetsuit? I had a 2-pc 7mm & now have a 1-pc 5mm. I went from 32 - 21 lbs of lead (I also got a different BC & lots more experience, but I think the suit helped.)

If you simply want to reduce ditchable lead on your belt, you can go to a steel tank. There are other places to trim buoyancy, too: the hood can get a little thinner, the gloves & boots can get thinner. You can get heavy rubber fins. Nothing will help as much as just getting more comfortable, but you can think like a cyclist or competitve swimmer & just trim everything that is adding to the problem.

 

[Rick Murchison]

Others have already made good suggestions. One thing you can do to quickly gauge just how much weight you really need is to take your wetsuit, hood, & gloves to a pool & stack weights on 'em to see just how much it takes to sink 'em. This will eliminate any "flail" or "breathing" factor that may be contributing to your weighting. If it takes 25 pounds to sink the suit (and that's not unusual for a brand new 6.5 mil) then 28's about right. If it only takes 15, you can probably shed 10 or so immediately.
And your suit will become less buoyant with age. I recommend the swimming pool check from time to time. Just knowing how much it takes to sink that suit takes a lot of the worry out of weighting.
Rick

 

[MikeS]

Steve,

The important thing is to find out what is the minimum safe weight rather than worrying about the hype. There is no way that anyone can tell you how much weight you need over the Internet. To be safe you should be able to stay neutrally buoyant at 15 feet with almost no air in your tank. Too much weight may result in poor air consumption, but too little may result in an unsafe ascent and/or missed safety stop. Despite the hype it should not be a contest to see who can use the least amount of weight.

Take no shortcuts! With the equipment configuration you use, in the environment you dive (salt versus fresh water), how much weight it takes to remain neutrally buoyant at 15 feet with a near empty tank? The test is time consuming and inconvenient as it needs to be done with a near empty tank and you need to take along extra weights and a place to store them (i.e. bucket). Most of the buoyancy testing in OW training is done with a full or partially full tank at the start of a dive, as it is more convenient. This requires that you estimate the amount of weight that needs to be added to compensate for increased tank buoyancy as air is consumed, so it is inherently less accurate.

With a brand new 7-6-5 one-piece wet suit and aluminum 80 tank, I need 30 pounds of weight in fresh water. Several instructors as well as the hype told me this was too much weight. But when we took the time measure it, the measurement confirmed I needed the 30 pounds. During the test if I had been any more relaxed I would have been asleep. I am in reasonably good shape for my age and not overweight I am just buoyant.

The good news is that if you find out you need 30 pounds there are some things you can do to get some of it off your weight belt, such as steel tanks, steal backplate etc. I would worry about one thing at a time though as any change you make will affect trim also.

Good luck,
Mike

 

[Rick Murchison]

For years a major training agency - make that several major training agencies have preached the "neutral at 15" dictum as "the correct weighting." I say the most important part of your ascent is the ascent from the safety stop to the surface, and if you're "neutral at 15" then you can't adequately control it - because if you're "neutral at 15" with all gas out of your BC, you'll be positive above 15, right where you need to be able to finely control your ascent rate.
Therefore, your minimum weight should be the weight that gets you neutral at the surface with no gas in the BC at the end of the dive, not neutral at 15'.
Rick

 

[JDostal]

You will drop weight as you dive more....I started out w/ 20lbs with a 7mm suit, and at the time I felt that I had too little weight. Now, I dive w/ the same suit with 14lbs of weight with an al100 tank. When I dive a high pressure steel 120, I can almost go down to 10lbs.

It'll get better with practice!

 

[MikeS]

Rick Murchison once bubbled...
Therefore, your minimum weight should be the weight that gets you neutral at the surface with no gas in the BC at the end of the dive, not neutral at 15'.
Rick

Rick,

Good point I stand corrected. But would not with almost no air in the tank, as the worst-case scenario, be more appropriate than at the end of the dive?

I still maintain that actually testing it is more important than worrying about the hype. The concept of “dropping” weight as you get experience is dangerous as it encourages reducing weight to appear more experienced.

I wonder how many of the people that talk about “dropping” weight as they got experience actually test their ability to remain “neutral at the surface with no gas in the BC at the end of the dive?”

Mike