Is overweighting of OW students a violation of standards?

[SillyQuestions]

There's a gent near me who's getting into cave diving (things work a little differently over here to the US) so we've sent him on his PADI OW course.

He's a skinny chap, about 6 feet tall. I'm a skinny chap, about 6 feet tall. In a drysuit they've got him using 20kg (about 40lb) he reported to me the other day. I use 6kg (about 12lb). Even accounting for newbieness, that's ridiculous and one of the first things we'll need to fix when we take him on.

 

[TMHeimer]

As you know, weighting is a very individual thing. I have a body(skin) suit, shorty and 7mil farmer john wetsuit. I simply did the weight checks years ago and wrote the 3 amounts down. The only time I needed adjust was when after 10 years I bought a new farmer john and had to add 6 pounds. For that I now wear 42 pounds. Also in salt water, I wear 18 pounds with the shorty and 10 with the body suit. Would seem an awful lot, but that is what I need. An instructor on our staff with the same physique as me happens to also need all that weight. Less than that and we can't descend.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

As you know, weighting is a very individual thing. I have a body(skin) suit, shorty and 7mil farmer john wetsuit. I simply did the weight checks years ago and wrote the 3 amounts down. The only time I needed adjust was when after 10 years I bought a new farmer john and had to add 6 pounds. For that I now wear 42 pounds. Also in salt water, I wear 18 pounds with the shorty and 10 with the body suit. Would seem an awful lot, but that is what I need. An instructor on our staff with the same physique as me happens to also need all that weight. Less than that and we can't descend.

What kind of BCD do you use?
What's the design of the suit - components...(attached hood or top and bottoms with bib hood or hooded vest?)
What tanks are you using?
What's your body composition?

 

[Land Fish]

What about underweighting?

During a trip late last year, I felt I was under weighted most of the time. It took some effort to descend in the beginning of most dives, and I had the tendency of shooting for the sky at safety stops

But the instructors/DMs would go as far as carrying extra weight on them and holding me down at safety stops than putting an extra weight on me, and they just encouraged me to "practice buoyancy / breathing control".

While I appreciated the encouragement, it didn't really help me with my confidence :sad:

 

[SillyQuestions]

It's supposed to take a little effort to get underwater in the first place!

Not that I'd encourage it. But some of the dives I do buoyancy cannot be worn.

It's a real eye opener to discover just how little weight you really need.


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[Diver0001]

Just out of curiosity, and because it has been a long time now, I pulled out my original circa 1990 PADI open water work book to look up a few things that seem to be hot button topics as of late. I went to the section about proper weighting. They say proper weighting is when at the surface before the dive you should be able to float with no air in your BC at eye level, then when you exhale you should slowly be able to sink feet first. Upon returning to the surface after the dive you should be able to easily float on the surface with no air in your BC. They went on further to say that some people may choose to add a little air to the BC at the surface to make things a little more comfortable.
I personally use a slightly different approach with weighting. I choose the empty BC at 15 foot stop rule as determining exact proper weighting (no more no less weight than absolutely needed) but none the less, at least PADI's description is better than some of the horrors I here about these days with gross overweighting. My instructor used the rule in the PADI book, and instead of piling more weight on a student who he knew was properly (PADI) weighted he would instruct them to exhale and use their arms in a palm up position to reverse stroke themselves down to where they could either get enough pressure on the suit to sink, or have them flip over and kick down head first, which was covered on how to perform in the 'skin diving' portion of the class. He also stressed "no elevator diving".
If the rules haven't changed from then to now wouldn't that mean that any PADI instructor who purposely and grossly overweights students to keep them on the bottom to to perform skills in an effort to make "his" life easier is in violation and should be reported?

The most recent standards require instructors to teach and execute skills with the students "neutrally buoyant". There are several ways to do that but the easiest to understand is to put the students in a "fin pivot" and have them do skills from there.

In theory, if I student can get into a fin-pivot with 130,000kg of ballast and do a regulator R&R then they are in a fin pivot and the instructor is not breaking standards.

Doing a buoyancy check and trimming are also both in the standards. This should bring the 130,000kg back to about 4 or 6.... or whatever the diver needs.

R..

 

[Land Fish]

It's supposed to take a little effort to get underwater in the first place!

Not that I'd encourage it. But some of the dives I do buoyancy cannot be worn.

It's a real eye opener to discover just how little weight you really need.


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I get what you said. But at this stage, I'd probably prefer a little more weight that I could compensate with a little air in the BCD than shooting towards the surface with no air in my BCD or lungs during safety stops. At least I wouldn't have to rely on someone else to keep me down.

I need to dive more...!

 

[Jim Lapenta]

There is really no substitute for doing a proper weight check. I have a new OW class starting next week. As I explained to my new students, and the way I have it outlined in my book, we will do weight checks for all of the 6-8 pool sessions we do.

I will do the initial one with them, guide them through the second, and observe as they do them with each other in each subsequent session. Sessions 4 & 6 they will do them twice. At the beginning of the session and at the end. Why?

Number one is to drive home the importance of doing them.
Number two is I want them to come to look at it as routine and something that can be done without a lot of time so there is really no excuse not to do it.
Number three is I want them to see what equipment changes and tank pressure does to weighting.
Finally when it comes time to do their checkouts, and I bring them in to the pool the week before or so and put them in the 7 mil suits they are going to use, I don't want to have to spend a lot of time on it.
They will know how much weight they need since they will have a record of it to start with. For OW dives I don't tell students how much weight they need. They tell me what they are going to need.

In the first session after the swim/snorkeling/skin diving skills they will get put in the exposure suits they'll need for the scuba class sessions.
Step one will be to put a weight belt on them and see what it takes to make them neutral and able to descend.
Step two will be to add the scuba unit and repeat the check.
Step three will be to perform a horizontal descent in shallow water to the pool bottom and verify there is enough weight.
Step four will be to check their ability to stay neutral and horizontal as we move deeper in the pool.
Step five will be to start doing skills in that position (neutral/horizontal) and have them adjust their buoyancy and control their breathing pattern to remain that way from then on no matter what skills we are doing.

By the end of the first session on scuba they should be swimming around pretty much horizontal and neutral. They should also be able to clear a partially flooded mask, remove and replace the reg, and adjust their weight belt (unbuckle and tighten) while they are swimming without much of a change in buoyancy or needing to stop.

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I get what you said. But at this stage, I'd probably prefer a little more weight that I could compensate with a little air in the BCD than shooting towards the surface with no air in my BCD or lungs during safety stops. At least I wouldn't have to rely on someone else to keep me down.

I need to dive more...!

As time goes by and divers get more comfortable with diving, their breathing stabilizes, they take fuller breaths and expel more completely, and they hold less reserve in their lungs. All around this is better for buoyancy and physiologically too. Getting this down can allow new divers to drop several lbs just by better breathing.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the more air you keep in your wing at your 15' stop, will also make it more difficult to hold that stop since you have introduced another factor into the equation of potential positive forces that can make you go up. Expanding air is one of the primary reasons for rocketing to the top, not much else...either in BC's or in drysuits.
Wetsuits do to a degree but not very dramatically because the material expands too slowly, and because the buoyancy of the wetsuit should have been accounted for during the weight check.
So, the less air in your BC at your stop, the easier it is to maintain that stop effortlessly.

 

[dmaziuk]

I get what you said. But at this stage, I'd probably prefer a little more weight that I could compensate with a little air in the BCD than shooting towards the surface with no air in my BCD or lungs during safety stops.

It's easy: you just need to remember when that happens and next time breathe out before it does and watch your breathing. At least that's what worked for my better half the 2nd time she dived with less lead than before. 1st time she shot to the surface, didn't like it, 2nd tank of the morning: no problem.