over weight divers please help

[23angler]

My wife is a little over weight and is having trouble doing some of the swimming skills in the padi open water class. I am mainly the one that is diving and she wants to do it with me. Tonight we where doing the final pool dives and the instructor will not let her go into the ocean dives until she becomes a little more adjile in the water. She is very buoyant and needs 22 lbs in the BCD to dive in the pool. One of the skills is she has to go the bottom on the deep end of the pool and touch the bottom (with out and scuba gear on). When she starts the descent with out weight she gets about half way down and then pop back up like a cork. As well as she is having a little of a hard time staying steady in the pool and she looks a little wobbly in the water with the gear on.

Do you guys think that she should train with a weight belt on to get her a little more buoyant till she becomes a little more steady in the water and can do some of the skills like going to the bottom of the pool. And then lesson the weight a little at a time till she can do it with out weight. Or is that not going to happen since she is so much positive buoyant.

Please help
Brian

 

[tg54]

I was recently certified, and had a similar problem. I wore 26 pounds in the pool,and when I had to dive to the bottom without any weights, my 7mm suit alone was so bouyant, I could not get my feet into the water.

I tried many times, finally I just let out my breath and was able to go down another foot or so, but my feet remained out of the water. No propulsion, so movement. My form was fine, just way too bouyant.

Just to prove a point, I later tried in a warmer water pool without the suit and did just fine.

My instructor passed me on form (rightly or wrongly, I don't know), she felt that physics could not be helped.

Good luck to your wife!

 

[sealkie]

exhale !! -- big people have big lungs - EXHALE ... nervous people hold a lot of air in their lungs EXHALE !!! - air is buoyant EXHALE !!


did I mention ... exhale ... LONG and COMPLETELY


... doesn`t ANYONE learn about arcamedies any more ...buoyancy is a combination of weight and volume = so and overweight person is bigger AND heavier - overall should not have much differance in buoyancy than a thin light person

Last time i checked ... and this was sometime ago ago - i tipped the scales around 180 lbs - I wear 6lbs of lead in a 3mm suit in the ocean .... so don not tell me I don`t know what i`m talking about

I have no doubt that she is over weight if she is wearing 22 lbs unless she is wearing a full 7mm suit in the pool ... and that will make it very uncomfortable and difficult to be graceful because her trim is all wrong ... which will be stressfull ... which will cause her to breath heavier ... which will increase the air in her lungs


You can`t fight physics ... but you can sure as hell use it in your favour !


good luck


pssst ... exhale :0)

 

[scuba_luv]

... doesn`t ANYONE learn about arcamedies any more

Archimedes, I think.

 

[scuba_luv]

My wife is a little over weight and is having trouble doing some of the swimming skills in the padi open water class.
<snip>
Do you guys think that she should train with a weight belt on to get her a little more buoyant till she becomes a little more steady in the water and can do some of the skills like going to the bottom of the pool.

How does she do with just a swimsuit?

Practice in a deep pool. Dive off the side and get to the bottom - that way she knows how it feels and what it takes.
Make sure she's starting her in-pool descent the right way: There's a way you can fold yourself, get your legs up in the air and let that weight propel you down with arms in front. Kind of like a dive but starting in the water.

Once she is comfortable with this spend some time practicing with gear on. Gear that is uncomfortable, different or just plain new can interfere with learning to dive.

You might want to check out some of the threads here on bouyancy - get all her gear together and find out exactly the weight that causes it to sink.

Then she can experiment in a swimsuit, floating and breathing. When she exhales floating on her back she should sink a bit. Inhale and rise again. Practice this until she is very comfortable, and then when she has her gear on and is underwater it will feel more natural.

Good luck!

 

[baitedstorm]

22 lbs seems to be an aweful lot of lead to be diving with in a pool in Miami. I can't imagine she's wearing more than just a skin or a 3mm. I'm with sealkie on this one, exhale! Sounds like she needs a confidence boost as well, maybe a little one on one until she's comfortable. As women, our bodies are so much different and she needs to know this right up front. For example I can hover effortlessly for ages, well....at least until all he blood rushes to my head. (I can only do it upside down if I try to do it in a sitting position). What works for you (weight wise) may not work the same for her. My advice would be to just give it sometime and practice and ......EXHALE!!!

 

[grkmbee]

Actually a heavier person may be very different in terms of bouyancy compared to a thin person...following the principle of D= M/V, if you compare one pound of fat to one pound of muscle you'll see a huge difference, quite litterally...so a person who is composed of a greater percentage of fat, although they are heavier and larger volume-wise, will still be more positively bouyant than a thinner person who is mainly composed of lean muscle.

On the other hand, take a relatively slim person who may be in poor phyiscal condition compared to a bodybuilder...sure the body builder is both heavier and bulkier but they will sink much easier (perhaps without the aid of lead) where as the thinner, out of shape person would still float. So yes, it does go back to Archimedes, but you can't compare small apples to large oranges. (although perhaps to medium apricots )

Anyways, up here in the NE we use indoor pools for training so no heavy wetsuits or massive amounts of weights to contend with. Exhaling is good...also when I learned to skin dive in my lifeguarding class, when we did the surface pike, we would have our arms in front of us as if we were going to dive and the once our torsos were in the water we would bring our legs up and pull our hands to our sides (arm motion is kind of like the breaststroke)...although you don't use hands in diving, when getting to the bottom of the pool skin diving I would think it would be aloud but I certainly could be wrong. Good luck!

 

[23angler]

ok i talk to the instructor and he said my swimming abliilities is not good. i can swim fine but when i have fins and mask and snorkel on it restircts me or scuba gear. when i try to swim know where and what i need to do but my body will not go and do it. i can do all the skills fine but i can;t move in the water very good. so what advice do you all have for me.

thanks for the help...
brians wife... :06:

 

[TravisT]

Well, to me this is somewhat hard to understand. Weighting yourself should be a process that makes you neutral in bouyancy. So with a few kicks with your fins you should be to the bottom, and vise versa going up.

Is he having you touch the bottom of the pool with a wet suit and no weight? I have a 5mm wetsuit and I'm quite sure that even with the 20 lbs I have on and being a slim guy, i find myself about right. It would be difficult to go to the bottom without any weight on while wearing a wetsuit.

Is there an option do this just in a normal swimming suit?

As far as swimming underwater, my instructor made us aware that arms do basically nothing while you are diving. So maybe to make yourself appear more agile keep your arms tucked tightly over your stomach or somewhere where they are not dangling or makes yourself appear you are struggling to move around.

If you have your weight distributed evenly over your body you should feel pretty good this way assuming you arn't overweighted or extremely underweighted. I have a feeling that if you have the correct amount of weight but still feel wobbly, make sure that you don't have 10 lbs on one side, 12 on the other. This could make you feel unbalanced and a little more difficult to swim properly.

I'm a newbie so maybe I have no clue what i'm talking about. But this is just newbie to newbie help. Hope you can find some way to work it out!

 

[sealkie]

Bri`s Wife

I your instructor said you can`t swim well --- you need to swim - with you mask fins and snorkle on - a lot

Ask you intructor for more specific tips on what you are doing wrong - It`s tough when we can`t see you !

Does all you gear fit ok ? - are your fins too stiff for you ?? .. maybe you need to switch to a more flexible pair

Some people go very stiff when they try and swim with snorkle or scuba gear - is this the problem ? .. try and think of yourself as fluid and keep youself relaxed

I really think discussing this more with your instructor will help as will studying the physics portion of the open water book - you`ll learn what effects your buoyancy and trim and force and thus makes diving easier ... physics is great !

Oh an on the wobbky feel - pull you weights forward of your hips a little - that might help