Quickest path to deco diving?

[scubaozy]

The freedivers are way heavy for probably 75% of their dive and hint... going down isn't the challenge on a 100 meter dive.

In most freediving courses you will be taught to weigh your self neutral for your target depth and positive for 10m. Depending on your weighing, diving down first 50m can be a challenge as well. Its up to the strategy really.

 

[scubaozy]

And the rest of us evolved a brain that made the S.C.U.B.A. and we can spend hours underwater.

Except you had to wait for someone to invent dpv ;-)

 

[johndiver999]

In most freediving courses you will be taught to weigh your self neutral for your target depth and positive for 10m. Depending on your weighing, diving down first 50m can be a challenge as well. Its up to the strategy really.

Not true at all and certainly not applicable to 100 m dives. Perhaps you should refer to any training literature you might have. NOBODY weights themselves to be neutral at any target depth, unless they are freediving very shallow. This is important (for freedivers) and you got it wrong.

 

[scubaozy]

Not true at all and certainly not applicable to 100 m dives. Perhaps you should refer to any training literature you might have. NOBODY weights themselves to be neutral at any target depth, unless they are freediving very shallow. This is important (for freedivers) and you got it wrong.

whatever

 

[johndiver999]

whatever

Thanks, I suppose this is off topic anyway.

 

[rx7diver]

In most freediving courses you will be taught to weigh your self neutral for your target depth and positive for 10m. Depending on your weighing, diving down first 50m can be a challenge as well. Its up to the strategy really.

Not true at all and certainly not applicable to 100 m dives. Perhaps you should refer to any training literature you might have. NOBODY weights themselves to be neutral at any target depth, unless they are freediving very shallow. This is important (for freedivers) and you got it wrong.

Hmmm. I understand that skin-divers who would dive down to a target depth to linger awhile, swimming around at depth (say, for shooting photos or film/video, or fish) would do exactly as @Ucarkus describes.

I also understand that scuba divers who dive without BC's do the same--which is what I've done the handful of times I have dived without a BC.

Maybe the confusion here is what people do when their objective is depth, itself (for freediving depth competitions, say).

rx7diver

 

[Sevenrider860]

I asked the local PADI shop, and was told "deep diver" was the intro to DECO.

I went home and was researching the course, and found this was incorrect.....

I am never going to do cave diving, but would like to do some of the very deep wreck dives beyond 130 but less than 180.

Probably not explained well by the local shop. PADI Tec40 is the course where decompression is taught. The PADI Deep Diver certification is a pre-requisite for Tec40...or you can have equivalent deep dive experience which would be 10 dives to 100 feet or deeper.

 

[Angelo Farina]

To comment on the side conversation, going fast is not efficient. Efficient is going the farthest on a fixed amount of gas or going the same distance using less gas. Given that force is relative to the square of velocity, going the fastest can not be the most efficient method.

I am a finned swimming instructor. 90% of training of a finned swimmer is about efficiency, only 10% is about speed.
Pushing yourself thanks to a large monofin can means exerting a very large effort. If you do not kick efficiently, the effort is so large tgat you cannot sustain it for mor than 10 seconds. An efficient athlet wastes less energy, so he can swim fast longer and win the race.

 

[johndiver999]

Hmmm. I understand that skin-divers who would dive down to a target depth to linger awhile, swimming around at depth (say, for shooting photos or film/video, or fish) would do exactly as @Ucarkus describes.

I also understand that scuba divers who dive without BC's do the same--which is what I've done the handful of times I have dived without a BC.

Maybe the confusion here is what people do when their objective is depth, itself (for freediving depth competitions, say).

rx7diver

No, A freediver will normally weight themselves to be neutral at 30 feet, maybe a little deeper than that if they are going "deep". If they are diving shallower than say 30 ft, then they obviously would be wearing more lead and would be neutral or negative at their intended (shallow) depth. It is better to be fighting sinking rather than floating up.

A freediver wants to make use of the sink phase, which means they are falling (negative) with zero kicking. This helps to optimize their efficiency. If a diver were targeting 50 or 80 feet for example, then if he weighted to be neutral at those depths, he would be wearing too little lead and would be inefficient and would be fighting positive buoyancy way too long and way too much on the descent - to dive efficiently anyway.

Getting the weighting right is critical to freediving - needs to be much more precise than a scuba diver who can manipulate lung volume and also, normally has a bc or dry suit to make accommodations.

It is not a trivial issue and doing it wrong will impair a freediver's performance and/or unnecessarily endanger them. Too little will reduce performance; too much will endanger them and make it to hard to get off the bottom when the chest and (typically) the wetsuit is crushed.

It needs to be adjusted correctly to within a single lb or at the most 2. When changing target depths, freedivers will adjust their weight belts.

 

[Subcooled]

That's me at ten feet or any feet or no feet

We call it the submersion effect, and it is a scientifically proven fact.
But, hey, have you ever heard of dryglove narcosis? It specifically affects dexteriry. Mittens narcosis is even more severe