Should your hands ever be used for movement or to hold position?

[lamont]

if i'm to the side of my buddy, but forwards, so my fins are right near their face, i'll sometimes skull with my hand to push away and go sideways. tough to do that with only your fins without kicking them in the face.

oh, i occasionally find pull + glide fun in open water. i don't grab coral, though, and nobody seems to care that much about disintegrating rotten stumps...

 

[Soggy]

There's nothing in diving that's "all or nothing" Diving is the ultimate "No (well, almost no) Rules" (except for a couple very prudent ones) sport. Sometimes you have to use your hands. It would be kind of stupid to just "not ever use your hands" and smash your face into a fire coral...lol...

CN

Why would you use your hands to avoid fire coral? I'd much rather do a quick back kick or better yet, stay far enough away from the stuff that I don't have to worry about it.

Diving is full of rules, but what it comes down to is that it is an intelligent sport. To dive well, one needs to engage their brain. What is the 'smarter' way to deal with stopping forward motion/adjusting position in the water? With your hands which do not make good fins or with the big paddles attached to your feet? Basically, there is never a reason to fin with your hands unless you have not learned how to do otherwise, in which case it is a problem that can be solved with practice unless you prefer looking like you are doing a doggy paddle in the water.

 

[Guba]

Geez, even FISH have pectoral fins, which they use to make course adjustments, braking, etc...

Try telling THEM that all swimming/maneuvering is done with the caudal fin.

 

[Soggy]

Geez, even FISH have pectoral fins, which they use to make course adjustments, braking, etc...

Try telling THEM that all swimming/maneuvering is done with the caudal fin.

I don't know about you, but I'm not a fish.

 

[Cacia]

soggy, you are a linear thinker. (that is very handy for complicated deco)

I think we should all get Soggy some of those little webbed swim mitts for his B-day. and then we could film him breast stroking around in his doubles....AND post it at the deco-stop.

 

[JeffG]

I don't know about you, but I'm not a fish.

I'm not sure...slimy...beady eyed... you had me fooled

 

[Soggy]

I think we should all get Soggy some of those little webbed swim mitts for his B-day. and then we could film him breast stroking around in his doubles....AND post it at the deco-stop.

That's fun to do in a pool, grab another set of fins and put them on your hands. You can really motor along that way!

As for the linear thought, my degree in music and computer science would disagree.

 

[ReefHound]

I don't know about you, but I'm not a fish.

And yet... there you are swimming underwater for an hour or more.

There are parallels and equivalences. Drawing an analogy between hands and pectoral fins is not saying that hands *are* pectoral fins. Just as an analogy between the wings of a plane and the wings of a bird doesn't mean that airplanes are birds. The point is that fish have a variety of fins for a variety of specific tasks, moving in different directions and different speeds. The caudals are the strongest and most efficient. But it's not always about efficiency. Sometimes it is about dexterity. I doubt there is a person on this board that has nearly as fine motor control over their feet as with their hands. You can move your hands in different directions and speeds than you can move your feet.

Of course you should use your fins for propulsion and steering at least 95% of the time. But why take it to the point of being anal retentive? An occasional use of hands in tight situations is going to have a statistically insignificant effect on your efficiency. If one is that obsessed with efficiency, then they had better not be turning their head from side to side while diving either. I'm all for improving skills and techniques but there's no reason to be a dive snob about it.

 

[Soggy]

My two independent fins on my legs using a frog kick in no way parallels how a fish propels itself through the water. That is the fallacious argument the manufacturers use to get people to buy things like split fins. We are not even remotely like fish underwater....

It's not about being a dive snob, it's that there are more effective ways of controling your motion. Those who know how to use their fins understand that. Those who don't will claim that they need their hands. Occasionally pulling yourself along in a current, or shoving off a wreck or your buddy is more efficient, but hand finning never is, nor is it more agile.

 

[TSandM]

Hands may have better fine motor control, but when I'm in my dive gear, I have a pretty substantial mass that has to be moved. Given the imprecision of movement in moving water, and the mass and inertia involved, I don't think you can get too excited about the possibility of fine adjustments because you can make fine movements of the hands. It's gonna take a big movement to move me at all.

Hands do have the advantage of being able to grip, and the people who have talked about pulling in high water flow situations (eg. caves, wrecks in current) have pointed out something I wasn't thinking of when I originally posted. And at the last moment, to avoid hitting something or someone, I'd use my hands (and have). But frankly, it almost always represents a failure to anticipate and correct my momentum before it got that far.