The minimalist movement
- Thread starter Eric Sedletzky
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My newest Zen Minimalist regulator. Later this year of 09 I plan to do some shallow explorations of some offshore sinkholes I found out of ---uh---nope, keep that secret. Anyways, here it is, ain't it a beauty of simplicity, of stark minimalism? A MkV clone piston first, tilt valve demand second stage, miniature spg.
I need to find my pressure LP relief valve to install, cannot remember were I put them. It is going to be great for explorations to 80 or so feet, solo of course
.
N
I need to find my pressure LP relief valve to install, cannot remember were I put them. It is going to be great for explorations to 80 or so feet, solo of course
.N
OP
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
This is an easy one.
Todays standard gear in 99% of the dive shops is gear designed to make up for a shortfall in strength and skills including mental skills; the industry want's to include a very wide cross section of people in diving so they design gear that makes up for a general lack of skills and comfort level. More people in diving = more sales. Big overstuffed jacket bc's with huge amounts of lift buoy divers out of the water on the surface so their nice and high up and feel safe. When in reality these contraptions mask the issues of weighting and surface comfort and actually reguire way more weight than is necessary just to make them work. Not to mention trying to move one of those things through the water. This is why they came up with split fins. Split fins make it easier to fin kick but in my opinion to the detriment of top speed, power, and manueverability. But people generally are to lazy to develop the leg power to effortlessly use an old school tried and trued rubber fin.
With weight integrated BC's it's worse. The air cells are way to big and the reason for that is because the rig has to be able to float not only a potentially very large steel tank but also all the integrated weights. The result is a huge bag of air that restricts the slipstream so bad that divers typically trudge through the water not glide. And in the bouyancy critical zone (10 to 30 feet) the air cell is so big that the diver constantly struggles to hold a position because of the expanding and contracting gas in the cell.
These dry snorkels now days don't let a diver suck a little water and prevent the diver from ever learning to relax and to clear and use a simple J tube. Using a J tube is more difficult at first but with this learning curve comes skill and confidence, as with all other minimalist gear.
I don't see a way to fully refine skills and reach ones maximum skill potential using contraptions that don't expose a diver to his/her weaknesses.
My skills have improved because shedding much of this fluff has increased my agility and speed. With this new gained speed and agility different finning techniques can be used that would be difficult or impossible using conventional gear such as smooth porpoise finning - very sleek and very efficient. Body positioning changes because of the added speed and you learn to use your whole body as rudder like a pinniped.
The skill level is largely mental, but also because the gear is so minimal the diver must learn a whole new set of skills like perfect weighting, lung control, body positioning and slipstreaming.
It's like driving a car that will only go 50 miles and hour around a track, you will not need to know the skills of how to drive 150 miles an hour because the car you're driving can't go that fast. But when you get into a car that can go 150 MPH a whole new set of skills needs to be learned. Is it less safe to go 150, yeah probably, but with the learned skills the risk is minimized and it's a hell of a lot more fun!
Minimalism isn't for everybody that's for sure. I wouldn't recommend it for someone who has difficulty getting comfortable in the water, but wants to dive for peer or spousal pressure reasons or part time vacation divers, etc. For them I would say just stick with the regular stuff and have fun.
Personally I find minimalism a challenge both mentally and physically and this is what turns me on, this is my kool-aid, and ultimately my bliss.
I freedove for years before doing scuba, and from this stand point I can see how scuba developed and later got buried in a sand storm of crap.
Skin diving was the original ocean diving activity. Skin diving is 100% skill. weighting is perfect, strength is there, stamina is there, mental fitness and relaxation skill absolutely has to be there.
They simply added a tank and a breathing aperatus and continued on with the same set of impecable skills. This is minimalism in a nutshell.
I should also mention that diving minimalist I am able to use my long blade freediving fins. This not practical with the big poofy contraption gitups.
You talk about speed! holy man!
Reg Braithwaite
Contributor
I just want to point out that some of the people on this thread are talking about minimalism as getting rid of the junk you are describing, some are talking about getting rid of redundant gear, and some are talking about getting rid of gear you don't need on a specific dive. These are three different things, but I completely agree with your point about non-minimal gear like split fins and jacket BCs.
I reserve the right to feel differently about the question of whether you should drastically pare your rig down on a dive-by-dive basis and whether redundancy is a bad thing for certain types of gear.
It may not be "minimal" to dive a seven foot hose on every dive, but I prefer to think of the "simplicity" of always having the same things in the same place, the same way. There are some things that warrant "thinking about," but there are others that I want to be able to do unconsciously. Like deploy my primary reg.
XZY -
Ok... next two questions...
1: Granting some of the issues relating to modern gear... isn't diving it well simply a different set of skills to be mastered v. the skill set associated with 'minimalist' diving?
2: Is "speed" really all that necessary. I mean, if speed is your thing then cool... but isn't "slow and steady" an equally valid diving style?
(I'll grant that one does feel "slicker" without excess drag... sort of the difference between swimming in a shorty and skinny-dippin... )
Nice explaination of your perspective by the way... thanks.
Ok... next two questions...
1: Granting some of the issues relating to modern gear... isn't diving it well simply a different set of skills to be mastered v. the skill set associated with 'minimalist' diving?
2: Is "speed" really all that necessary. I mean, if speed is your thing then cool... but isn't "slow and steady" an equally valid diving style?
(I'll grant that one does feel "slicker" without excess drag... sort of the difference between swimming in a shorty and skinny-dippin... )
Nice explaination of your perspective by the way... thanks.
John_B
Grasshopper
OP
Eric Sedletzky
Contributor
I guess if one get's used to that stuff and develops the mental skills comfort level needed for diving then I guess that's fine. But I some how feel they are missing out on the freedom and joy of a less cluttered configuration. There might be people seeing this thread and thinking, "wow I never thought about this, this is cool"
There is also a whole other side to minimalism, and that is the savings of money spent on stuff that doesn't really need to be there. For people who love to burn money and can't wait to find another fire to shovel thousands of dollars into, maybe they belong camped out in a dive shop. I mean, somebody has to do it or else us minimalists wouldn't have a place to get air fills. So in that respect, bless their hearts.
Minimalist also means minimal $$$ which means more money saved to go on killer dive vacations or just do more diving in general.
If slow is your thing then a minimal set up still means way less drag = more efficiency = way more bottom time, which could also mean the ability to use a smaller tank which means even more agility and efficiency even for going slow. I've dove with people who had the full on conventional set up and we've stuck together the whole dive. They go slow and at the end of the dive they have 300 psi left and I come up with 800 -1000 and I have a smaller tank!
Plus there is less weight to have to lug around on shore or boat. The bonus is if you want to sprint for a second you can.
It's a win win in that category.
captain
Contributor
where is the 2nd stageMy newest Zen Minimalist regulator. Later this year of 09 I plan to do some shallow explorations of some offshore sinkholes I found out of ---uh---nope, keep that secret. Anyways, here it is, ain't it a beauty of simplicity, of stark minimalism? A MkV clone piston first, tilt valve demand second stage, miniature spg.
I need to find my pressure LP relief valve to install, cannot remember were I put them. It is going to be great for explorations to 80 or so feet, solo of course
N
; don't tell me that it is that small firehose-like thing
Gear is often used to cover for a lack of skill. Skill is easy to obtain, but it takes time.
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