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How do you breathe while you're diving? Do you do FULL (oh-my-god-i-couldnt-exhale-more-even-if-i-tried) exhales?

Often, some divers tend to breathe shallow "off the top of the lungs" and dont do full exhales. This would result in you having "over full" lungs most of the time and could be a contributing factor.
 
How would overfull lungs (and therefore more positive buoyancy above the center of gravity) cause someone to be head heavy?

Balance underwater isn't really complicated. Basically, you are floating, without an attachment to the bottom. Therefore, you will rotate until you are in a position where the forces pushing you upward (lungs, exposure suit, and BC) are precisely balanced with the forces pushing you downward (weights and tank, most of the time). If you can align those forces so that they balance out in a horizontal position, you will remain horizontal when you are immobile. Otherwise, you are going to move, inexorably, into the position where those forces ARE balanced.

Some of the things that affect your position are variable. Your posture is a big part of this. Positioning body parts, incuding your head, arms and feet, can significantly affect your balance, and how they will do this will depend in part on whether your body parts are positive or negative. People with heavy neoprene and positive fins may find themselves with a lot of positive force low on their body, and tend to tip head down. People diving doubles may find that they have so much weight high on their body that they can't control the tendency to go head down.

The key to this is to put yourself in a useful diving position -- body fairly flat, legs out behind you, head up -- and see what happens if you don't move at all. That will give you some keys to where your combination of equipment and exposure protection puts your balance. If you are head heavy, you are simply going to have to move some ballast aft of your center of balance. Whether that's a weight belt, a DUI harness slung low, negative fins, or ankle weights, something is going to have to move south.
 
I have to admit that I don't understand why people are telling this diver, who appears to have too much weight high on his body, to get a backplate. Putting more weight up on his back may very well not improve his situation; it may make it worse. Getting an aluminum or Kydex backplate might allow him to keep his weights pretty much where they are (which is clearly not optimal).

He either needs to modify his posture significantly, or move ballast south of his center of gravity.

Agreed! Talk about a gear solution to a skills based problem. If you can't solve trim in a BCD what will you blame when you can't solve it after spending 5 - 9 hundred on a BP/W?

I split my weights between a belt and the pockets and have some on the cam bands. You just have to spend some time (dives) playing with it. Mounting the tank high or low (on the BC) also helps. I also make sure I mount things in the same position each time so any insights I gain won't be lost the next time I gear up.
If possible, sling a couple of 2 or 3lb weights with some clips and move them up and down your torso in the water (or have your buddy do it). When you find good horizontal trim you will know where weight should be added (shifted). Then you can refine it from there.
As noted, if you are going heads up near the end of the dive you could be being affected by the bouyancy shift from the tank.
 
How would overfull lungs (and therefore more positive buoyancy above the center of gravity) cause someone to be head heavy?

I had a brain fart. I saw "head heavy", but my brain thought "head light" :dork2::lotsalove:
 
Thanks to DaleC for bringing this fancinating discussion back to earth. My problem only occurs near the end of a dive at the safety stop. I am sure the empty tank plays some roll but proper weighting should fix that.

I am now sure the solution is a proper combination of distribution and gear adjustments.

Thanks for the many ideas, I have taken a bouancy class and will try a larger tank when possible (I am also an air hog).
 
another thing you can experiment with is the position of your legs. i found that my legs were too bent at the knees, such that my ankles were too close toward my head which threw off the balance.

stretching my legs out so that my feet were no longer in line above my knees helps with being more heads up. you might find a similar thing if you're also bending at the knees
 

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