New divers tend to be nervous and move around a lot. Many, including some more experienced divers swim with their hands. Once they get comfortable and learn better techniques they will lose some of the lead.
They are also overweighted in OW as standard training (in most cases) and they think that is the way they should be weighted all the time.
I did the same thing for a few dives out of OW because I figured the instructor was the pro. Little did I know, the way we were weighted was just a convenience for them to get us planted on the bottom to do skills. We were never de-briefed.
There's no rule that says you have to be weighted so that when you dump air you drop like a rock so you can do a feet first decent. It's OK to dump air and still be floating on the surface, you can pitch forward and decend head first if that's what it takes to get down. Beginners many times think that they have to be weighted enough that they can drop on their own, you don't.
The extremely valuable time I spent freediving before scuba taught me this.
The big test is if you can hold a stop at 15 feet at the end of the dive with a near empty tank and no air in your BC. Everything else is just coincidental and revolves around this one principle,...that is if you want to be weighted as perfectly as possible.
---------- Post added June 15th, 2014 at 05:42 PM ----------
Putting the weight belt on last is exactly what I was taught in 1970 and for the same reason. That reason is still 100% valid today though most training agencies barely even cover dropping your weight belt in an emergency, at best it is mentioned once or twice during the course and none that I know of practice it. Look through the accidents section on SB and you will see that most of the divers who are found dead are still wearing a weight belt. If you are found dead wearing a weight belt it is because you were an idiot and it cost you your life. Something this simple and basic should not even be up for discussion, it should be common knowledge and practice for every diver. But the reality is that people will spend endless hours talking about and working on holding a hover or sending up a SMB and ignore something simple that will save their A$$.
Dropping the weightbelt while diving with no BC was/is the way to establish positive buoyancy and was/is the first thing taught.
Diving with a BC originally was no different from no BC diving in weighting or style, the only difference was you had a way to compensate at depth.
Sometimes when I dive with no BC some smarty has to ask just how I plan to get to the surface and stay floating without a BC? I tell them to look at a freediver and show me their BC......
idiots
And of course, it's all in the weighting.
Plus, haven't they ever heard of dumping a belt?
