New DMT, carrying extra weights is really affecting my buoyancy. Help!

[TMHeimer]

Extra weight just takes practice. I never practiced with actual weights, but lugging around a bag full of shells (or scallops for supper) fits the bill. This winter in FL I found a small anchor at the start of the dive and carried that %^$*&^# thing around for 40 minutes.

 

[EloiseNavarro]

I think your idea is good for the diving. When you are over weighted, you need more gas to put in your BC. So, try once with 2 on your belt and 2 in your pockets.

 

[Andyoak]

I would just like to say "I hope you remember how **** being over weighted is if you ever become an instructor and think over weighting your students is a good idea"

 

[ScubabunnyCR]

It's generally a given as a divemaster to be carrying extra weights for clients. Depending on situations this can vary from 2lb + . However, saying that, I would spend time working on your own buoyancy first, get yourself to a happy confident place first, and then start with adding the extras. Everybody learns at different rates, and until you are comfortable with your own weighting I wouldn't look at adding extras. If you are being pushed to do this during your divemaster program, maybe take a step back to practice before reentering it. If you are nervous and stressing out, about the weighting when in the water, this will also affect your buoyancy! Good luck!

 

[TSandM]

I disagree with the statement that where you put the extra weight has no effect on your buoyancy. If you put weight low on the body, so that it wants to drag your feet down, you will be kicking upward all the time, which DOES make you more unstable, because you have to remain negative to avoid ascending. That means you have to match your kicking to how negative you are, and if you stop kicking, you will sink, which will make you add air to the BC, which will make you positive when you get back to the depth where you started.

Carrying extra weight makes the bubble bigger and it requires more careful management. Diving out of balance exacerbates the problem. Both issues are manageable by someone with enough experience to know what's causing the instability, but it does take practice. I was going to recommend the exercise of taking a 5 lb weight into the water and handing it back and forth to another diver, but someone has already described something similar.

 

[Simon J Rogers]

During my DMT, I was carrying an extra 2 to 4kg, and often gave them to customers at the beginning of a dive if they struggled to get down. Most of the time, it's fairly obvious if a customer needs extra weight from the manner in which they descend.

With regards to diving overweighted, it is a little bit more tricky at first when changing depths. The thing I found helped me with buoyancy was realising that you can adjust for small changes in depth just through your breathing, rather than adding and dumping air from your BCD. But it comes with practice.

 

[scuberd]

Jim is not answering the question. The fact is most DM's at dive destinations carry and extra weight or two as well. It is a fact,that is part of being a working DM leading casual recreational divers, and it is a good idea for a DM to be able to dive with a few extra pouinds, because often you will need to pass them to another diver.
DivemasterDennis

I do acknowledge that this statement is true, but I don't think it should be. Most 'buoyancy' issues are not related to buoyancy at all; they come from poor technique in the water. I see every day divers of all skill levels and I refuse to carry extra weight, if a diver is having problems staying down help them to stop kicking themselves to the surface, or holding too much air in their lungs, or dump air from their BC, etc etc etc. Why do I weigh 250 lbs and dive with 6 lbs of weight while the muscle bound guy weighing 175 needs 18 lbs (in warm Hawaiian waters). Just something to think about as you dump 'extra' weight into your diver's BC

 

[Phil_C]

I do acknowledge that this statement is true, but I don't think it should be. Most 'buoyancy' issues are not related to buoyancy at all; they come from poor technique in the water. I see every day divers of all skill levels and I refuse to carry extra weight, if a diver is having problems staying down help them to stop kicking themselves to the surface, or holding too much air in their lungs, or dump air from their BC, etc etc etc. Why do I weigh 250 lbs and dive with 6 lbs of weight while the muscle bound guy weighing 175 needs 18 lbs (in warm Hawaiian waters). Just something to think about as you dump 'extra' weight into your diver's BC

Ouch - I just cannot agree with this - buoyancy is a matter of physics and you cannot change it! - yes you can have other habits or problems that cause you to not sink, such as finning upwards etc. BUT if you have not taken enough weight with you to counter your air use, then no amount of dumping air, breathing out or anything else will keep you down when the air in your tank depletes.

You ARE going up, going head down and finning might help slow your ascent, and yes, you may be able to hold your depth by keeping swimming down, but that is no way to do a safety stop, the extra exertion at the end of a dive could increase your risk of DCI. I'm afraid saying I can do it, so other divers can do it as well and I won't carry extra weights, ignores the fact that many vacation divers do not have your levels of buoyancy control, may dive without doing a proper weight check and therefore not take enough lead, therefore it is sensible as a working DM to have bit extra.

As an aside when I do a drysuit dive with a newer diver I almost always take extra lead so I can help swim their legs down and prevent a runaway ascent when they have managed to to add too much air to their drysuit and inflate their legs, go head down and not able to dump air. Yep a drysuit diver is taught to deal with this, but when a newer diver doesn't correct it straight away it is reassuring that I can make myself negative enough to be able to easily help them get under control.

For the OP I think overcoming your problem is a question of practice, this is the first time in any diving course that you have been asked to deliberately overweight yourself, up to now the emphasis has been on getting yourself perfectly weighted. Coping with the extra weight is just a matter of practise and getting used to it. I prefer to dive with my correct weight, but if I have to add some then I don't find it too hard to manage my buoyancy. But then I spent a lot of time on shore dives taking extra weights in order to set out markers for navigation courses and so on, so have had plenty of practise of carrying extra weights, then dropping them, adjusting my buoyancy, doing it again, and then at the end of the exercise picking the all up and swimming then in again.

Try something like that - do a shore dive and carry three or four extra weights. Put one down, adjust buoyancy, and swim on, repeat and adjust buoyancy etc. etc. Then turn around, and collect them all up again, adjusting buoyancy each time. Do that a few times and it will start to become second nature.

Good luck with DM training - Phil.

 

[DiverGuam]

OP, the very first and most crucial point in your favor is you have unlimited diving available. Go somewhere shallow with someone else who is playing around with this and start with absolutely no weight at all. Put the weight on a float, or borrow a lift bag, and hang all the weight off it. If you have clips weights, everything gets easier.

Do this exercise in 10 feet/ 3m of water. Keep you fins up behind all the time. Don't touch bottom (ever, but especially when you are doing this exercise.)

Data Point 1: Keep trying to descend with your legs way out of your way. Fully exhale, and recognize that leaving the surface the most important thing is to fully exhale to descend. if you cannot descend, then add weight one by one until you can descend only on a full and complete exhale. That amount of weight, with adjustments for wetsuit compression, and tank ballast swing with a full to empty tank, is one data point to know.

That weight is data point one. (say 2 800g weights)

Data Point 2: Now swim around at ten feet picking up and dropping off weight and recognizing that (assuming a wetsuit) you can actually wear less weight once underwater because of the wetsuit compression. Take off all the weight, and see if by concentrating on full exhales and fins up out of the way, you can stay down. Keep taking off weight until you can just barely stay down with fins out of the way, and fully exhaling.

No kneeling.

This weight is data point two. (say 1 800g weight)

Once you have played with the weighting from above and done a bunch of descents and ascents, concentrating on doing them only with timing your breathing, then you will learn to keep still, and get your lungs empty, to descend.

Data Point 3: Blow the pressure off your tank, till you get to a bare minimum. What that bare minimum is, is up to your judgment. I would always blow the tank down to 100 PSI/7 bar to make sure I know how buoyant the tank I am diving is when empty. Take off weight until you are just able to maintain the depth.

That weight is data point three (maybe back to 2 800g weights)

Now, something to think about: You already know that you need less weight to stay under water than you do to descend. Which means the bare minimum weight to keep you at 10 feet will not be enough to get you back down.

Lather, rinse, repeat. To help run some ideas through your head, do this exhaling to descend exercise with your inflator hose disconnected so you have only oral inflation available to add air to your BCD. This will help you understand stuff.

Have fun. It gets easier.

 

[snowmaker]

If a few extra pounds is causing problems your really going to be in trouble when you have a student that starts to go up or down and you need to control them.

We do weight checks with students before the first dive, but I always overweight myself for OW classes so I can more easily control a student that's having trouble with buoyancy.