Trim problem: foot heavy

[g1138]

+1 body positioning. Before messing with trim weights or shifting weights off your hips, try changing your body position. A diver planking out in the water will always sink head first or feet first.

Bending you legs up below the knee, and holding your hands in front of you will usually correct your feet sinking problem. Speaking from first hand experience

 

[*dave*]

Think of your body as a teeter totter.

To the right of center of gravity(CG), you have buoyancy exerting an upward force. This buoyancy comes primarily from your lungs and BCD.

To the left of CG, you have ballast exerting a downward force. This is mainly your weight belt, but can also be fins.

Being over weighted will have the effect of making trim harder to maintain: You will need more buoyancy right of CG to compensate for the additional ballast left of CG. Weighting is important and, sometimes, it's not a matter of being foot heavy, but head light.

The teeter totter can be balanced, as has been mentioned, by shifting ballast(trim pockets, steel tank), reducing required buoyancy or shortening one end of the teeter totter(Bending at the knees) and lengthening the other end(Extend the arms).

Minor issues with ballast distribution can be compensated for with techniques such as fin sculling and body positioning. One of the biggest culprits is dropping your knees. Drop your knees and your ass will follow. Try maintaining a gentle arch from your shoulders to your knees.

 

[DBailey]

Also try to get someone to look at your trim.

For me, when I was truely horizontal, it felt like I was really heads down. What felt horizontal to me was a bit heads up.

 

[pjhansman]

Bending your legs up below the knee

That sounds seriously painful.....

 

[rivers]

i speak from experience when i say to move your weight from your waist to your tank straps. i have the hollis 5 lbs trim pockets. I mount them on either side of my tank as mentioned before, and that helped to improve my trim.

 

[BabyDuck]

double-check one thing first -

go to 20ft or so, get neutral, and hold still. still still still. see if your feet or head go down.

this is because it is a natural instinct-y thing to fight to get feet-down if you're head-heavy. then sometimes you'll think you're feet-heavy when you aren't. so make sure it's really a feet-heavy issue before you run through the excellent ideas upthread.

 

[spector39]

This is good stuff, thanks! Some things I'll consider are weight pouches and lighter fins. Regarding body position, I have thought about this and tried many things in the water and no matter how I position myself, my feet go down, even when I bend my knees. I also played around with removing some of the weights off the belt and held them in my hand while my arms outstretched in front of me, and only then I was perfectly balanced.

 

[SnorkelLA]

I don't think this has been suggested yet, but try neutrally buoyant fins. Switching to Aeris Velocity x3's really helped my trim out.

 

[g1138]

That sounds seriously painful.....

I mean up as in relation to lying on a coffee table, stomach down.

 

[diveprof]

I've been working on trim and buoyancy in the pool and have found that I am consistently foot-heavy in the water. I wear a weight belt since my BCD does not have weight pockets, and if I adjust the belt higher on my waist it helps a little, but not enough. And, the belt falls back down eventually anyway.

Any ideas besides getting a new BCD?

Would lighter fins fix the problem? I'm using some fairly heavy fins now. I have been looking at the APS Mantarays.

Thanks!

Several thoughts:

Under your signature you list your experience as being 0-24 dives. My first thought would be to look at your overall weighting. If you are diving overweighted, you end up having to add signficant air to your BCD. With your weights in your weight belt pulling your waist downward and the air in your BCD going to the highest point, you may find yourself moving through the water at a more upright (feet lower - head more upward) position. This is not uncommon in newer divers. Getting your weighting correct is where I would start. Adding more weight in trim pouches if you are overweighted may not truly address the basic problem - it will just give you more weight to carry arround and may compound the overall problem.

If your weighting is correct, then:
1. consider 7mm boots if you do not have them. You are in Texas and some of those lakes can be cold at depth so 7mm boots are not a waste (I dive my 7mm boots everywher - Coz, Bonaire, Roatan, etc.). You didn't say what fins you are diving. Some models like the Scubapro Jet fins are great, just negatively bouyant (7mm boots take care of that)
2.Shift the tank a little higher (towards your head) on your BCD. This changes the weight balance.