Freediving w/ weight belt?

I love snorkelling and free diving as much as I do scuba diving. I practice breath-holding using various exercises, static and dynamic and have done for some time. I know several and have seen more people who use a weight belt while free-diving.

However, I had never done it myself until the other day. Mainly because I am naturally negatively buoyant and I am lucky enough that I work in a place where it is rare to need a wetsuit.

I didn't like it.

I always feel like I am expending half my 'breath' on a descent and that when I turn to head for the surface I know that I will get there. However, when wearing weights (2kg) I felt like I had to expend more than 'half my breath' on the ascent and that I had to be much more conscious of the fact that my descent had been made unnaturally easy.

I guess I have 2 questions:

Is this common and something you become accustomed to?
Do you feel like you are increasing the risk that you are undertaking by doing so?

My free diving experience is limited, but I would think you want to be neutral even when free diving. The important part is always coming back to the surface. If you have to expend that much energy, then you're too heavy. I will wear weight on occasion when free diving, but only to compensate for the neoprene I'm wearing. If I'm without neoprene, then I'm without added weight.

When I am diving, i weight myself to be neutral at about one-third of max depth I am diving to. For ex. if i am diving to 100 feet, I want to be neutral at about 30 - 35 feet. experience will be your greatest aid in finding the correct amount of weight. Please, err on the side of caution and your safest rule of thumb is to dive with the least amount of weight possible.

As a general rule I weight myself when freediving so that when vertical in the water at the surface, I float at eyeball level with full lungs. This leaves me neutral at about 15 ft. in a 7mm one piece and at about 30 ft with a 3mm one piece.

It works well as it leaves you positively bouyant on the surface where you can rest between dives and leaves you positive to some degree down to about 15-30 feet where you become neutral. Being positively bouyant in the last 15-30 ft is handy in the event of shallow water blackout as it makes it easier for your buddy to get too you promptly without the risk of sinking deeper. Weighting this way also does not leave you excessively negative at depth and feeling like you need to exert yourself excessively to ascend.

I don't know what I'd do without a wetsuit.. I'm a sinker also.. a 3mil suit/no weights puts me nuetral at somewhere around 25-30ft fresh water. I wonder if it would be better to wear somekinda floatation vest then if I wasn't wearing the suit. I know I hate treading water at the surface so would definetly have a float along. I've seen body builders that couldn't float even with a water skiing vest on.. (o.k., it was a bit undersized, but still I thought it would surely hold them up) You may want to be considering floatation instead of weights to end up nuetral at 25-30 ft.. it sure would make your surface time easier and make that turn around from the depths seem less intimidating.

Hi All,

Bouyancy is a great topic....

A dive has three phases, unless you compete then its two phases.... Descent, bottom time and ascent. Usually the ascent is less pleasant because it arrives at the end of the dive cycle. Weights should be used in a way to safely distribute effort across all phases. The correct weight should make descents easy, bottom time manageable and ascents consistent.... and you should be able to float comfortably on top while breathing up.

I was trained to be neutrally bouyant at 33ft(10meters). This was to allow for an efficient acceleration on descent into the sink phase at 1meter per second while providing for an ascent phase at the same rate. This made both calculating depths and durations rather straightforward.

Although this is generally the practice of a competitive freediver, that kind of training is especially useful to beginning and intermediate divers as they can concentrate and develop the skill set directly and intensely before applying it to speargunning or whatever.

With a 3mm suit and depending on your own density, 5-8lbs is adequate and if you use 1lb weights you can really fine tune. You should be able to take your D3 down to 33ft and hang there. The attached pic shows me at 33ft standing on my head watching an eel under a coral... my hands folded on my stomach, neither sinking nor rising....

Of course, there are other concepts to explore. For example. I loaded up with about 10lbs plus a 1lb knife and about 3ft of chrome chain with a clip on one end. I was Heavy, Man.... There were some dolphins nearby and I chose to just let myself sink with just a little forward momentum and then I balled up the chain and reached forward with it in my hands. The effect was that I was sinking against my fin blades and ballasting heavy in the middle and forward. So I didn't really have to do much work but I was getting the most glide forward for the sink rate that I could muster without actually burning 02 by swimming. I had some very long and rather deep submersions...

The reason I had the chain was to test the response of dolphins to the high range of sounds that come off rattling chains.....

lungfish:

The reason I had the chain was to test the response of dolphins to the high range of sounds that come off rattling chains.....

Click to expand...

And...

Response seems to be species specific and is related to several other factors. Basically, in the best conditions, the animals become intoxicated, for lack of a better word...
You can't test this with a regulator on and you have to have the attention of the pod so you must get into their groove at depth....