The big picture is not that we're trying to achieve 2X4-like trim, but rather stability in the water; we want to be able to pick when and where we'd like to hover at any given moment. With that in mind, weight distribution and trim all play important parts; then we use our various finning techniques to help maintain position. It's not about being frozen in a block of ice; it's about constantly tuning while we dive. Like keeping a bicycle upright in traffic
Weighting plays a huge role. Having your weight in the right location will prevent you from feeling to head heavy or foot heavy. If you maintain trim (head up and knees up), then you'll be in the proper position to assess your weighting; keep in mind that dropping your knees or head will cause a diver to go into a knees down position, regardless of weight distribution. So keep in good trim when you're attempting to assess your own weighting.
Now assess your weight distribution: if you feel like you're going foot up, head down, you need to move weight back (a common feeling for divers in heavy steel doubles, i.e. E8-130's
). If you feel that your feet drop, no matter how much you keep your feet up, you need to move weight forward. Because everyone's body is so different, there is no one solution, and this is where experienced instruction is important. The more you see people bouncing around, the more you learn how to help them, and I've seen a lot of people bouncing around
.
Note: For the coldwater divers, you don't want a shrink wrapped drysuit as you do this either; you need to maintain a volume of air in the suit such that it's not dumping out of a fully open valve, but not empty. Empty suits reduce comfort, and also make your feet very negative, contributing to foot down trim. You need some gas in there.
Once you're comfortable with your trim, get used to kicking. There are no points for not moving
. In the ocean, there is current, surge, and other water movement. I often find that during ascent, I have to constantly do little backwards kicks to keep myself from running into my team. While working on the bottom, surge kicks us around, so we're constantly having to reposition. If the guys in the DVD weren't finning, they would drift off the frame, which, while funny, wouldn't amount to much of an instructional video. I agree that extraneous movement is inefficient and wasteful, but if it keeps you in positiion, with your eyes on your team, and with little impact on the environment, then it's working. What I always recommend to my students in Essentials and Fundamentals is to pick something on the bottom that's more or less stationary (an anemone, a sea cucumber), and try and watch it for a while(1,2,3 minutes). If you can observe it without disturbing it or the environment around it (no kneeling
) then you're well on your way towards a new "happy place".
Joe Talavera
