A Question

[3-Ring Octopus]

Hmmm...I've always felt the natural way to descend was in kind of a chest-down "natural" position. (That is to say, chest down, bent slightly at waist and knees with fins out at the ready behind you...so that basically all you have to do to really get going is extend out a bit and kick...)

Are your feet really floating "up"? (over your head so that you're inverting?) Or are they just going "out" behind you?

Cheers,
Austin

 

[loosebits]

I have two words for you .......ANKLE WEIGHTS............try it you'll like it.

If we can be of assistance please let me know.

Happy Diving

 

[ZzzKing]

I think solving the problem of descending too fast by introducing another problem of descending vertically isn't the correct approach. I have no clue why they teach to descend vertically (and I'm not even sure if they actually teach that at all or if that's the way students tend to descend and no one corrects them).

It is taught. There are numerous references to ascending and descend vertically in the PADI AOW manual. Not sure about the other agencies, though.

 

[loosebits]

I did my OW classes through NAUI about 10 years ago. I frankly can't remember what I was taught as far as what orientation to use to ascend and descend.

What is the reasoning reasoning behind teaching vertical descents? Isn't it pretty well accepted that the proper way to descend is how you plan on diving - hoizontally?

 

[2905luvsbubbles]

I did my OW class through SSI and don't really remeber being taught to descend any way in particular. I was more fascinated about what I was seeing and worrying about staying with the instructor, I never paid attention to the position I was descending in. As you do more dives, you will get more comfortable descending. You will also find, that depending upon where you are diving, you may use different positions in descending. A entry and descent off a beach will be different than going down an ancor line in an open ocean. The best advice is to dive a lot and become comfortable diving.

 

[ClayJar]

Sounds like your fins are trying to help you. I descend like a really slow skydiver (body horizontal, knees bent, fins above/behind me (and parallel to my body). I find that I have a lot better control that way. Additionally, you get to see where you're going a lot better, and diving horizontally makes buoyancy much less a pain (as you present much more surface area to resist up and down motion). Ear clearing is easier for me if I'm horizontal (especially since it seems to work best for me when I tilt my head "up" toward my back).

The only reason I can think of to have your fins below you while descending is to kick toward the surface because you're too negative (such as when you're diving doubles and you forgot to put a wing on your backplate).

(I've heard someone teaching people to descend vertically and then kick once to stop your descent when you're a few feet off the bottom, so as not to stir up the bottom. I descended in front of that group and watched as, pair by pair, they descended exactly as taught... and each stirred up the mother of all silt storms. I didn't think it would help to tell the instructor that fin wash travels more than a foot underwater, so I didn't bother.)

 

[phrixus]

One thing that has not been mentionned is due to biology, for some reason women seem to have 'floaty feet' which is what your problem sounds like to me. What happens when you try to do fin pivots? Do your feet float then? I've seen a lot of female students with this problem, the majority of whom are wearing full foot fins & shorties. Try decending horizontally & see if that's any easier. I would try to avoid ankle weights unless you can actually feel your feet dragging you to the surface (more likely to be a problem with drysuits).
If you look at the pictures on this page you will see that my feet are elevated slightly in pretty much all the pictures regardless of the suit I wear.

Good luck with the rest of the course
:O)

 

[ClayJar]

I've seen a lot of female students with this problem...

I was going to ask (in all seriousness) if it *is* a problem, as my experience is ***immensely*** biased toward observing people diving upright and stirring up silt like a V-22 Osprey executing a short takeoff on a dust-covered field, but then I considered the kicks. Having your feet up and behind you seems quite the natural position for frog kicks, modified flutter kicks, and all those other "technical" (hehe) kicks, but does it impair the plain flutter kick?

It took a bit of experimentation for me to figure out how to dive with my feet up and behind like that, and my buddy spent several dives figuring out how to get her feet up and her body level so she could do the non-silting kicks. I'd always considered it an annoying advantage some people were blessed with when they could dive that way naturally. Obviously, it's not just getting your feet to sink for fin pivots that's the problem, as it would be rather... Dilbertian... to spend all sorts of effort to try to get your body to trim out in a way you never want it to trim out again after that.

Anyway, *is* it the flutter kick that's the problem? (I suppose it might make someone more prone to bicycle kicking, eh?)

(Of course, since I'm now diving dry, at least in cold water, I'm having to do all the experimentation over again to get trimmed back to normal.)

 

[pengwe]

I was going to ask (in all seriousness) if it *is* a problem, as my experience is ***immensely*** biased toward observing people diving upright and stirring up silt like a V-22 Osprey executing a short takeoff on a dust-covered field, but then I considered the kicks. Having your feet up and behind you seems quite the natural position for frog kicks, modified flutter kicks, and all those other "technical" (hehe) kicks, but does it impair the plain flutter kick?

The first few dives I did, my feet were 'floaty' enough to make me head down vertical in the water, if I let them. I felt like I was fighting them all the time. It wasn't very comfortable.

 

[ClayJar]

Gotcha. I've only be like that in a drysuit.