Freedive weighting?

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My rule of thumb is a kilo of lead for each milimeter of wetsuit and whatever else you have on. Haven't had any problems so far. Believe I have read that in a freediving book somewhere (Umberto's book?)
 
You should start out with about 4-6 lbs less than you scuba dive with. Be ready to adjust the weight when you are on site.

That is cylinder and BC dependent.
 
I ended up being 6 #s less than what I wear with my Ladyhawk BC and 80AL tank and 2# less than with my steel. I was overweighted and man, my legs were sore the next day finning to stay at the surface the entire time! :)
 
In freediving you should always be positively buoyant at surface. Because no matters how hard you work at depth, you shouldn't struggle at the surface where you should be recuperating...
Usually, I weight myself to be neutral at 10 m.

For me with my 5.5 pants and 7 vest, that's around 8-9 Kilos. But that depend of your stature also....
 
Not only being positive at the surface, but also it's wise to be positive in the last 5-10 feet.

Personally, I tune the amount of weights to match my buoyancy when I'm not using
any wetsuit in salt water. This is also being neutral (or close to it) at 30ft for my case.
Every body type and wetsuit have different buoyancy characteristics, so you will have to find
the amount of weight yourself.

Just make sure you get your technique right also. If you are duck diving, make sure you get
it right. Wrong technique may trick you to add more weight than necessary. Make sure somebody watches your fins/legs to make sure they are parallel and close to each other. You
should be able to glide down for a while (8-10ft???) with a single duck dive move...

I (178-180lbs) use a 2-3mm surfing-wetsuit with 4lbs in summer/spring in Southern California. I could probably drop 1 more pound, but my max depth is 30-35 feet most of the time, so it's good.
 

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