What I tell people who ask this question is that using your bcd to get to what you think of as neutral, you should be horizontal in the water and during the course of the dive make a conscious effort to just STOP. Count to ten slowly while breathing normally and see if you go up or down. If you do, make a very minor adjustment by adding/venting air and see if that fixes it, rinse repeat until you get it. From there, start swimming again and see if you go up or down. If you do, there's likely something fundamentally wrong with how you're trimmed. If you go up, the most likely culprit is overweighting. If you go down, the most likely culprit is overweighting. How is that possible? Well, if you're carrying too much weight below your bodies pivot point which is usually around the center chest while weight belts and weight pockets are normally as the waist, it will drag your lower body down so when you fin you go up. If you have the weight slightly higher, but still below the pivot point, you have too much air in your bcd which will most often put the bubble by your butt dragging your lower body up so when you fin you'll go down.
There are gear configurations that make it easier to trim properly using the gear, and there are body positions that you can attain that will help, but without proper weighting to begin with, neither one is really a long term solution.
To get weighted properly, the first step is to learn how to descend properly. You shouldn't be moving your feet or hands at all. Your bcd should be completely empty. With those conditions met, you should exhale completely. In this case completely means you exhale, then keep exhaling then exhale a little bit more. Many newer divers retain air in their lungs that they just don't need. If you start falling like a rock, you're overweighted. You should get the first couple feet above you using the above method after which you take a small inhale, exhale completely again and by now you should be descending at a comfortable rate with 8-10' above you and you can start breathing normally. The end result of the above if you're not consciously trying to do otherwise is the common 'butt first descent.' The fix for it is pretty easy but takes some practice. As you drop those first few feet, straighten out your torso and bend your knees so your body makes an L (that's a L not a Z). As you do that your upper body should come forward with the tank being the weight that's stabilizing you into a horizontal position (skydiver position) pushing you instead of pulling. From that posture you can see the bottom coming, your body acts to slow your descent since there is more surface area trying to get through the water and you can add tiny bursts of air to your bcd to control the descent. Once you get to depth, you should be able to stop yourself a la Mission Impossible and start your dive!
All of it takes constant practice and fine-tuning until it's something you're not thinking about anymore. For your next couple dives, if you make your buoyancy control the goal of the dive and what you see secondary, you'll see drastic improvement. Another thing that might help is to have someone shoot video of you so you can see how you're trimmed and match that against how you think you're trimmed. There may be a disconnect there you can work on.
It's late and I'm tired, but I hope that makes sense!
Rachel
P.S. Hi, Diver0001!! Good to see you
There are gear configurations that make it easier to trim properly using the gear, and there are body positions that you can attain that will help, but without proper weighting to begin with, neither one is really a long term solution.
To get weighted properly, the first step is to learn how to descend properly. You shouldn't be moving your feet or hands at all. Your bcd should be completely empty. With those conditions met, you should exhale completely. In this case completely means you exhale, then keep exhaling then exhale a little bit more. Many newer divers retain air in their lungs that they just don't need. If you start falling like a rock, you're overweighted. You should get the first couple feet above you using the above method after which you take a small inhale, exhale completely again and by now you should be descending at a comfortable rate with 8-10' above you and you can start breathing normally. The end result of the above if you're not consciously trying to do otherwise is the common 'butt first descent.' The fix for it is pretty easy but takes some practice. As you drop those first few feet, straighten out your torso and bend your knees so your body makes an L (that's a L not a Z). As you do that your upper body should come forward with the tank being the weight that's stabilizing you into a horizontal position (skydiver position) pushing you instead of pulling. From that posture you can see the bottom coming, your body acts to slow your descent since there is more surface area trying to get through the water and you can add tiny bursts of air to your bcd to control the descent. Once you get to depth, you should be able to stop yourself a la Mission Impossible and start your dive!
All of it takes constant practice and fine-tuning until it's something you're not thinking about anymore. For your next couple dives, if you make your buoyancy control the goal of the dive and what you see secondary, you'll see drastic improvement. Another thing that might help is to have someone shoot video of you so you can see how you're trimmed and match that against how you think you're trimmed. There may be a disconnect there you can work on.
It's late and I'm tired, but I hope that makes sense!
Rachel
P.S. Hi, Diver0001!! Good to see you
