The Great 'Ankle-weights Debate'.

[scuba g]

Originally Posted by mala

moving a 1lb weight hundreds of times consumes a considerable amount of energy although there will be fitness benifits in the long term.
i can understand students trying them out -but surely its not a long term solution.

A soluton to bouyancy? My suit is neoprene so the feet feel a bit bouyant, so I wear the weights to cancel that, it physics and not physcological (not being a smart arse here!), wearing them and then when your "used to the suit" taking them off, means your feet will feel slightly more positive. Its like a DIR verses non DIR, suits some and not others. I was caving last year and I didnt wear my ankle weights on advice of my instructor, and as I was sidemounting and using my suit for bouyancy, I didnt like how my feet were slightly more bouyant and "loose", were the ankle weights help keep the suit tight around my ankles.

[mala]

Originally Posted by scuba g

A soluton to bouyancy? My suit is neoprene so the feet feel a bit bouyant, so I wear the weights to cancel that, it physics and not physcological (not being a smart arse here!), wearing them and then when your "used to the suit" taking them off, means your feet will feel slightly more positive. Its like a DIR verses non DIR, suits some and not others. I was caving last year and I didnt wear my ankle weights on advice of my instructor, and as I was sidemounting and using my suit for bouyancy, I didnt like how my feet were slightly more bouyant and "loose", were the ankle weights help keep the suit tight around my ankles.

loose i can understand-i wear extra socks just to get that tight feeling.
my suit is a neo as well.
a small weight at a distance from the c of g has the same effect as moving a large weight (cylinders or rb) a small distance.
each to his own.
for me they would be a last resort.
saying that one of the the most important things is to be happy and content with your kit while diving and if this means ankle weights then so be it.

dive safe.

daryl

[Al_Star]

Originally Posted by scuba g

When finning correctly you use your full leg, a 1lb on each leg IMO doesnt make much of a difference, as for being physcological, my personal view, no, but cant vouch for others. The physical balance in water with them does make a difference, i have taught students drysuit and PPB and give them the option to try them and not, if they perform better with/without then thats they way they should dive, down to the diver.

Ankle weights tend to be used by people who feel they have buoyant feet - because they are running their buoyancy on a drysuit. The clue is in the name - you should run your buoyancy on your BCD and keep yourself dry with your drysuit. Running with enough gas in your suit to prevent squeeze means no floaty feet sensation and means divers can actually acheive horizontal trim in a drysuit. This means they don't kick up the silt when diving.

As for the weight on the feet making no difference to effort, well of course it does. If I want to work on fitness at the gym then I add more weight and more resistance to the exercise. It doesn't take a sports scientist to tell you that ankle weights make your finning more of an effort and therefore make you work harder on a dive and use more gas.

Decent fins can help such as jetfin style fins - they are negative so you get a bit of a counterbalance. The extra weight which adds more a little more effort to your finning is easily offset by the fact they let you swim more efficiently.

Having actually swum for 9000 feet in one of my last cave dives there was no way I could have managed it with blocks of lead around my ankles and my old Mares quattro's!

Cheers
Al

[John63]

Originally Posted by Al_Star

As for the weight on the feet making no difference to effort, well of course it does. If I want to work on fitness at the gym then I add more weight and more resistance to the exercise. It doesn't take a sports scientist to tell you that ankle weights make your finning more of an effort and therefore make you work harder on a dive and use more gas.

Decent fins can help such as jetfin style fins - they are negative so you get a bit of a counterbalance. The extra weight which adds more a little more effort to your finning is easily offset by the fact they let you swim more efficiently.

Serious question here.

On the assumption that some lighter fins give similar propulsion to jet fins, whats the difference between weight on your ankle + lighter fins, and no lead + heavy fins?


Cheers, John

[Clare Gledhill]

Don't confuse weight with propulsion. Most people wear ankle weights as they believe that they cannot achieve stability without them - not for propulsion.

Jet fins are slightly heavy - and do act as a marginal counter weight at the end of your leg (300 grammes or so in water) - but reasonable trim can be achieved in the flimsest of fins - or indeed without any at all.

I'm constantly told of people who find that their latest 'all singing all danicng' fin which costs god knows how many hundreds of pounds is faster than a jetfin. Well it may be in a straight line over a very short distance. But as Al says, swim for any distance in a cave, especially with flow, and you learn that a jetfin does the trick for propulsion and manouverability. That's why most US cave divers who have to swim distance in flow conditions wear them - not just DIR divers.

Jetfins - cheap, reliable, just a p.i.t.a. for your luggage allowance

[purple vonny]

There have been 140-odd posts on this subject since 2003. Some people wear them and like them, some people don't.

There is no right or wrong.

How we dive and what we wear and how we look seem to have been discussed to death on this thread.

Shall we now the let the subject rest in peace?

(I'm off to pack my ankle weights to go diving- I don't want heavy jet fins and I don't care what I look like or what anyone thinks of me)

[Clare Gledhill]

Well in that case we better shut down the board and go diving. If no new diver is allowed to ask a question which has been 'done before' then I think we've probably 'done' most of them by now.

[mala]

Originally Posted by John63

Serious question here.

On the assumption that some lighter fins give similar propulsion to jet fins, whats the difference between weight on your ankle + lighter fins, and no lead + heavy fins?


Cheers, John

interesting-probably not much.

extra bits of kit to snag,forget or fall of.
as the weight has a smaller moment arm you would need a little more lead than fin weight.

[purple vonny]

I was just thinking that this thread has been going for 5 years with every opinion under the sun already discussed on it.

The general opinion is that some people like them and use them and others think they are wrong and you don't need them.

But we could see if it could be made the longest running thread ever

[Diving Dude]

Originally Posted by Clare Gledhill

...If no new diver is allowed to ask a question which has been 'done before' ....

First option should be to use the search feature.