How Much Weight Do I Need?

How much weight am I going to need?

The all important question. Buoyancy control is one of the arts of diving and in order to master it you need to be weighted properly.

Unfortunately most instructors strap enough weight on their students to sink a small ship. While this practice ensures that the student won’t float to the surface, it cripples their ability to become good divers.

Determining the right amount of weight for a given diver isn’t as easy as you might think. Many factors determine how much weight a diver should use on any given dive and that number will change depending on the diver’s equipment and the conditions they’re diving in.

So how do you determine how much weight you need?

Here are some tips to help you find out how much weight you should wear.

How Much Weight? - The Rule Of Thumb

A good rule of thumb is that a diver wearing a full 3mm wetsuit with an 80 cubic foot aluminum tank should wear 10% of their body weight in saltwater and around 4 pounds (2kg) less in freshwater.

Keep in mind that this number is a rough starting point rather than a law of diving.

What Factors Change The Weight You Need?

The actual amount of weight you should wear depends on other variables such as your fat-to-muscle ratio. For example, a person who weighs 200 pounds (90kgs) with 30% body fat is going to be much more buoyant than someone who weighs 200 pounds (90kgs) with 15% body fat.

In addition, your equipment will change the amount of weight you need as well.

If you wear a thinner wetsuit or use steel tanks instead of aluminum, you’ll need less weight. However if you use a 100 cubic foot aluminum tank (the tank will gain buoyancy as you use the air in it) or a thicker wetsuit, you’ll need more weight.

As I said, the rule of thumb is more of a starting point.

How Much Weight? - How To Test It

There are a couple of ways to test your chosen weight configuration, but they all require you to be in full gear with a tank filled with 500 (34 bar) to 800 psi (55 bar) of air.

The first test can be performed on the surface.

Move your body into an upright position on the surface and let all the air out of your buoyancy compensator. Then inhale deeply and let your lungs fill with air. With your lungs full, you should float with the water line reaching halfway up your mask.

If the water line is lower than that, you’re too light. If the water line is higher than that, you’re too heavy.

Now let the air out of your lungs and sink down to about 20 feet (6m) (if you don’t sink, you’re too light). Take a few normal breaths with your body in a horizontal position. You should rise and fall slightly.

If you float back to the surface, you’re too light. If you feel your butt being pulled down below your torso, you’re too heavy.

buoyancy control is the art of diving. But you’ll never achieve it unless you’re properly weighted first.

Do a weight test whenever you use a new equipment configuration and log the results in your dive log for future reference.

You won’t believe how much easier diving is when you’re perfectly weighted.

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