When selecting a diving weight belt, consider the type of diving you will be doing and make your choice accordingly. Before knowing how heavy your weight belt should be for diving, you will need to do a buoyancy test. It is crucial to never dive with a weight belt alone, as it should never be dangerous. For freediving, the belt should sit higher on the body due to its construction and design, which helps to enhance ballast below the water.
A weight belt is the oldest weight system used for scuba diving and is simple and affordable. It works just like a regular belt by fastening around your waist. You can easily adjust the amount of weight on the belt. The ideal weighting is calculated by using the equivalent of 110 of your weight when using a 5mm suit in saltwater and a 12-liter tank. We recommend getting your weighting right to the nearest 0.5 kg (1.1 lb).
A scuba weight belt typically consists of a strap to which different pieces of lead (usually weighing 12 kg or 2-4 lbs each) are attached. In freshwater, most divers need 6 to 8 percent of their body weight in added weight, while in saltwater, which is denser and will add buoyancy, most divers need around 5% of their body weight. Weights in the 0.5-1 kg1-2 lb range are ideal for more evenly distributed weight around the body and allow for more streamlined freediving. A rule of thumb for scuba diving is 10% of your body weight for cold salt water and 5% for warm salt water diving.
In summary, choosing the right weight belt for scuba diving is crucial for safety, comfort, and optimal buoyancy. It is essential to target a surface weight target and have several extra 1 lb weights for added buoyancy.
📹 Freediving: How Much Weight?
How much weight you need for freediving depends on a couple of things like body composition, wetsuit, how deep you dive and …
📹 3 tips on choosingthe right weight belt for freediving
In this video we show you what kind of weight belt you should choose for free diving. We also show you how much weight you …
Excellent article! I’ve always wondered what the minimum weight I need based on my BMI. Ideally it would be cool to go down with 100# weight belt that is tethered to the boat and once you arrive at your target depth, then use the quick release feature on the weight belt (which is attached to the boat); then you can ascend easier…but that’s cheating.
Very nice article Gert. As freediving spearfisherman we do use – as you correctly stated – more weight than a freediver would do. This mainly due to freediving in different depths throughout a session – in shallower waters we will need the ‘additional’ weights to be able to stabilize our body (against buoyancy) when e.g. laying on the sea floor (ambush hunting), but also more weights will help when there is some currents at the bottom. We use lots of weights compared to freedivers. For freediving one needs to overcome the first positive buoyant meters and then go vertically down. Doing a clean duck dive as you described nicely also in other articles would catapult us into the depths 🙂 In spearfishing we follow fish, or stay in some layers of water (sometimes shallower, sometimes deeper) so actually we never have the perfect weighting 🙂 – unless we stay at a certain depth throughout a session. For a 3mm wetsuit (and depending on our body density) we might use 6kg – in shallow waters (<10m) even more. Thanks for sharing your experiences and know-how - love your articles. All the best and keep it going brother !
Winter I was diving Frc/rv. During April tried diving with the kilos i was using last summer full lung and I was too buoyant. I like to think I gained lung capacity and not gained Kilos of fat :D. Sprinting to 18m then finning slow to maintain 0.6m/s speed of descend is no fun, always bring extra weight especially first dives of the season folks !
I know that it’s been a year since you made this article but still very usefull. I just started with freediving last month and already went to Deepspot Poland were people experience free fall from 5-8 metres. Me? I finally started freefall in 14m after I was neutral boyent in 12m😂😂. But I made it I reached 21m at the end of the weekend being almost complete beginner. I am definitely going to continue, love your articles, learnt Frenzel from you and Adam Stern. Thanks a lot for your content❤.
Hey Gert, I bought my first wetsuit 5mm. I have a lot of experience with freediving and spearfishing, but I always did it with a rash guards. Well the first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t stable in my floating posture, I had to constantly compensate for rolling almost all the time. I used a belt and a back harness. On the belt there were 7kg and in the back harness 4kg. Since I did use weights before and never had rolling problems, what do you think it could be?
👋🏼, i am a good swimmer and i‘m freediving a bit, not on a line. I‘m diving to depths of ~10m, but it feels to me as would i use to much Oxygen to dive down (because of the „Power” i Need to swim). (My weight is 80kg and i am not a Bodybuilder;) ) Here‘s my question: should i take weights (1-2kg?), even though i don‘t use a wetsuit? Will this help me, or is it useless/ making diving worse? I hope you get my Point and understand my english. I would appreciate an answer and i liked your article! Bye ✌️
Gert I see very confusing articles about surface buoyancy check for freedivers and where water level should be on deep exhalation. Some say it should be on cheek… some say head can be below the surface. Would you mind as a professional instructor to advice what’s the best way to check before reaching to 10m?
I’m thinking about upgrading my weights to some that are covere up in silicone. I use 6kg on my belt. I got 1 2kg siliconise one I wanna keep and 2 normal 2kg once I wanna swap out for silicone once. My question is what is recomended to use. 2kg a piece weights or 1kg a piece weight, but still enough for 6kg total. So eitet (3x 2kg) on the belt or (1x 2kg + 4x 1kg)
Hi Gert! I have a question: I like to freedive the way most people spearfish, meaning in shallow water and the purpose is to stay in the bottom seeing the fish. So, I have two options regarding weights – I either wear too much weight to be neutral around 5m (for me it’s something like 6kg in a 5mm suit) or I have a safer amount of weight and don’t take a full breath. I was taught in my freediving course that when I exale on the surface the water level stays at around the eye level, and that happens with around 4.5 kg. But it sucks to have to hold on to the rocks in order to stay down…
Nice article but you are talking as if competitive apnea diving is synonymous with freediving when in truth this is just one specific type of freediving. I’ve been freediving for over 50 years now but in all that time I have never really had any desire to simply following a line down into the depths to see how deep I can go and then coming right back up again – if there is nothing to see I have no reason to go there. My only interest when diving is in exploring colorful reefs in warm tropical waters, and for that purpose I only use about a 5 or 6 pound weight belt (soft weights) and no wetsuit. Don’t get me wrong, being a very competitive person myself, I can totally understand why some people like doing these depth competitions, I just don’t understand why this is the only thing people picture these days when they hear the term “freediving”.