While we are very familiar with weight-belts worn around your waist or inserted into your BCD while scuba diving, not too many new divers are familiar with or aware of the benefits of diving with ankle weights.
Ankle weights come in many forms but usually comprise of narrow rectangular or cylindrical neoprene or nylon pouches that are filled with lead shot as weight that allows the weight puch to contour around the scuba diver’s ankle, having a quick release buckle to attach and detach the weight easily. Ankle weights are always worn in complement to other kind of weights such as a weightbelt or integrated weights.
Sea Pearls Ankle Weights (1 Pair)
So How do Ankle weights benefit a diver? Well there are a couple of reasons for opting for ankle weights:
Ankle weights reduce leg and fin buoyancy and minimizes the stress on a divers back for a more comfortable dive. Often divers find their legs floating upwards, and find it difficult to maintain buoyancy because of this. Ankle weights help solve this problems.
Your diving position is important to good diving, and maintaining a horizontal position is ideal. Having your buoyancy off or your legs floating upwards gives a diver a skewed trim or profile underwater. Drag and resistance underwater is far greater than it is in air owing to the denser medium, hence it is crucial to reduce drag and resistance which will not only help in saving air and extending bottom time but reduce your overall fatigue. If your legs are too high then there will be increased drag which will slow you down and cause fatigue. Ankle weights are a good way to help you change your position in the water by redistributing your weight, reduce leg buoyancy and drag.
Durward Ankle Weights
Divers that require a greater amount of weight often find it difficult to carry the lot around their waist, and so ankle weights help here by allowing the diver to redistribute some of the weight to his/her legs. This is often a huge relief for divers with smaller waists or back problems that find it harder to carry all the necessary weight on a waist worn weight belt.
Drysuit divers frequently require ankle weights because the legs of a drysuit are filled with air. The result is that the legs want to float up automatically so ankle weights add negative buoyancy to the ankles and help bring the legs down into a correct horizontal position.
Fill Your Own Set of Ankle Weights Up to 3 LB. Each
So what should you look for when purchasing Ankle Weights? Divers should ensure that their ankle weights should fit snugly (not tightly) around the leg and have a one hand easy release buckle to allow you to ditch the weights in case of an emergency. Don’t opt for too heavy ankle weights as you don’t want to tire your legs out faster or cause your horizontal position to shift downward on account of your heavy leg weights.
