- Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to Scuba Diver Magazine.
My name's James.
It is so great to see all of your smiling faces out there.
If you're new to this channel
I'm a professional diving instructor
and digital content creator
and Scuba Diver Magazine
who brought me over from my own channel,
Divers Ready with one simple goal in mind
to help make you a better scuba diver.
And in this video,
the latest in our series that we call Dive Like a Pro.
We are focusing on trim.
So later in this video
I'm going to be giving you
my one single biggest piece of advice
for getting your trim down absolutely pat,
but first I want to answer the five most common questions
that students have for me about trim.
Starting with,
what do we even mean by trim?
In the simplest terms
trim is your body position in the water.
So you can think about it as
scuba diving with good posture.
And when we're underwater
we want to be in as hydrodynamic of profile as possible.
And the reason for this is because
that means that every kick we make
is going to be the most efficient.
Trim also covers things like
streamlining your equipment configurations
to make sure you don't have
a huge amount of drag being created
which obviously makes kicks less efficient.
There's a reason they don't make submarines
in the shape of a well decorated Christmas tree.
Why is trim important?
Well, as we said in other videos
in the Dive Like a Pro series,
trim is one of the four core fundamental skills
of scuba diving.
Together with breathing, propulsion or finning
and buoyancy control.
So the thing with those four skills is
they are all interconnected.
So if your trim is off,
how does that affect your buoyancy,
your breathing and your propulsion?
Well, as I already mentioned,
bad trim is going to mean that
you're going to have to kick harder to overcome drag.
If you have to kick harder,
that means you're going to have to
increase your breathing rate
which means you're going to consume your gas faster.
How does trim affect buoyancy?
Well, trim covers things like
the correct positioning of weighting
so that you can use the minimum amount of weight you need,
which means you're passing the less gas
through your buoyancy and so on and so forth.
All of these four skills are completely knitted together.
And if one of them is out of whack,
chances are the other three will be as well.
So what position should I be in?
Well, the best position for a scuba diver underwater
is to have a torso as horizontal,
parallel to the surface as possible.
You want a slight curve in your back
so that you can angle your hips forward,
but keep your chest and the rest of your torso
in a nice flat position.
And then if you're using the frog kick style,
which we covered in our finning videos,
which I'll link up above there somewhere,
you're also going to want to have your thighs
in the same plane as your torso,
with a 90 degree bend at the knee
and a 90 degree bend at the ankle.
So when you frog kick
you're getting the maximum amount of efficiency as possible.
And the rest of your body is nicely aligned.
If you're using the flutter kick style,
perfectly acceptable,
but you want to make sure that that mid point
where your legs are crossing each other
is where both your legs are horizontal
and again in line with the torso.
where should your arms be placed?
Well, I see a lot of divers that just tuck their arms in
and fold them across the chest there.
That's okay.
It's not best practice,
but at least you're streamlining,
you're not creating excess drag.
I prefer to have my arms out in front of me like this
for a couple of reasons.
Number one, there's no air in my arms
and there's no area in my legs.
So that means I'm counter balancing my lungs nicely.
And the second reason is I've got all my instruments here.
I've got my compass,
I've got my computer
so I can reference everything at a glance.
Plus, I mean, if we're being honest,
you just look bad ass.
Your head should be in a neutral position,
but tilted up slightly
so you can see where you're going obviously
but there shouldn't be a need to crane your neck,
the slight bend in your back should lift your chest enough
that you can hold your head in a nice, comfortable position.
What are the common mistakes divers make
when considering their trim?
I think the first mistake is
not considering their trim,
not thinking about it as a skill
that actually needs to be worked on and refined.
And also not testing their trim.
How do you test your trim?
Well, it's very simple.
All you do is get nice and shallow and close to the bottom
but without touching it obviously
and hold a hover,
and just hold a hover in one exact position.
And if you're not pitching or rolling or yoaring
nautical terms there for you people,
then your trim is probably okay.
And it means that the weight is evenly distributed
around your body.
Once you've got that hover under control,
give a couple of kicks.
Did you go straight forward remaining at the same depth
and inline with the way that your body is facing?
Or did you veer off to one way or the other
or go up or go down?
In which case your trim is off somewhere.
Go back, make adjustments to the placements of your weight.
Maybe shift some accessories around
if you're carrying a lot of gear with you
and try and get as balanced as possible
in that hover position.
But the challenge people have when judging their own trim
is it's not really a measurable thing.
You can get the feeling,
you can run that test and so on,
but it's not like breathing where you can look at your gauge
and see how much you're actually consuming.
So more on this a little bit later on
on how you can actually manage your trim a little better.
I think another mistake people make
when trying to refine their trim
is not considering their equipment as part of it.
They focus on getting their body in the right position,
but don't actually consider
that their equipment choices
play into how their trim comes out.
For example a backplate and wing
is always going to serve you better
than a big bulky jacket style BCD.
And then you've got things like your accessory mounting
where is your octopus hose being routed?
Where is your knife being mounted
and your reel and your SMB.
If you're down there looking like a one man band
your trim is never going to get to where it needs to be
regardless of how good your body position is.
So consider making all of your equipment choices
with streamlining in mind.
We can't be having these one man band looking divers
that ain't right.
It ain't right.
Even your choice of fins plays into your trim.
I have several different sets of fins that I use
for different types of diving,
fresh water, salt water
negatively buoyant fins,
positively buoyant fins,
neutrally buoyant fins
just to make sure that my legs stay in the right position.
Obviously, if I'm in a dry suit
I want a nice heavy pair of fins to keep my legs down.
So I don't go inverted.
If I'm traveling and I'm just diving barefoot
then I want the lightest possible fins I can.
So that I'm not too tailed down.
When it comes to trim,
that's a real pro level tip.
One pair fins does not cover all styles of diving.
So yeah, you're going to have to make
some different gear choices.
And then the last question of course
is what can I do to perfect my trim?
Well I think I've packed this video
with quite a few hints and tips already for you
but the honest answer there is just practice,
practice, practice, practice.
There is no easy answer.
There is no shortcut.
There is no magic wand.
I'm sorry to have to tell you that
but the only way you're going to get better at trim
is doing a dive,
refining your setup
refining your weighting,
refining your body position
and then doing another dive
and keep going and keep going
and it's a constant work in progress.
I don't know if there is such a thing as perfect trim.
I know people who have better trim than me
and it's something I'm always working on
even as a dive professional.
But that kind of brings me to
my single biggest piece of advice
as has become our habit with this series of videos.
I like to throw in at the end,
my one biggest piece of advice
on the subject that we're talking about
and today it's about improving your trim.
My biggest piece of advice for any diver
looking to get a better body position in the water
is to use one of these.
In my opinion an action camera
is an absolutely essential tool
to help you improve your trim
and your body position in the water.
It's very hard to have that out of body awareness
to see what you look like.
And it's just a great tool for that purpose.
I use all the time with my tech students.
I want to make sure that they know
what they look like in the water,
and you should do the same for yourself.
Get yourself an action camera,
give it to your buddy,
have them swim around you in 360 degrees in all planes.
And that way you get a really good sense
of how you look in the water
just hold a hover and have them swim around you.
And then you can review the footage
and make changes based on what's actually happening.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed this video.
I really packed it full of as many hints and tips
as I could have on the subject of trim.
If you did learn something
please give this video a big old thumbs up.
Don't forget to make your next dive on that subscribe button
if you haven't done so already.
And until next time,
my name is James for Scuba Diver magazine.
Just over here,
I'll put some other videos that I've created
for the Scuba Diver Magazine channel.
And if you want to see more content from me,
my channel Divers Ready is linked in the description
to this video below.
Until next time, dive safe,
dive often
and dive like a pro.