Estimating Your Weight Needs
Rule One for Peak Performance Buoyancy is
that you don’t wear more weight than you need.
Your BCD may be able to offset
a bit of excess weight, but
every gram you wear that you
don’t need adds to your drag
and magnifies the adjustments
you have to make throughout
your dive.
How do you know how much
weight to wear? Easy – you perform a buoyancy check in the water. There’s absolutely no
other way to precisely figure it out. For Peak
Performance Buoyancy, you check your buoy-
ancy: 1. Any time you change your dive gear
configuration. 2. Any time you change dive environments (especially fresh water to salt or
vice-versa) and 3. Any time you
haven’t been diving for a while.
We’ll look at the five steps for
checking your buoyancy in a
moment, but what if you have
no idea of how much weight
you need with a specific gear
set up? To make your actual
buoyancy check go quickly, you want to estimate the weight you need so you only need to
make minor adjustments. Use the following
guidelines to get you in the ballpark:
Basic Weight Guidelines
These guidelines assume an average build individual in salt water. Decrease the
weight somewhat for lean individuals, and increase it for heavier individuals.
Exposure Suit Type
Start With
Swimsuit/dive skin
.5 - 2 kg/1 - 4 lbs
3 mm/1/16 in. one piece wet suit,
shorties, jump suits
5 % of your body weight
5 mm/3/16 in. two piece wet suit
10% of your body weight
7 mm/1/4 in wet suit w/ hood & gloves
10% of your body weight, + 1.5 - 3 kg/3 -5 lbs
Neoprene dry suit
10% of your body weight, + 3 - 5 kg/7 - 10 lbs
Shell dry suit, light undergarment
10% of your body weight, + 1.5 - 3 kg/3 -5 lbs
Shell dry suit, heavy undergarment
10% of your body weight, + 3 - 7 kg/7 -14 lbs
Salt/Fresh Water Change
Body Weight
Add (going to salt) or subtract (going to fresh)
45 - 56 kg/ 100 - 125 lbs
2 kg/4 lb
57-70 kg/ 126 - 155 lbs
2.3 kg/5 lb
71-85 kg/156 - 186 lbs
3 kg/6 lb
86-99 kg/ 187 - 217 lbs
3.2 kg/7 lb
PRINT
Peak Performance Buoyancy 213