Extreme Dolfinism

[Spearo_the_Hero]

Ok, I finally was able to use the DOLfins today for the first time!

Man, these are not easy for me to use!

I got in the water, strappped 'em on...started to swim...but the heels of my feet seemed to be pretty loose against the footboard, which when kicking felt not right as it creates disconnection. So i tried to help it by wrapping the velcro thing around the little wing of the thing that sticks out a little.

Then as swimming and diving i was WAY off in going where i wanted to go...veering to the side and kicking but having the blade slice like a knife through the water.

Oh man, i got scared a bit when i tried to test it at depths of 20m + when i was coming up i totally misssed the kick in that even the slightest of angle i couldn't get any trust to go back up (sliced through the water) so i can see the danger of this in that one must master its technical use...for this is a VERY TECHNICAL P.O.E. (piece of equipment).

I would try to look at my kicks from underwater (head fully tucked in) and noticed that surely my feet need to be perfectly straight as to keep the blade from slicing all over the place.


after about an hour and some underwater cursing, i grabbed my fiberglass bifins to have a familiar dive. Well upon that i really noticed the drag of the fins and noticed yes it does need more 'power' to use, where as the DOLfins needed not much effort so I guess it really does have potential. But also i was scared of having the blade get caught up on the reef and keeping me down stuck and trapped.

More to come this weekend as i'll be trying to master these suckers out. but so far my fiberglass bifins get me down at depth faster.

I guess I'll read the instructions on it now!

 

[Spearo_the_Hero]

Re: Extreme Dolfinism IN PRACTICE

Day 2 today......

Well I grabbed my bifins after 90 minutes of practicing with the DOLfins to at least feel the benefit of normal diving..

Please let me remind everybody I am NOT in some pool doing dynamic, which i have no interest in. I freedive in the open sea. Therefore there is current in the water...hidden currents, counter micro currents, streams of cross currents and areas of no current. That being said, it makes the DOLfins (so far) hard to use because the current can get the angle of the blade off--and just a little bit off will cause it to slice in the water.

It was not easy going down straight and i was always kind of twisting around going down and also coming up...possible due to the current. I hate it because i have a hard time just going straight!

Overall today was better, i did notice a nice stroke i was trying requiring little effort by using the calves only....just like the CALF PRESS machines they have in the gym.

I really hope these will work in the open sea for freediving and spearfishing...but so far they are underperforming my bifins by about 25%...which means LOTS of work to make 'em work better than them.

These DOLfins are very TECHNICAL....and i assume would require about 5-10 hours of use to get proficient. I have 3.5 hours with them and suck major ass with them.

I dive everyday so i really want to make these work for me.

 

[monkeyhatfork]

do you have past experience with standard monos, or just bi-fins ive seen hardcore bi-fin people strugle a bit with normal monos, I have the opposite problem, I started out with monos so have had to try and build up my ability with bi-fins which was much weaker and with whatever mono it is you are going to give up some of the agility you have with bi-fins, not to say your observations arent legit, there are many muscles required to keep a mono on a strait path that arent nessesary with bi-fins and therefore may need time to develope

 

[Spearo_the_Hero]

Hi There,

I've never tried a monofin before and plan to get it down eventually.

Surely bifins require lots more power but with all the uncertainty in the movements of the DOLfins and its accompanying mental stress along with missing many proper stroke/kicks it takes a toll on the dive for me.

So maybe this thread will turn out to be a journal on my progression with the DOLfin classics. :martial

 

[Spearo_the_Hero]

Re: Extreme Dolfinism NO MERCY

Ok....day 3 and I almost lost my life with these GD things.

I do OK swimming on the surface parallel to the water. But going down and coming up there is so much twisting, turning and knifing to render the dive ineffective.

I decided to take these down to my normal threshold-of-comfort level at 25M. I'm glad I didn't hang around down there but wanted to get up ASAP to be safe...but god dammit i thought I couldn't make it up! 75% of my kicks were all knifed and sliced through the water not to allow any thrust or purchase to get movement. I F'ing had to use my arms to climb back up to the surface and with thoughts that this dive was the end...that the SmithAreospace engraved fin would pull be down to Davy Jones' locker!

That was the scariest dive of my life! yeah, i just could not get anything to work on that attempt to resurface. Immediate thoughts where to never use these things again.

I stayed in the water for another hour and tried to baby back into the movements of the DOLfin...I did notice I was doing much better only when my head is fully tucked so as to allow me to see the damn blade of the fin. Somehow this visually adjusts my position and i can get it to usually make efficient strokes.

I need some GD instructions..how about some videos on how to exactly stroke these things when going down and coming up?

Bottom line....take these DOLfins out in the open sea not knowing how to use them and trying to deep dive by yourself is just too dangerous.

The most positive thing about these is they are very easy on the muscles and don't require much power...but they absolutely need 100% perfection...THERE IS NO FORGIVENESS...THERE IS NO MERCY with these suckers!

 

[DivingDane]

hmmm not be critical but a couple of things in that last post were a bit scary...

A) Diving Deep by yourself, shouldnt be happening in the first place... particularly with a piece of equipment you arent comfortable with. should have a buddy/safety there for emergencies.
B) trying something without knowing how to use it first???

i havent used the Dolfin range yet, so it is quite possible the isues you are having are unique to the design , but it is more likely that you are not used to using a monofin. ALL monofinners i have met have had exactly the same issue you are having with your fin when they first start. in reality i would recommend getting in a pool and learning the technique first before taking the unit out into an environment with so many variables.

just my opinion, look forward to seeing how you progress.

DD

 

[cdavis]

To reinforce the, learn in a controlled environment first.

I never had the directional stability problems most monofiners have at first, tried 4 or 5 different fins, pool and easy open water down to 20 m or so, no problem. Used a monoflap a fair amount in the pool before taking it out in some open water with current and slightly challenging conditions. I never even suspected that this would be a problem, but it was, very much. Pretty soon I was thrashing around, not unlike you. Monos demand a pretty high skill level for tricky conditions, considerably higher than I had. You can learn, but give it some time.

Connor

 

[Spearo_the_Hero]

Thanks for the comments and glad that these DOLfins have a chance yet after all!

Yes, you are right these really need quite the skills. I didn't think the regular monofins would also act similarly in that they would thrash around so its good to hear the case from others.

 

[REVAN]

Dude - Please go to a pool or other confined water and learn to swim with the DOL-Fin before taking it out in the open ocean. Most importantly, dive with a competent dive buddy.

Monofins are very different from bi-fins and it is important that you learn to control the fin or you will not be able to make it work for you. Start by reading the material in the owner’s manual, especially the sections "Control" and “Controlling Fin Twist and Side-Slipping”. Practice the exercises for controlling your body’s roll position with your feet constrained together. Remember that the fin is literally flying through the water behind you. If you try to force it into position, it will fight back and you will end up slicing it sideways. You need to learn to control your body independently of the fin and then lead the fin into position. Control your body first and the fin second. If your upper body is under solid control, it will be easy to get the fin to follow behind you.

 

[Spearo_the_Hero]

Re: These things are like a car SPOILER attached to a foot rack one told me!

Good to hear from you REVAN!

Sure...easy to use these in a baby's swimming pool in flat water just below the surface where a user can easily establish himself with the pool bottom and the surface...but can't practice any diving and turning, where it count's for freediving. Anyway, i have a pool right on my reef before it drops down but how else can one learn diving with these things at any normal depth for turns and such?

It would be nice and BEST to have some visual instruction as i learn visually so I recommend you make some more youtube videos showing how YOU perform EACH METHOD...cuts down on the steep learning curve for all of us using this. Can you please post videos on how to use these instead of democlips of how these "fly' thought the water?

I'm not flying with them....i'd like basic instruction shown in application not in text.

Your manual has some words I don't understand such as "..strokes the fin orthogonal to his upper body..." What the hell is orthogonal? GD, i have to look up in google dictionary for that word....ok i just checked: it means:

or·thog·o·nal
  [awr-thog-uh-nl]
–adjective
1.
Mathematics .
a.
Also, orthographic. pertaining to or involving right angles or perpendiculars: an orthogonal projection.
b.
(of a system of real functions) defined so that the integral of the product of any two different functions is zero.
c.
(of a system of complex functions) defined so that the integral of the product of a function times the complex conjugate of any other function equals zero.
d.
(of two vectors) having an inner product equal to zero.
e.
(of a linear transformation) defined so that the length of a vector under the transformation equals the length of the original vector.
f.
(of a square matrix) defined so that its product with its transpose results in the identity matrix.



Also you talk of UP KICKS and DOWN KICKS......what is that? Upkicks towards the surface or Upkicks toward the divers body?

Also in the manual "THE FIN SHOULD ALWAYS BE STROKED IN A DIRECTION THAT IS ORTHOGONAL TO THE SPAN OF THE HYDROFOIL FIN. IF THE FIN IS TWISTED IN ROLL RELATIVE TO THE DIVERS UPPERBODY, AND THE DIVER INAPPROPRIATELY STROKES THE FIN ORTHOGONAL TO HIS UPPERBODY RATHER THAN ORTHOGONAL TO THE FIN'S SPAN, THE FIN WILL SIDE-SLIP AND TEND TO INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF ROLL MISALIGNMENT IN THE FIN WITH EACH DOWNSTROKE.

Ok, i don't know what that means! Please do a whole video on Orthogonal for us.

Looks like i'm the only tester of this fin....otherwise there should be more people in here talking about their experiences.

Also MY HEELS feel like they are too loose and not secured on the baseplate. I think there should be something made to keep the heels planted on it otherwise that strap does not keep the heels firm but with each kick the heels get off of it.

 

[REVAN]

Spearo,

I’ve started a new forum thread titled “DOL-Fin Information Exchange”. Please direct comments and questions on your learning experience that you want exchanged in a public forum to this new thread. The thread “Extreme Dolfinism” is dedicated to the development story of the DOL-Fin Orca monofin and these comments relating to your learning experience with the DOL-Fin Classic are off-topic.

As a beta tester, you agreed to test an engineering unit and provide constructive feedback on the product and training information. I need testers to work through problems they experience in learning to dive the DOL-Fin and let me know what techniques you think would have made it easier to learn. Personally, I’ve been using these products for so long that I don’t remember how I learned to use them in the first place. As a result, it makes it difficult for me to know how best to approach the problems new users may have. The content in the Owner’s manual was my best attempt at putting into words how to learn to use the product, but it may be missing key information that is so automatic to me that I don’t even realize that it is critical to the learning process.

Since many others have used the DOL-Fin successfully, I’m sure that this is simply an issue with learning balance and control. A bicycle can work great when you learn how to work with it to let it help you balance. However, if you don’t learn the technique and instead fight the bicycle, it will very quickly dump you on the ground. Likewise, when you learn how to balance and control the DOL-Fin, it will be as easy to use as is a bicycle. As with a bicycle, balance and control will become automatic and you won’t even have to think about it. The techniques are applicable even when not using a monofin and, I think that once you learn them you will naturally maneuver more efficiently through the water even when using bi-fins. In the mean time, you will need to have some patients. I will try to work with you to discover a training method that works.

Ron

PS- Orthogonal is a word, which in the context used in the manual, pertains to right angles or perpendiculars.

 

[Spearo_the_Hero]

Thanks REVAN....i will continue to betatest on an almost daily basis with these and hope they will increase performance with what I do; and once finally properly used, I hope they will really add to my freediving.

Going over to your new thread to keep the purity of the thread since it is not dedicated to your DOLfin Classic.....WAIT...let me go to post #1...OK, i see absolutely no mention of the OCRA at all in that post--let alone until the 4th page.

Does this mean that the DOLfin-classic is NOT part of "EXTREME DOLFINISM"?

I got them to pursue being an extreme dolphin -- more like "Stunted Dolfinism" or "Hydrofoilically-Challenged DOLfinism" for me at this point.

Are these things for pure freediving or SCUBA?

 

[Jon]

Ron,

If your sending out test units to be evaluated then maybe you should send them to people who are currently using monofins so they have something to compare them to- and have already gone through the learning curve of using a monofin so know what to look for when evaluating a new one. For instance, I may not be a world record holder, but I have been diving with monofins for the past 9 years and am currently on my 7th fin. I've also had the chance to use many other fins. Some were decent and others sucked pretty bad (Lunocet), but I have some experience to judge them by. There are many (MANY!) other divers on here with vast monofin experience that might prove to be more beneficial to your design process.

Spearo, you need to search You tube for one of the hundreds of monofinning videos out there to help you fine tune your technique. Maybe you should pick up a beginner fin to start with before you start ripping apart something as high-end as the DOL-fin. You wouldn't let someone who just got their driver's license to start test driving race cars and let them write up reviews on how the did, or didn't work. I'm sure that you are a fantastic diver with bi-fins, but a monofin is a different animal. You could even go to Florida and take a monofin clinic with Martin- who would also be one of the first people I would want to test any new monofin before I would buy it.

Jon

 

[trux]

Spearo, you need to search You tube for one of the hundreds of monofinning videos out there to help you fine tune your technique.

The following monofin technique video tutorial may be perhaps quite useful for the DOL-fin too. I have no experience with the DOL-fin, but if there are some important differences to the classical monofin technique, then I suppose Ron will comment on it: APNEA.cz - Monofin Training Tutorial

 

[Spearo_the_Hero]

@ Jon.....yep driving this Ferrari on my learners permit!

Well I think that this DOLfin may be totally different than a traditional Monofin in its application.

Anyway, these are meant to replace monofins as the wave of the future, right?

Gimme some more time ....i know these have potential and I was just offering my initial experience in reflection of my initial expectations.


@ trux...thanks for the link!

 

[REVAN]

Well, I've been quite busy at work on getting these diving fins done and ready to sell. But it looks like I'm going to miss the November target by a little. I just had too many delays with going to the world championships and other unplanned jobs that came up. I have parts and tooling jobs dispatched that will not be completed in time to do anything with them before I head off to the DEMA Show. So, it's looking like things won't be available until sometime in December at the earliest.

I'm also still struggling with the cost of the Orca. At present, it is still requiring too much time to build the fin to be able to sell it at the target price. It is requiring too much time to trim and fit the parts to get everything to fit together correctly. I'm fairly confident that I will eventually be able to develop my tooling to the point that it will work out, but I don't want to take a bunch of orders for something that I'm uncertain of being able to deliver. Instead, I think I will develop my tools and techniques as I build the fins. I will sell the Orca's individually as they are completed. When I become proficient enough to make them without selling them at a profit loss, I can start taking orders for the fin.

One of my delays was that I interrupted my work on the Orca to design a new prototype DOL-Fin product. I wanted to bundle the fabrication of the new design's parts with one of the other jobs from the Orca project in order to keep the costs down, but that required holding the Orca job until I had the new design ready. The DOL-Fin project has gotten to where it is through continuous development and improvement. This is just a continuation of that philosophy. If none of the existing DOL-Fin designs are quite right for you, be patient. Maybe, something new will come along that will be just what you were looking for.

 

[Spearo_the_Hero]

Well, I sure have been diving every day. I've been using my BiFins again more lately and I find that i'm just more relaxed with them. Also, i've discovered that diving down vertically with these DOLfins really requires a neck weight, which I don't have and don't like wrapping my belt around my neck. Ha!

But so far in terms of performance for rec. freediving i've been able to be at par with the DolFins and the regular fiberglass $100 capt. Nemo fins of mine, which perform really well for me.

Rec. freediving on the reef with these DOLfins is pretty cumbersome on the reef and certainly will damage the reef much more especially as I'm diving down checking out the interesting species like turtles and little caves.....the blade of the DOLfin just gets in the way too much and hard to stay still with it and not knock off parts of the reef.

So in the past month i've come in being much better at using the dolfins, where I rated them at 40-50% inferior to my bifins, in terms of my overall performance to NOW being equal to my bifins in water without current.

But I will say a little bit of current in the water MAKES IS MUCH HARDER but where there is no current (rare) then I go up and down really nicely and easily..something where having fins you don't notice the loss of efficiency in the strokes against the current. Therefore, it is my idea that these are really best for those mastering DYNAMIC trainings in the pool, where one deals with no currents and can easily keep the fins orthogonally positioned.

 

[REVAN]

Current should not be an issue unless it is just a psychological barrier. I've used the DOL-Fin in currents so strong that the other diver's from the boat were literally crawling along the rocks to get back to the boat's anchor line. I simply aimed my nose into the flow like a salmon and had no problems with the dive in spite of the fact we were scuba diving in currents exceeding 1 knot in a rocky and turbulent ocean-zone. All my CWT training and target dives at the 2010 World Championships in Okinawa were also conducted in strong currents.

All monofins dive deep better when using a neck weight. That is just how it is. If you are not exceeding 20 meters it won't make much difference because you will be kicking and therefore controlling through most of the descent. Beyond 20 meters depth, the long coast without fin inputs will not be stable unless you use an appropriate sized neck weight. Controlling the instability in the coast is much more easily achieved with bi-fins. It is easy enough with bi-fins that many bi-fin divers may not even realize that they are actively controlling an unstable mode during the coast.

Monofin divers have to be a little more creative about handling this instability. Aside from using a neck weight, many monofin freedivers will add small rudder-like fins to their monofin's blade to give them more yaw control authority to overcome the instability (they already have plenty of pitch control). The DOL-Fin Classic and HP have struts that double as ventral fins, or rudders, to achieve the same thing. The DOL-Fin Orca has a thick rudder-like keel section to give it effective yaw authority. The important thing to remember is that the instability will be there in any case where a neck weight is not used to correct the imbalance. Without the neck weight, a clean coast into deep water will require active steering inputs from the diver to keep the body streamlined and aimed in the direction of the descent. If you ignore the issue and do not actively add rudder inputs to maintain your attitude, you will slowly diverge in yaw and end up falling sideways through the water. This is true regardless of the type of fin being used (unless it is a freakishly buoyant fin which overcomes the buoyancy of the air in the divers lungs).

 

[Fondueset]

Spearo - it sounds like this may be your first monofin? If so a lot of what you describe is your monofin learning curve. Separating that out from the actual performance of the Dol-fin may not be possible in your case.

I've used monofins exclusively for a few years and it took almost a year for me to really finally get my technique together. Pete Scott (Laminar)came here and gave me a couple pointers that completely changed everything.

When I got my first monofin I really did not think it was any better than bifins - it didn't seem particularly efficient or fast. Nowadays I pretty much cannot stand bifins - I use my monofins for photography, spearfishing, depth, long surface swims etc. etc. But it took quite a lot of practice.

Last time I was in the blue hole I dove with no neck weight. I was neutral at 15m and maintained very slight undulations to keep the fin behind me. My first time down there it was a real problem - I kept getting sideways in the water even with my neck weight - which is only about 2.5lbs. The fin I used then was much lighter but got negative at depth and wanted to pass me.

The neck weight also helps shift your center forward a little in horizontal swims - which is helpful in power transfer.

 

[Spearo_the_Hero]

Thanks Fonduset....wow a whole year to master monofins! Man, i guess I don't feel all that reluctant then after only a month.

Well at first I was hoping I could get it down in a few days, ahah!

@Revan.....the straps have come undone on me a few times during dives.....not fun...pure Davey Jones! I think it is because the ankle strap that wraps around to the front is taking up too much of the main velcro space.