Soft option

[penguinator]

What are the negatives of a mono being too soft? Is it only a power issue? Or also troubles at depth or technique?

I am asking this because my first mono was way too hard for a beginner mono-er like me, and am contemplating either a 'soft' or a 'medium' for my next fin. Ill just keep my stiff mono for body-surfing

 

[rslomkow]

I have a soft and and I have tried a hard (Waterways) as far as I can tell the only downside to soft is acceleration and top-speed. It is much easier for getting a good technique with a soft one.

Though I am still a newbie to the whole mono-fin thing. The Pelizzari book suggests starting with a soft.

The hard/sprint (Waterway) fin is not nice for swimming in my opinion. You can only kick down the return has no power.

I have done some river swimming against the current with my M2 LD. That is a good judge of where are you really getting the power out of your fin. The amplitude is suprisingly shallow, but the frequency is still not that bad.

With a soft fin you have to increase the frequency more to get the power you want. That frequency increase might consume more o2 than you like for going deep or may be too difficult to reach to do the sprint you want.

But I recommend the soft for playing around it easy to get used to, and you can be more relaxed with it.