Knowing how difficult it is to achieve just the "right" kind of weighting with a freediving weight system, while keeping it comfortable, the Lobster Weight Team decided to conduct an entertaining experiment to see how useful the neck weight is and how important it could be for freedivers.
We invited Dmitry Mazepin, master of sports, Russian champion of CMAS 2017, repeat winner of the open St. Petersburg AIDA Cups 2016-2019, of Russian CMAS Cup 2018 and of Russian Championships AIDA and CMAS 2017 and 2019, to participate in the experiment and to test the equipment.
The goal of this experiment was to demonstrate how far could the same person dive with and without various diving equipment, by only once pushing off the pool side.
In the first lane, the diver swam without any equipment.
In the second lane, the diver swam using a self-made weight or a tire, which is used by 90% of all freedivers. Tire weight: 3 kg (~6.6 lb)
In the third lane, the diver used a Small Lobster Full Set. For more precise results of the experiment, we offered him the professional equipment with the same weight as the tire - 3 kg.
As a benchmark we used the results shown by the diver, without any equipment. So, here are the final results:
- without the equipment: 8.1 m (26.57 ft);
- with the tire: 11.4 m (37.4 ft), which is 28% more than the standard;
- with the Lobster Weight System: 12.0 m (39.37 ft), which is 33% more than the benchmark.
Note that this experiment was done as an independent evaluation, not for advertising purposes, because we wanted to examine the difference between a self-made weight system and a professional one.
At the end of the experiment, Dmitry made a beautiful remark: “A trained athlete, most probably, could have dived farther, using the tire as a weight, but I felt more comfortable with the Lobster Weight System because it didn’t shift.”
