 No matter what the advertisers and magazines say, there's not all that much difference in dive masks. They either fit you or they don't. And even with all the weirdness they are putting on snorkles, they're basically just pipes to breathe through. But when you get into fins you start seeing some major variations with actual performance ramifications. And what the average diver is unaware of is that there are fins out there that are so completely radical that they practically change the whole nature of diving. Here's just a quick browse over some of the radical alternatives for your propulsion system.
FORCE FINS
Radical is what Force Fins have always been all about. Their first model, like fifteen years ago, was obviously revolutionary. It was forked, of odd construction, and bend the wrong way. But it was plain vanilla compared to their current product line, some of which look downright alien. But don't mistake this kind of wild looks for the sort of cosmetic gimmicks you see in so many snorkles or wetsuits: these designs have always been performance-driven, propelled by designers who don't mind breaking completely out of the envelope. The cool thing is: most of it is just common sense.
For instance, they ask if you've ever seen a fast-swimming fish with a squared-off tail. You think about it, or start paying attention to it, and you realize it doesn't happen in nature. The speed fish have forked tails, always. What should this tell us? Apparently nothing that most fin manufacturors have ever listened to. Force Fins have all, from the start, featured forked ends like a marlin's tail. Although current models take the concept to new extremes.
The Force Fin Folks also have a revolutionary, if completely common-sense approach to applying power to propulsion. Most fins end up being driven by calf muscles, which are fairly small, and among the easiest to cramp and hardest to develop anywhere in the body: just ask the body builders. You can pretty easily demonstrate to yourself that the power of a flutter kick comes from the downstroke, not the upstroke. Just try kicking a soccer ball backward with your heel. This is because the big muscle along the front of your thigh is the most powerful in your leg, one of the strongest and most explosive in your body. So why, they reasonable ask, are most fins hooked or cupped so that they appear to scoop water on the weak upstroke?
In addition to generating thrust in a different way, hooking into the downstroke and snapping back so as not to hinder the upstroke, Force Fins shift the muscle load to bigger, more efficient, less easily overworked muscles. Force Fin laughs at the current mania for big, super-stiff "power fins".
What such fins do is REQUIRE more power to get movement. You might think you're going faster or stronger because you feel more strain on your calves, but you can get the same effect by shifting to a higher gear on a bicycle going up a grade. You bog down, start to overwork your muscles, and don't go any faster. Force Fins are designed to mimimalize pain and strain, produce more speed and power from less effort, and move water more efficiently. Force Fin has charts and stats about thrust performance on their website. that are definitely worth consideration.
MONOFINS
If fishtail fins from Mars aren't radical enough for you, how about just using one fin? I should point out monofin swimming is the fastest that a human being can move in the water. They are lengths faster than competitive surface swimmers, and blow away underwater swimmers with ordinary fins: some finswimmers can move up to 7.5 miles per hour. Finswimming is a growing form of swim competition, and has been nominated as an event in the 2004 Olympics. Monofins might be the future of underwater swimming. Being able to move faster for the same effort and oxygen expenditure is enough, but monofins, like Force Fins but even more so, change the whole physical nature of swimming. With the feet together on the fin, the only stroke possible is the dolphin kick, the powerful force behind the butterfly stroke. The full body undulation of the dolphin kick moves the propulsive force not only up from the frail calves to the thighs, but beyond to the powerful muscles of the trunk.
In addition to what this means for sheer performance, the toning effect on the body is spectacular, with conditioning and strengthening spread over a wide area, including the abdominals, lower and middle back, gluteous, and quadriceps. Form follows function and swimming like a dolphin can make you look like a powerful, sleek marine mammal. Ocean finswimmers have reported dolphins swimming and playing with them as they weave through the water. In a few years most free divers might be blasting down with poweful strokes of their big "tails". Finswimming represents the same sort of cyborg human efficiency supercharger that we have seen in bicycles, skates, kayaks, and vaulting poles. Suddenly you can do superhuman things, move at maximum efficiency. Monofins are a very direct route to becoming a successul marine organism.
For more information and links about monfins and finswimming, check out the Snorkle Bum Finswimming Page.
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