The underwater sports are comparatively young. The first All-Union (in USSR) contest in underwater sports took place in 1958. By the beginning of 60s the mainlines developed into the finswimming on the water surface, the underwater swimming with aqualung, the diving lengthwise and the underwater orienteering (on open water).

The underwater swimming is a technical sport. It means that the equipment is of great importance on a level with the training of sportsmen. One of the most important part of it are the fins used by sportsmen and sportswomen.

At the dawn of this kind of sports the sportsman used two flippers – one for each leg. The sportsman couldn’t show a high speed in such flippers because they are more for bathing than for sport swimming. At led to the low results and it forced sportsmen and there coaches to find more perfect forms of the fins.

It gave rise to “stickers”. One “stick” was a rubber on a plate of fiberglass. The sportsman used two flippers as before and the swimming technique was crawl. The results raised a little but they did not answer the desire of the sportsmen. The subsequent experiments brought rise to monofins. There were two rubbers on one plate of glass. It bound the movements of sportsmen but by the time it led to sharp rise in the results. The reason was the replacement of a crawl by a butterfly stroke, what was much more effective.

Then the development of fins paused. The sportsmen and their coaches came to nothing more than a selection of size, rigidity of the finplate, its’ form and location of rubbers on the plate.

At the end of XX century the new type of monofins was created as a result of bold experiments. The main difference became a rubber wedge fixed between the rubber galoshes and the plate. The plate continued the same line with legs. The chance of an angle of attack moved  a part of load of from leg muscles onto muscles of the back. Also the form of the new fins became more streamlined, more buoyant (because of using the spongy rubber). All of  this rose the results.

The  subsequent work resulted an emergence of various monofins made by the different fin-makers. To my mind, the modern monofins can be divided into two groups: “flyers” and “hypers”. The division based mostly on difference or similarity of the shape the fin-makers keep the technical niceties of the constructions a secret.

 I can tell that “flyers” and “hypers” differ from each other by rigidity of the rubber wedge. The spongy rubber is softer and it is used in production of “hypers”. And the vacuum rubber which is harder is used for “flyers”.

This important difference usually predetermines the application of the fin model. “Flyer”, I think, is more for sprint. It needs to snap quickly into action  by the fin plate at a short distance, but the soft wedge of “hyper” does not let to do that. From the other hand the hard wedge of “flyer” binds the movement of plate at a long distance.

Through the most important  basis of selection of the fins is an individual technique of the sportsman.

Today the experiment is going on. The fin-makers are looking for new materials, new forms, to make monofins more effective, to make them fit to the different sportsmen and sportsmen and the different kinds of sports.

For example in 2003 the World Underwater Federation CMAS resumed the world championships in free diving (the diving lengthwise and deep without register of time). Now it needs to use some other materials because in condition of high pressure at a depth of 50 and more meters the rubber which is used now does not meet the requirements of thee rigidity of fins.

At the same time there is a number of sportsmen-amateurs who do not make the high speed end in itself, but who prefer  the healthy way of life and get pleasure in sports. We continue to make “sticks” and the simple monofins for them. Also the qualified sportsmen use the plain monofins in the everyday training.

In conclusion, I’d like to say that any wishes of working sportsmen and their coaches will be taken into account in my subsequent work on the production of fins for underwater sports.

Yours sincerely,

Ivan Shakhov