Sidemount diving beyond the basics: in our courses section you find our Sidemount and Sidemount Plus programmes. So, what is Sidemount Plus?
First things first – the TDI Sidemount Diver course offers great foundation training for those discovering sidemount diving. It covers basics as well as a few challenging skills that further develop a diver’s understanding and knowledge of the equipment configuration and its potential applications.
However, over a few years of teaching the course, I felt like I was shortchanging divers only completing the minimum of 3 dives prescribed by agency standards. Even if we were doing long dives, we were merely laying basic foundations. It felt like we had only scratched the surface and my students were just starting to understand the potential, as well as the intricacies, of diving sidemount.
Diving deeper into Sidemount
For example, the degree of flexibility offered by sidemount diving is one of its main advantages. However, in order to benefit from that, I felt divers needed more than three dives. That’s how the idea for Sidemount Plus was born, intended to take divers beyond sidemount basics.
The concept is pretty simple. Building on the learning from the initial course, we add two days / four dives. The goal is to consolidate and expand on what’s been introduced already. What that entails depends on the student. So far, it’s been a mix of tank handling exercises, line laying in preparation of cave diving or a couple of days focussed on propulsion and stability.
The point is to allow tailor-made learning for you. We include video analysis as well as some play time, because divers are more likely to continue doing something they enjoy. The added time increases comfort levels and deepens the understanding of the configuration. This is key to students continuing with sidemount diving. It’s something that’s hard, if not impossible, to achieve in two or three days.
Just two days add hugely to the learning curve by creating a higher degree of familiarity with skills and equipment. This, in turn, will accelerate the diver’s development in the long run. Of course, divers can do that by themselves with a buddy after the course. But not everyone has a qualified, experienced sidemount buddy on hand to really help them out here. Additional supervised training will set them much further on their way to true proficiency.