Sidemount Diver Instructor: Teaching the Streamlined Life

If you've spent any time around the training deck at our Reading academy over the last couple of seasons, you'll have noticed something: sidemount diving has stopped being a niche technical curiosity and become one of the most requested configurations in the building. Divers like the trim, the streamlining, the ease of getting in and out of the water at awkward UK sites, and if we're honest, a lot of them just like how it looks. As more of our own students ask to learn sidemount, more of our instructors are asking us the same question in return: how do I get qualified to teach it myself? That's exactly what the Sidemount Diver Instructor course answers, and with dry suit season now properly underway, this is the time of year we see the most interest in it.

What Is the Sidemount Diver Instructor Course?

The Sidemount Diver Instructor course is a Professional Academy qualification that authorises you to teach the Sidemount Diver specialty to your own students, rather than simply diving in sidemount yourself. It sits alongside our other specialty instructor ratings and is one of the more popular choices among instructors working towards Master Scuba Diver Trainer status, since specialty instructor ratings count directly towards that milestone.

Unlike a straightforward specialty diver course, this is an Instructor Development style programme. You're not just learning to trim out a pair of cylinders and swim comfortably, you're learning how to break the skill down into teachable steps, demonstrate it clearly to a nervous student, spot and correct the mistakes divers commonly make, and run a safe, well structured specialty course of your own from start to finish.

Who Is This Course For

This course is aimed squarely at active instructors. You don't need to be a technical diving specialist or have hundreds of sidemount dives behind you, but you do need to already hold an instructor rating and be comfortable in sidemount configuration yourself. We see three types of instructor come through this course most often: dive centre staff who want to widen what they can offer students locally, instructors heading towards Master Scuba Diver Trainer who need extra specialties on their card, and technical-minded instructors using it as a stepping stone towards our Tec Academy sidemount and technical courses further down the line.

It's also worth saying who this course is not for. If you've never dived sidemount before, start with the recreational Sidemount Diver specialty course first. You'll need genuine comfort and competence in the configuration before you can credibly teach it to someone else, and trying to skip that step usually shows during the practical evaluation.

Prerequisites and What You Need Before You Start

To enrol you'll need an active instructor rating in good standing, a Sidemount Diver specialty certification, or equivalent documented sidemount experience we can evaluate, and your own sidemount harness and cylinder configuration, since fit and familiarity matter here more than in almost any other specialty. We ask that candidates arrive with a reasonable number of sidemount dives already logged, simply because teaching a skill well requires having wrestled with it yourself first, including the bad dives where your trim was wrong and you had to work out why.

If you're not sure whether your current experience is enough, get in touch before you book. Our Professional Academy team will happily talk through your logbook and suggest a couple of tune-up dives if needed, rather than have you show up under-prepared.

What a Typical Training Day Looks Like

Classroom and Standards Review

Day one is mostly land-based. We work through the specialty standards in detail, covering exactly what a Sidemount Diver specialty course must include, how to structure knowledge development sessions, and how to brief students on configuration, gas management, and trim before they ever get wet. We also spend real time on teaching methodology: how adults actually learn a physical skill, why demonstration order matters, and how to give feedback a student can act on rather than feedback that just makes them anxious.

Confined and Open Water Teaching Practice

The rest of the course is hands-on. You'll take turns being the instructor while your peers play the role of students, working through skills like harness configuration, gas switching, trim and buoyancy in sidemount, valve drills, and out-of-gas procedures specific to the configuration. Your course director or evaluating instructor watches closely, and you'll get direct, specific feedback after every session, not just a pass or fail at the end.

What You Actually Learn

By the end of the course you'll be able to run a full Sidemount Diver specialty programme independently, from the first classroom session through to the final open water dive. That includes teaching correct cylinder positioning and trim, gas management and rule of thirds planning for a twin independent cylinder setup, valve drills and shutdowns, streamlining and buoyancy control specific to sidemount, and how to help a student troubleshoot the small fit and balance issues that are unique to this configuration and that no manual can fully cover.

You'll also come away with something less tangible but arguably more valuable: a much deeper understanding of your own sidemount diving. Almost every instructor who takes this course tells us their personal trim, gas planning, and comfort in the water improved simply from having to explain it clearly to someone else.

Common Questions People Ask Before Booking

Do I need my own equipment? Yes, you'll need a sidemount harness and cylinders that fit you properly, since ill-fitting kit makes both diving and teaching unnecessarily hard. Talk to us if you need advice on rigs before you buy.

How long does it take? Most candidates complete the course over one intensive weekend, though we can spread it across two if that suits your schedule better around work commitments.

Will this help with Master Scuba Diver Trainer status? Yes, this specialty instructor rating counts towards the specialties requirement for MSDT, alongside your other qualifications.

Is dry suit experience required? Not for the course itself, but since we're heading into dry suit season, many candidates choose to combine the two, training in a dry suit throughout since that's how most of their future UK sidemount students will be diving anyway.

Why It's Worth Doing

Sidemount isn't a passing trend. It solves genuine problems for UK divers: easier entries and exits at sites with awkward access, better trim for anyone who has struggled with a traditional backmount rig, and a real path into technical and cave-style diving for those who want to go further. Instructors who can teach it are simply more useful to their dive centre and more marketable if they ever move on, and students consistently rate sidemount specialty courses among their favourites because the improvement in their comfort and trim is so immediately noticeable.

How It Fits Into a Bigger Pathway

For most of our instructors, the Sidemount Diver Instructor rating isn't the end point, it's a bridge. Many go on to explore our Tec Academy, where sidemount configuration is standard for technical and overhead environment diving. Others simply add it to a growing collection of specialty instructor ratings on their way to Master Scuba Diver Trainer. Either way, it broadens what you can teach and deepens your own diving at the same time, which is a fairly rare combination in this industry.

Ready to add Sidemount Diver Instructor to your teaching card? Explore the Sidemount Diver Instructor course or browse our full course listing for other Professional Academy options, get in touch, or call us on +44 (0) 118 9761 729. We're based at Bellman Court, Great Knollys Street, Reading, RG1 7HN, and we'd love to talk through whether this is your next step.